MIX CHALLENGE - MC077 June 2021 - Winners announced

[elroms]

Hello! Thanks to the song provider, this was really original and interesting to mix

Here is my entry : https://drive.google.com/file/d/14TGlAo ... sp=sharing

I organised the following groups for the instrumental : drums, bass (including the bass and the low pad), melody (including all melodic instruments and effects, but not the didgeridoo for instance)

Then I did a lot of the usual EQ, compression, multi band limitation. I applied some saturation to the bass too, and applied some side chain compression from the drums to the bass and low pad

I applied some reverb on the flute to make it sound more "dreamy", a tiny bit of delay on the piano too

On the lead voice I put a lot of plate reverb, some EQ, 3 compressors, 1 multi band limiter

I hope you like it, good luck to everyone!

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 7 days left to submit your mix.

[TheLordRudman]

Hi everyone,

Here is the link of my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ldmaQB ... sp=sharing

I hope the file is in compliance with the rules. Good LUCK to all of us.

[dnlptn]

Hi all,

Here is my submission, thank you RodA for a cool track. I tried to make it feel cinematic and find ways to keep the energy going.
Tired not to overdo the reverbs - hope you enjoy it.

MC077
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a9IVqd ... sp=sharing

Drums
Kick drum has a reverb with saturation (BB HG-2) before it for some largeness.
Added saturation to all drums for some edge.

Vocals
De-essers & soothe, UAD Neve 1073 eq, few compressors, Saturn, delay
Few reverbs going on - Main verb is a vintage valhalla verb, blended with vahalla plate for warmth.
Automated other verbs (abbey road chambers, avid studio verb) for certain words and phrases

Vocal Double
similar treatment, but delayed by 364 samples

SFX
BB HG-2 Saturation, Vintage Valhalla Verb
Radio has Saturation and Tape Emulation

Piano
BX_ssl400 eq and decapitator Sat

Strings/Pads
Automation for these to pop out during the choruses

Reverb FX
Had some sidechain reverb thing going on for the reverse cymbals and one of the vocal parts so that the reverb would activate at the end of the phrase.

Didgeridoo
EQ, devil loc and decapitator. I wanted this texture to have more edge.

Mix-Bus
UAD Ampex-ATR 102, Manley Passive, BX Townhouse

Thank you

[Nimii]

Hi All!

Thanks for the opportunity to mix this great track!

I tried to keep this one simple and not add 100's of plugins and I am quite happy with my end product!

I loved the sound of the kick drum driving the track with the piano. I focused on that, ensuring I have enough space for everything, especially the low end.. while still having the vocal open but not too upfront.

Drums got minimal processing with just some parallel comp and distortion on the kit, mostly on the kick drums

Bass was the usual 1176 and neve-style saturation and EQ

Piano I left natural and sent to a room reverb. I eventually added an automated Valhalla Supermassive for some delays in the breakdown and adding groove in the chorus, very low in the mix.

Vocals got quite a bit of treatment as I found them a bit too bright for the track. Sorting out most of the level changes with clip gain, I used a series of light EQ and compression from Waves F6, Slate VMR (1076 pre, 1176 comp, 1081 eq, and a tube saturation) into a parallel Waves F6 for de-essing, into a MJUC comp for light compression at the end, sending into a chamber, hall, H3000 widener all with automated send levels.

All other sounds I just made sure that they did not clash in the low end with a combination of ducking and mid-side EQ.

I buss everything to their respective busses (drums, bass, synths, strings, vox, etc) and then to a mix buss. All busses have Slate Digital Virtual Mix Rack for console emulation and Slate Digital Virtual Tape Machine for some tape sound. SSL Bus Comp on the mix bus doing max 1db of compression into a Slate EQ to open up the 4khz range slightly, into a Waves Pultec for a touch of tone and 'smiley face' EQ.

I mostly used the SSL channel strip for EQ and comp on any channels.

I used quite a bit of Soundtoys on this for various levels of distortion

Waves F6 for frequency-specific compression/ducking to help make space for the kick and bass where needed.

