2024-MAR-01 Info: Check out Songwriting Competition 079 if you're into "Synthwave" music making.

MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Winners announced

Join the Mix Challenge - recurrence: February until December
User avatar
Mister Fox
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 3102
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2017 16:15 CEST
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#31

Post by Mister Fox »

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 7 days left to submit your edit
User avatar
Dodgingrain
Posts: 157
Joined: Wed Sep 20, 2017 03:16 CEST
Location: United States
Contact:

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#32

Post by Dodgingrain »

wav: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrjZgw92g ... A?e=fDskyR
mp3: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrjZgvLab ... w?e=D5UfH7

Interesting song, I enjoyed working on it, its nice to work on stuff that is clearly from this side of the Atlantic. This is a song I could have heard on the stage in the woods in Peninsula State Park as a kid when I was 12 where they did lots of folk/Americana mixed in with historic stories, etc. That was a big scene there back then in the early 80's.

For the mid/side decoding I used Voxengo MSED.

The rest of the mix was pretty standard. Peak compressors on most tracks to get the stray transients. The kick far is mixed a bit louder as this would be very apparent in a live situation on a small stage and it gives the song more of an old historic folk vibe. The vocals have slap delays, compression, deessing, a little bit of distortion, reverb, and a highly compressed ad track mixed in low, there is also just a touch of widening going on. The backing vocals sounded a bit odd so there is some ducking via fader automation to try and blend them better. The huh marching parts just had some compression and eq. The synth strings are a mess so there is compression, eq, and an ensemble effect to try and work on these, still not happy with them but they are necessary for filling out the low end. I think in this case I would have re-recorded them while mixing as that is an easy part and its an easy sound to create.

I think the missing cymbal track really hurts this mix and I wish I had them. The rough mix was really muddy, hopefully that isn't the desired vibe on this.
Mixing, Mastering, Remixing Services
Two Cat Audio Labs, llc
https://www.twocataudiolabs.com
https://www.instagram.com/twocataudiolabs/
User avatar
SoundBeing
Posts: 32
Joined: Sun Sep 15, 2019 18:54 CEST
Location: Berlin
Contact:

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#33

Post by SoundBeing »

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aeonz014iom8m ... g.wav?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fh0a6ug38neoq ... g.mp3?dl=0

My first attempt here, hope I fit all the parameters. Here's my session notes:
Civil War Mix Notes:

I sub grouped all of the instruments that I wanted directly working together.
Ex: Drums, E Bow, Strings, Acoustics, Resonator/E.Gtr, BVs, etc. Each sub group has some element of compression all sent to a Mix buss. 2 buss is loaded with an SSL Comp with a late attack and a release that is timed with the Kick hitting around -3dB. Kramer Tape adds some depth and grit.

With the drums, I doubled the kick drum and treated each one for a different bass frequency using RBass and a Pultec. 60hz focus on one, and 80hz on the other. Both are gated for a nice punch. I didn’t like the low, loose, muddy kick in the demo, so I made sure mine was defined and punchy. Kicks are muted on the intro. The “kick far” I tuned down a step and a half to be a pitch which was more appropriate for the key of the song. It’s panned just off center L and accentuated at 250hz. The top snare is gated and an SSL EQ is generously coloring it’s sound along with an additional EQ cutting a good amount of 400hz. SN bottom is also an SSL EQ. There is a comp/eq/reverb send that is muted and opened on the third beat of each snare hit. It adds a more aggressive hit along with a subtle reverb tail. I find that if you leave an open reverb on any drum it mucks up the mix. So this only opens and closes to fill that space. No muck. Floor tom is muted until the final hit. Big and bold, it is panned hard Right. I used the mid/side Rooms as Hard L/R stereo pair. The mid, I delayed 25ms to add space. Both are compressed at about -4. The Drum Sub group has an SSL Comp with the slowest attack and fastest release with a 4/1 ration tickling the drums. EQ adds some upper register, a very small amount of TrueVerb and a Bx-Solo adding a pinch of stereo.

