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MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Winners announced

Join the Mix Challenge - recurrence: February until December
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Mister Fox
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Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#41

Post by Mister Fox »

Due to time constraints, I have to post the friendly reminder a couple of hours earlier than usual:
As of this moment, there are a bit more 25 hours or 1 day and 1 hour left to submit your edit.


Please do not forget to document your edits
marvinbastos

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#42

Post by marvinbastos »

Hi folks, thats my second challenge,and i enjoyed too much to mix this song.
I used only native Reaper plugins for mixing,and some lexicon impulse responses for reverbs!!
Thats all!
Here is a link.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18vr-Pn ... IlSL1/view
White Punk OD
Posts: 253
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 23:58 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#43

Post by White Punk OD »

THIS SONG IS SO GOOD!!!
Green Dog, you will land a hit! I would love to hear the whole album.
And you have super pristine analogue synth sounds!

Dance to the Pulsar. Sway with the deep drone sounds of the warp drive engine.
Sing with Princess Leia in the small navigator booth.
Get the crowd in the dance hall addicted.
Make it loud and rave.
:phones: ^_^


Ok, this is it, I beg you to enjoy!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nLng2S ... sp=sharing WAV mix
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UYulMY ... sp=sharing mp3 - check it, behaves well!

screens:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


--------------------------
There is so much other reference to recall, Robert Miles, Goldfrapp, Hikaru Utada, Fiona Apple, Krieger, AND ONE - Wasted (found it a couple of days ago), of course Kraftwerk, and an endless list of Trance, House and Rave stuff I don't know the names any more.


It was a challenge for me, but not for my notebook. It laughs at me with 45% CPU load, and everything on and live.
This time I had to use a couple of commercial plugins, got them for a bargain.
The project grew to a hundred tracks, including many bus channels.
To keep all these little elements under control, and create the bigger picture, and maintain the flow, in my local idiom people would say, this is like "herding a bag of flea" :D

After judging what every recorded track means to me, and grouping them accordingly, I decided, what should keep the whole thing together, and it was a snare, vocals, and the "bass concert". Bass needs to be warm and rhythmic. We need to dance here, don't we?

I formed the snare sound with that Neve emulation by brainworx, using the gate and their incredibly expressive EQ.
I called it the pulsar, because there is an LFO in the DAW that sways the treble knob with a sinus. The plugin can digest this smoothly. So within every 2 bars, the sound is swelling up and down.

I left many sounds quite original, they were perfect already. I used all printed effects, where existed.

The guitars had a serious hum, I sent them all through a de-hum system and reprinted these tracks before loading into the DAW.
I put these guitars in an "orchestral" section, together with Soundscape, EBow, and Moog.
Also for the start of the orchestral interlude, I had to cut the timing a little bit.
Orchestra has its bus treatment with a crazy Lagrange-delay web, a saturating comp (Thrillseeker LA), and a little EQ, boosting midrange, and shaping bass and treble into a softer area. (between -1 and +2 dB only)

Only GTR v3, GTR C, and GTR Intro are receiving some minimal regular guitar treatment.

Vocals got a "spaceship pilot cabin" sound with a special reverb impulse, that I had created from scratch, 100% electronic, some years ago.
Male vocal got autotuned.
Some understatement or underground attitude is by design.
De-Essing and breath control are partially manual, additionally to what the plugins could do. I left some in for the sake of some imperfection.
There are 3 automated IR reverbs, one is auxed.

The bass stem has the bass guitars, the subsonic synth, and the pulse bass synth. It got a sidechain ducking from the kicks.
I call it its own concert, because it needed a conductor. :)
But I had to create one special track: Sub-sonic to the regular bass guitar, that always plays quite high, and I had to automate this very carefully, to enhance the fullness of the sound at the right moments.
This gave me the right amount of LF drone sounds and saved sonic balances in the direction that I was aiming at.
So this deep sub will hopefully stand out from most other mixes.

Keybord bus was one of the Vitalizer targets. Lead Vocals was another, Soundscape was another.
The acoustic piano sound got the NastyDLAmkII, a very vintage and spectacular delay with modulation. You think you can't hear it, but it totally carries the overall sound.