FX consists of a large chamber (main FX) ducking with the lead vocal, a hall, a plate, a room, 8th and 16th delays, and a "H3000" style sound using Soundtoys Microshift. All reverbs are from Verbsuite Classics and delays are Soundtoys Echoboy and Crystalizer

Here are links to my submissions :

Wave : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r1q6YG ... sp=sharing
YouLean Loudness Meter Read out : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uBHrkF ... sp=sharing

P.S The notes said the project files were 48/24 but the files were 44.1/24 so I bounced it in the format provided

Thanks all!

[AndyM]

Here's the link to my mix

https://signalflowau-my.sharepoint.com/ ... Q?e=28gh97


Nice to hear a didge in a song

Lead Vox Very light Rvox Compression, Pultec EQ, and Blackbox Saturation, Plus Automation throughout, CLA Epic Reverb and throw subtle delays

Mixbus Light Compression, Stereo Widening and Maag Eq and automation to lift the Chorus's

Lifted/highlighted the noises in the didge when played and added reverb

Automated Piano Reverbs in Sections

Used the Waves Omni Channel on most tracks for Filters and eq and some saturation

[Ozgen Sabuncu]

Hi i am new in this forum. I hope i'm doing everything right.

Drums: I've separated drums two drum bus. Called high and low drums.

Low Drum bus: Ssl 4000e bx, pulsetec eq- nomad fact. bx true peak limiter.
paralel drum bus: slate distressor.

High Drums:Reverb and some ssl 400e eq.

Piano: Reverb, Magnetic-Nomad fact., Spl vitalizer

Keys: None processed except Flute

Flute: bx delay, And sidechain compressed with vocals

Fx Bus: Standart clip - Sir audio

Back vox: SAturn and h-reverb

lead vox: Outlaw gain rider, la2a emulation slate, Mv2 waves, Sibilliance-waves
i copy the lead vocals and i gave convolotion reverb and widen it. With izotope trash.

Sub pad: Side chain with drums, and fuzz from reaper js distortion.
eq with ssl 4000e

Bass SSl 4000e eq and compression.

Didgeridoo: conv. rev with fuzz from izotope trash. and limiter-reaper.


Mix Buss: Lindell 50 bus, Vbc Fg red, Magnetic(TApe)- Nomad fact.

I've did to much automation, and clip gain to channels.

This is my first subscription. I hope i did the explanation right. My english is low level, sorry for cant make a detailed reply.

This is my link. Thanks and Hello to everyone

[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EqCTQt ... sp=sharing

[julio]

Hello. I am new here. Hope I followed all rules correctly

I've tried to make the song as "dreamy" as possible without compromising the initial sonority

I basically eq everything, used compressor and gates on about 70% of the instruments trying to balance between the natural feeling the song already had, and used many effects and saturators. I also used many parallel compressors and some automation.

I would be happy to hear some feedback

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w9uYC3 ... sp=sharing

[Christoph_K]

Hell everyone, here's my entry: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9tygqvjocs361 ... K.wav?dl=0

Fist I removed the clicks in the tracks where it was necessary - it reminded me a bit of the good old AKAI S1100 times where you had to find the loop points without clicks )
Then I focussed on the low-end to find a pocket for each instrument playing down there. The bass track was a bit difficult to work with. It seemed to have a lot of processing baked into the track which wasn’t helpful IMO. But I hope I managed to get things straight down there. Also I thought I could try to go for more excitement with the percussion tracks. I wanted to work out the trance feeling a bit more while having much space around the percussive elements with the rest of the music floating around like in a distant dream.