Shaker sounded great. I compressed it a bit and found a slightly left side placement inside the drum sound.

Ebow is there as a pad. Fader move in the instrumental section gives it some more voice. Modest compression on the sub group, no EQ no FX.

Strings are pretty useful in the track. Since there’s no bass, I’m relying on the “low string” for the low end of the track. It has an RBass accentuating 150hz, a C4 hanging onto the low end and a limiter to keep it right where I want it the whole time. Hi String is panned hard R.

GTRS: The acoustics are panned mostly left, I added some harmonic saturation, Eq in the upper register and a modest amount of compression. Same thing with the Resonator. The e. gtr has a bump at 250hz and a side chain compressor that ducks 4-6 db when the vocal is active. That way, I could keep it nice and hot in the middle of the mix but it still gets out of the way of the vocal. The Electric and Resonator are grouped and panned towards the right side. There is a ping pong delay on one of the resonator tracks that is gated to only pick up the accented hits and is in true stereo. It has a wide pan which gives a wonderful sense of space between left and right. And because it only opens on certain notes, it’s subtle and doesn’t muck up the mix. Resonator fader moves on transitions and in the instrumental.

With the Lead vocal, I mean, it was recorded with two incredible mics, I used them both, the 251 as my center with LA-2A, some EQ to overall brighten and add tone. There is a pinch of Hall reverb on there, almost none, but just enough. The U47 I panned off center R with a tape echo and an LA-2A. It’s sitting under the 251 in volume. So subtle, you wouldn’t notice it unless I muted it. No tuning.

The BVs are panned and exist mostly on the left side. I rode the fader to make sure their tails really came through. The breathy stuff, weird, love it, used it, heavily. This is the one place where I really let the reverb be noticeable. I find that reverb just destroys a mix. So I save it for one or two things.

Any mid/side was dealt with phase, delay, panning or doubling.
White Punk OD
Posts: 253
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 23:58 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#34

Post by White Punk OD »

So, here we are again. I hope that David will like it and accept the style I tried to recreate.

Please, listen before reading!

Here is the WAV, 48k/24:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jWCUMi ... sp=sharing
(I will never render at 44.1 because some plugins sound awful in that mode. But I have no problem if Dave or Mr.Fox ask me to provide a converted 44.1 WAV additionally, my convertor is very legit and sounds totally clean.)

mp3, 44/16:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hnwd6H ... sp=sharing

Here are the screen shots that reveal the overall structure:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


Overview:

Vocals use a lot of fader automation, also for deessing. TDR Nova for intellegible lyrics, and Klanghelm twice, first with "Auto" (fast adaptive), second with "Slow".
I autotuned the vocal only during bar 67-75 (long notes in the second chorus) and in bar 100. You can see the bypass operation in the screen shot. To me this Melda freeware seems quite transparent. I can still make it a bit slower, though this type will naturally "yodel" at a certain point. It does not create the Antares metallic artifact. I'm just showing what it sounds like.

I made the marching snare quite big, and gave it some echoes, plus a Haas delay, like soldiers marching in the streets, and having more than one drum. The bottom carpet was deliberately enhanced.
Also, I used a VCA LFO synced to the beat, to enhance the marching groove. (rising saw tooth for a pulsating crescendo)

When listening to the original mix again, I decided to use the "kick far" track to simulate a couple of cannon thunders, at the same point where the original had some crash or noise effect also. But probably I left out one or two, can change that on request. It is nothing extra, just automation boosting volume and reverb, and a clip cut gain +9dB for these hits.

For the bass, I created a drone sound from the bass string section, with a technology that resembles "MaxBass", and employed the psycho-acoustic effect that makes harmony frequencies simulate a lower bass tone.
The high strings got an extension like pulling an additional drawbar on the Solina that adds the 4" sound. Just a bit more brilliance, derived from the original track.