Synthesizers were sorted into different roles, like my loop+sequencer+percussion section, or bass stem, or melody.
There is massive EQ on some synths, and often a Haas delay (ADT by AirWindows is a bliss and game changer).

Bus strategy is as follows:
A dry drums
AA percussion + sequencers + loops
B drum room and overheads
C basses
D guitar
E orchestra
EE orchestra melody
F keyboards
G BG vocals
H lead vocals

Stereo bus has Elysia Alpha compressor, pushing 1-3 dB, and an instance of Ozone 8 with the maximizer off. The Ozone autopilot had suggested some minor EQ correction that I adjusted a bit further, but it is within +- 0.8dB
I tested loudness with Limiter6, it digests quite well, the brick has still fat punch and ends up at ~ -10dB.

Good luck everyone, have a great day!
White Punk OD
Posts: 253
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 23:58 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#44

Post by White Punk OD »

@marvinbastos, please can you invoke the google drive sharing mechanism, we have otherwise no permission to get to your mix.
hjchjc
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2019 07:19 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#45

Post by hjchjc »

Very inspired by Spike Stent's work with New Order and more recently Foals, so I went a little harsher and more aggressive than I normally do. I thought that would be a good approach for this very cool, complicated song.

with all my mults my session ballooned to 106 tracks, but I think it turned out pretty well.

It's -16.2 LUFS and -1.1 dBTP.



Plugins used:

Plugin Alliance: Lindell 6X-500, Lindell 7x-500, bx-subfilter

Voxengo: OldSkoolVerb

Logic: EQ, EnVerb, Chromaverb, Tremolo, SilverVerb, Space Designer

SoundSpot Firefly, Percolate, Kickbox,

Melda Spectral Delay,

Auburn Sounds Panagement 2,

Soundtoys Tremolator, Decapitator,

Airwindows Air, ADClip7, BlockParty

Waves TG12345, API-2500, H-Delay, Kramer PIE, Puigchild, Scheps 73, RDeEsser, H-EQ, RVox, Vocal Rider, and Kramer Master Tape,

Musical Entropy Spaceship Delay,

Focusrite Red EQ,

FabFilter Pro-Q 3 and Pro-MB,

Yohng W1 Limiter.

iZotope Imager, Ozone 8 Spectral Shaper (not for mix bus but for the guitar bus)

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J2RbH5 ... sp=sharing
MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13iDdxi ... sp=sharing
VasDim
Posts: 79
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 07:57 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#46

Post by VasDim »

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7v0edb1p56p02 ... m.mp3?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxq6wa3onqgor ... m.wav?dl=0

For all track are used:
- Waves Q10;
- Waves C4;
- Db ProComp.

AUX Effect;
- Waves TrueVerb;
- Waves SuperTap;

Good luck to all.
VasDim
Slickster716

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#47

Post by Slickster716 »

Hi

The composition of this song is very well done. I enjoyed working on this project.

Here is my submission

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1R4Lp_ ... F0PfV3MfnM

For some reason when bringing into protools the first few times the tracks had random sync points that made it impossible to set up the song. The only way to get it to work was to load in from the workspace and to remove elastic properties.

For mixing this number of elements I found it challenging to mix the low-end properly and also still have a fat bass response. In the end i settled on a tighter low-end as it seemed the best approach for the number of instruments.

Most instruments had eq processing using fabfilter q3 or bx_console E/ G or focusrite depending on the level of brightness in the material.

Acoustic Drum kits used emperical arouser and waves dbx 160 on the kick/snare. 1 of the room tracks had an 1176 style compression effect and the other had an ssl listen mic compressor effect. The effect in the end was to create a bright, saturated tone that complimented the electronic drums. The low-end was filtered from the acoustic drums a good amount.

The Electronic drum kit was put together very well. alot of the higher end elements needed to be tamed. I used bx_refinement and eq to help lower the presence of the cymbals/shakers etc. even still the mix has a good amount of high end. The bell had a surprising amount of low-end that was contributing to some issues mixing the sub/low-end, that i could not identify. I muted different tracks until i found out it was that. That had to be filtered out.