Vocals
- Manually deessed the tracks, pre leveling with clip gain, nudging of some phrases to reduce too much delay between some consonants. Repaired the „P“ from „Pull away“ with another „p“ stolen from „spirits“ at the very beginning
- On the single tracks: high pass to remove rumble, dynamic high shelf for taming the sibilance, dynamic EQ to remove resonant frequencies, UA 1176 20:1 for fast transients, UA LA-2 for leveling and a final deesser
- SSL Channelstrip 2 on the bus with a slight cut at 3.5k and 650hz, high pass at 90hz and lowpass at 13k, Smooth Operator to tame resonances and sibilance
- Reverb (Byome, UA Capitol Chambers)
- Stereo Spread on BGVs (Microshift)

SFX
- Reverb (140 Plate, Byome Endless Verb)
- Scooped out some lows in 23_SFX5
- Spiltted 24_SFX6 in a track for the fills with all the low end and one with a high pass for the parts where the bass is playing

Instruments (Track 13-17)
- SSL Channelstrip 2 with EQs
- Gem Dopamine on choir and flute
- Saturation Knob, Pro MB and bx V3 for removing low end in the mid signal to make room for the bass on 15_PAD
- Aphex Exciter on the Strings
- LA-2 and Exciter on the Didgeridoo

Piano
- EQ and LA-2A on the single tracks
- Parallel aux with High-Pass, UA Distressor heavily compressed for more sustain
- Bussed to one aux with UA Ocean Way, LA-2A, SSL Channelstrip 2 for EQ, Smooth Operator
- LiqudiSonics Reverberate (Concert Wave)
- Delay

Bass
- MSpectalDynamicsMini, bx_subfilter, LA-2A
- Send to AUX with high and low pass and „The Abuser“ for distortion blend
- Soothe2 to tame resonant frequencies, Manley VariMu, EQ on the Bus

Drums
- UA API Vision Strip on all tracks
- Aux for the low drums with pultec, distressor and Waves TransX for more punch
- Room Ambience on all tracks
- Fatso for parallel compression
- Distressor and Elysia Master on the bus

Mixbus
- Shadow Hills Class A Mastering Comp
- UA Pultec
- bx V3 for widening

This time I used a parallel smasher comp (pulsar 1178) for piano and vocals.

[Dodgingrain]

Thanks for the cool song to mix, its nice to get some different styles with challenging instruments.
Here is my entry: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrkNlD_gp ... Q?e=uW9mTr

Vocals:
I cleaned up the vocals by editing out all the clicks and pops. I then did some alignment on the vocal parts which was mostly shifting some of the vocal events a little bit, it was easy to do that manually. Next there was a lot of sibilance and hard consonants in the vocals that I treated with Melodyne. The lead vocals use two compressors, LA-76 and SL4000E, there also is a parallel ad track for the vocals where they are heavily compressed and mixed in at a low level. The lead vocals have a couple delays as well. The background vocals are similar but only use a single compressor and there is less eq treatment. The vocals are used as a side chain input to other buses in the mix including the piano and pads.

Piano:
The big difficulty here was getting this to fit well with the vocals and other parts. It was necessary to have the vocals as a side chain input to a dynamic eq on the piano. There are also some eq changes to brighten up the piano and a little bit of compression. The piano has quite a bit of automation done on its faders as well and is a side chain input for dynamic eq on the pads to help make space for it.

Bass sound:
This has some distortion/saturation added, a little bit of eq and compression and a stereo widener above 200hz. The kick is ducking the bass as well to help keep the low end clean. There is a little bit of automation on some of the louder notes to try and make a little bit more space along with a transient designer to emphasize the attacks.

Drums:
Several of the drums are gated and have transient designers or a dbx 160 to add some punch. The kicks have some distortion/saturation added as well. Other than that just some eq and light compression. To me it was important that the great drum track was easier to hear.

Flute:
A bit of eq treatment and hard pan off to the left side to give it space away from the vocals and piano. Eq was boosted a little bit around 3.3k.

Didgeridoo:
Mostly eq and panning to the hard right to give it space similar to how the flute was moved.

Pads:
A little bit of eq and ducking to leave lots of space for other parts, there is also some level automation to bring up a few sections as needed here and there. These are mostly treated as true pads as there wasn't too much room left between the vocals, piano, bass, and drums.

Sound effects and risers:
These mostly are treated with just eq except for the radio which also has some heavy compression and big low pass and high pass filters.