About the tuning issues, I thought perhaps their keyboard was tuned a bit lower than the guitars? Seen that a couple of times before. Anyway, I tuned all keyboard tracks higher at +8cent. Seemed to help the vocals a lot, during the whole song. Still a bit of a color, but feels a lot better to me now.
I think the sound should be warm for the love, but also have some inherent little detune and dissonance for the pain, as the e bow contributes to that also.

Master bus:
Density 1.0 compressor, doing less than 2dB, with "fat" and "transformer" analog emulations; Thrillseeker XTC exciter; TDR Slick EQ (no more than 0.6dB); VoxengoEssEQ (-0.4dB on 3k); Melda Saturator (with special harmonics boost, limiter sure is off).
White Punk OD
Posts: 253
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 23:58 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#35

Post by White Punk OD »

Some remarks on details (I might update this posting later).

The DAW makes a track automatically stereo, when it sees any stereo data involved.
The mid/side treatment is not immediately visible in the screen shot. The mid channel is being treated as mono, the side channel has two clips on one track, routed left and right respectively, one has polarity inversion on the clip attributes. I could throw all three clips on one track, but I wanted to adjust the volumes of the side channels.

I experimented a lot with phase and timing correction.
Let me mention the snare room recording, I delayed the mid signal for 0.11ms, and also put a 90° phase shifter on both side channels, one plus and one minus.
This is the result of checking with a spectral correlation meter, that compares mid with side raw tracks. This setting yields the smoothest or most even correlation curve.
Nudging by ear confirmed that thing, and I got it where I wanted.
Direct snare top and bottom were aligned to the room snare, and aren't actually loud and leading, but rather for the effect of the marching sound in the background.
Still, the alignment, the Haas (ADT by Airwindows), and the LFO pattern make the snare quite dominant, without cluttering up the other instruments too much.

Gtr C Matt Mid got a little compressor, which creates a surprisingly nice motion together with the side signal that hasn't. Like a very soft flanger driven by envelope.
Also, I threw the "Emissary" clean channel on the decoded guitar, to brighten it up a bit. These two effects work nicely only together. Doing this, overall sound becomes richer.

The slide guitar uses Neutrino and the Echomania tape echo, and has detailed volume automation.

About the chords, well I would ask to discuss with David, what the intention was, when one musician plays chord A and the other plays B. Will you decide to keep the dissonance for reasons of art? Or shall I sort it out? (I think that's a mandatory question to get a song done well, and hit its purpose.)
I decided to attenuate a few chords, that I thought were less beautiful sounding.
In general, I cared a lot about the playing, and gave it some structure, with putting forward one or the other note.

As we don't have the original keyboards available, I did put more focus on the guitars. But there is quite some volume ride putting a couple of string notes forward.

All guitars go to a stem bus with a colored compressor, and also there is the Limiter6, but using only the HF limiter. This controls the slide guitar a bit, leaving it still quite bright.


I love the recording, especially the pristine guitar sounds, and the drums.
As it is a mix-off for practice and experience, I decided to take some time for it, and create something a bit more polished.
But all of it lives in total vintage context, so there are really old and fat tape echo and plate reverb sounds involved, and no modern effect whatsoever.
I hope, listeners can enjoy. All the best to everyone here, and thanks to Mr. David Paul Paige!

Recently, I watched a Civil War movie in black and white, a young couple was seeking work in a small town, and soon the draft call came, and after some weeks the men returned, horribly wounded, and many missing, and in the parish house they improvised a hospital and the guy had some medical knowledge, and so on. It was very moving. So, during mixing I tried to recall the impression.
Chriswilson83

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#36

Post by Chriswilson83 »

Hi peeps,

Dead sorry but I won't have time to submit a mix, the month has just been too busy to find the time 🙁
User avatar
TomImmon
Posts: 57
Joined: Sun Jun 16, 2019 18:03 CEST
Location: near Berlin (Germany)

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#37

Post by TomImmon »

Many thanks to David and the team of mix challenege. That was really a very nice song for mixing. Quite to my taste!