I used on a lot of instruments the SPL Transient Shaper plugin. there was a build up of muddiness and i wanted to change the dynamic shape of alot of the sounds to help remove some build up. I attenuated the sustain on many of the tracks to help make them fit - including some of the bass tracks.

The main bass had a Burnley 73 EQ, 670 style compressor, maag eq, and added vibrato/tremelo and some chorus. I placed a cut in the eq in relation the fundamental of the kick drum in order to mix the low end.

The pulse synthbass was sometimes difficult to deal with also - i reduced the sustain and added different cuts in the lows/mids to make room for the kick and the main bass track.
The guitars where processed differently - many used bx_refinement to help reduce harshness in many of the tracks. For some of them i used waves r compressor which is good for polishing/setting back in the mix. Others i added saturation and use more upfront compressors to move forward in the mix.
The keys were processed in a fairly simple manner, using typical eq moves

For the lead vocals and intro vocals I used Maag e2/waves rvox/klanghelm sdrr2, pro-ds.

The backing vocals I used Rcompressor and many I have processed with Izotope Nectar - I find that it seems to do a good job with background vocals.

For the mixbus i used the nebula TIM P bus comp and j37 tape emulation. I also used the matthew lane dr ms to help add depth/dimension to the mix.

Many of the tracks are routed to the nebula vnxt emt plate reverb 140 program. I also used the mfc group buss programs, but didn't use on individual channels due to the cpu load.

Thanks again for the opportunity and i would like to help improve further if i have the opportunity.
Snarowitz

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#48

Post by Snarowitz »

Hello,
Here is my submission for MC059. Cool song, thanks for offering it up. I used the pre effected tracks and further spacyed them up with various delays, echoes, and reverbs. Keeping everything ITB this time I used various compressor and eq plugins as needed, with saturation and stereo imaging generating the spaced out canvas. Didn't have much time to look into reference tracks this challenge, so I pulled from my recollection of great tones in my favorite pop,electronic, and metal of all time. Used some very broad stroked references, like Tools "ænima", and "Lateralus" albums for guitar tone. As well as In Flames "Come Clarity" and "Soundtrack to Your Escape" and The Prodigy "Fat Of The Land" albums for general feel at different points throughout. I didn't have much in my brain to compare the vocal to... Best I could come up with was some kind of cross between Bjork and Sneaker Pimps. Breathy yet dominating, with an almost Prince like flare at times. The male vocal drones in the background, occasionally peaking out to accent dynamic changes. there is some dynamic eq and M/S compression on the 2bus to enforce the groove and better focus tonality within the stereo field. Hope you like it.

SNarowitz

WAV.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tV65aS ... sp=sharing

MP3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11iRiT2 ... sp=sharing
Mork
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Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#49

Post by Mork »

Hi,

great song, thanks for that!

WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=15n7MO ... Qh3SqnDroi
MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=12krU- ... P6zRV4LPGC

Due to time constraints I am posting this now, before work, to not let the whole work go to waste :exhausted:
There is really nothing that special going on, because the song comes with lots of stuff already. However, there is one plugin worth mentioning that had the greatest impact: my trusty Sonnox EQ (could be any EQ), especially the filter section. 5 Kickdrums, 3-10 basses plus fat analog style synths? Come on... :hihi: For example, that is why the "Bass" sounds as it does, to make some room for the "Pulse" which is really what provides the low end of the basses (or bassi? bassii? bassens?). Hope you like it!

Cheers
Mork
stu b

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC059 October 2019 - Submissions until 21-10-2019 11:59pm GMT+2/CEST

#50

Post by stu b »

Great work Green-Dog and thanks, had a lot of fun. Felt the tracks were well processed as they were so for me it was mainly about balances and volume rides. Also experimented with plenty of delays, verbs and saturation, used Trackspacer on various tracks, mainly the basses, not much else.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kljyit68s6d91 ... v.wav?dl=0
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