I made the M / S decoding with a plugin from Ghz, because it offered more possibility in the DAW, than the normal M / S decoding with 3 mixer channels. I really like M / S. Is is great for the overheads, though that was not so noticeable in the reduced instrumentation of this drum kit.

Wav 48khz/32bit:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yw5thbl39b5bt ... n.wav?dl=0

MP3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sgs9hwsncbuz0 ... n.mp3?dl=0

To the mix:
I actually used analogue textures on all channels. Kick and snare uses tape saturation and a little DevilLoc. On all acoustic guitars SPL-Twintube was used to add some additional harmonics. The vocals use FrontDaw as preamp and additionally J37 as tape plugin.
Kick + Snare: In addition to subtractive and addititve EQ, I used Disto as a compressor and gated both channels carefully. The kick got a bit of extra low end with bx_subfilter. Snare was optimized with a transient shaper.

Room got some gating (range -15db) and long release to damp the tail oft he reverb a bit. At the same time, the room was heavily "inflated" with the Fairchild compressor

The acoustic guitar in the intro used an Eventide Ultrachannel preset, the other acoustic guitar ran on the Fairchild compressor.

The two Dobros ran over J37. Reso B was treated with fairchild, Reso D was treated with the MV2 Compressor (since you get a good balance between picking and melody line)

The E-Bows got only a slight limiter.

The vocals were "pretreated" with Nectar3 Elements and subsequently colored with Fairchild and processed fort he dynamic with Cla76. In addition, a limiter was used.

The main room is from the 480L (Large Hall). For the drums Abbey Road Chambers was used. The vocals used a stereo slap back delay and an EMT140 plate. For the Dobros, a small room was used for one and a small plate for the other. All guitars and the vocals got a little 1/8 delay with slight modulation.

All instruments / vocals went on a rear bus, which was equipped with SDC_64 Compressor and VSM3

On the Mixbus there was the Townhouse compressor (for the glue) and a little EQ in M / S to get the bass better in the center.

I did a lot of fader automation on vocals, background vox and the resonator guitars.
rawdrewage
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 17, 2019 19:39 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#38

Post by rawdrewage »

Hi All,

Here is my submission.

Mixed in Nuendo 10 all in the box.

24 bit 44.1KHz wave - https://www.rawdrewage.com/MC058_david_ ... rewage.wav
MP3 - https://www.rawdrewage.com/MC058_david_ ... rewage.mp3

For some reason the links I had to google drive stopped working so I moved it to another server.

I hope you enjoy.

Good luck to everyone.

Cheers
Last edited by rawdrewage on Wed Sep 18, 2019 12:53 CEST, edited 1 time in total.
PeterM

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#39

Post by PeterM »

Very interesting song for mixing!

Here is my submission: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KyzlQn ... sp=sharing

I’ve send the MS recorded tracks to Groups and decode the signal with Logic’s Direction Mixer.

EQ + Compression on almost every channel. Reverb (Logic Chroma) on snare, room, guitars, strings, ebow and vocals. I’ve used a little pitch correction on the vocal. Also de-esser and stereo delay. There is a Stereo Spread on the Lead Vocal that is mixed in at certain points with volume automation. I’ve tried to separate the different guitars, which was a little difficult because they are fighting in the same frequency-space. I used 4 ‘busses’ with buss compression: Drums, Instruments, Lead VOX, BU VOX. Only Logic built-in plug-ins.

Thanks for listening, suggestion are welcome!

Best,
Peter
noogard

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC058 September 2019 - Submissions until 21-09-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#40

Post by noogard »

Hey. I really like original mix, and I failed to produce one close to it :) But anyways :)

Tried to keep it smooth and soft, so almost nothing was done to tracks except EQing, and reverberation. Tried to softer drums by waves trans-X... bit helped.
tape for lead vocals, but to be honest not really happy with it, of someone can help me out, how to reach such a soft sound as in original mix, I'd appreciate.
bit compression for guitars and dobro guitars.
bit of rbass for lower string track

Master bus - tape, soft buss comp

MP3
WAV
Post Reply