MIX CHALLENGE - MC087 August 2022 - Winners announced

[White Punk OD]

Hello everyone, hi Ady, I hope you will enjoy my mix.

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



mix bus: Ozone 8 Elements with Maximizer off, and when the mix was 80% ready, I used the autopilot to give me some EQ curve to even out monitoring imperfections. further, my IRON glue comp preset for rock music.

aux bus - crystalline reverb - predelay 1/16 length 7/16, EQ with mid scoop. used for ld vc, brass, cala
very subtle setting, just to fill out the width a little bit.


I arranged the routing in my typical deep tree structure. so I can instantly solo rhythm section, brass section, git section, african section, but also subsections like solo guitars, cajon etc.
some section slots are equipped with EQ and comp, sometimes saturator.
there is a tribal drums and a tribal rooms sub bus, so the dry sounds get their own compressor (townhouse). the room sound is less washy and gets more intensity this way.


rhythm section (beatloop, perc, drums & bass) has simple volume automation to make the chorus sound fuller.
Cajon DI uses Focusrite channel strip, the deesser is on, comp is on, some EQ. this yields a very solid base sound with controlled low mids.
Cajon bus has 4000G channel strip, more compressor again. this plugin has a very naked, direct, natural sound for such purpose. I can't make the cajon loud, but it merges well within the rhythm section.

hipassing where needed, uses bessel. bessel HP and LP are neither dull nor thin.

beat loop
TDR Nova GE - expansion mode!! 6 main frequencies of instruments in the loop - resulting with deeper intensity. this is killer! make the attacks not too fast.
Klanghelm IVGI2.
narrow attenuation at 87Hz to make room for the bass.
3 EQ bands automated, fairly simple, to give the "ethnic" sounding parts more midrange, and attenuate the cymbal sounds that might sound a bit harsh during these parts.
Klanghelm IVGI2.
The intro uses some morph concept, slowly increasing intensity. the instrumental bridge as well.

bass was multed. output has townhouse comp, and narrow attenuation at 73Hz to make room for the drums.
1 - brighter sound with airwindows "single ended triode" cranked up, elliptic filter cuts off lowend, and yeah, ERS 250 ambience! Klanghelm comp DC1A3.
2 - Ampeg SVTVR emulation, for very full round sound that is not overwhelming.
I resisted to tune the bass, but tell me if I should...

main vocal was tuned with bx_crispytuner, auto mode, loose settings.
Nova GE autopilot mode for "dynamic deresonate", then some tweaking, totally cleaned up some trace of boxy mumble and bedroom sound.
ERA6 voice deepener, funny how well it worked, they gave it away for free because the company was sold or so, now making different products.
bessel hipass 3-pole 200Hz, I tend to use the bessel curve for LP and HP o most tracks.
Lindell channel X, to FET-compress the shnizzle out of that vocal, also using the great saturating preamp and the classic passive EQ.
ERS 250 for ambience reverb.
SIR with my own convo impulse, this yields a mashup of slap delay and nonlinear reverb. also on Tamar's vocals, there it serves as a typical special effect (similarly used also by Ofra Haza back then).
SN05G limiter as there were some serious overs.
Lead sum has also a deesser and another focusrite channelstrip (deesser and comp are in use as well). finally, DeEdger.
I created a detune stack of 8 tracks (Warren Huart formula), very subtle, you hear it only when you mute it, sounds fuller when unmuted.

Tamar vocals use a copy of the lead TDR Nova, then it was printed, continue from there.
attention - elliptic 3-pole filter at 380Hz, this is part of the special effect. lowpass bessel at 3k8.

guitars
HP, LP, but no other EQ on any git at all except the solo guitar, which uses NWEQ 1.21 which is very old and exotic and has the most wonderful shine for this sound.
18_GTR_DIST_MLDY and 19_GTR_DSTRN_2 use elliptic hipass, to cut low end but sound natural. 18 uses different frequencies (88/128) for its 2 parts!
17_GTR_mic2 was split because it uses 2 different sounds, so the short lead-in parts have HP, LP, plus ADA flanger to soften that a bit more but the ADA makes it resonate a bit which is very subtle.
--but-- on guitar BUS we have sitting the SPL vitalizer and Glaceverb (jumps out at the wah effect), which shapes the guitar section and keeps it together.
guitar recordings are the compass for the production overall sound. if they are so well-recorded, I just sort them in, and intensify the section bus.

ribab string - that's a bit like an erhu.
I used Nova GE "dynamic deresonate" and while fine-tuning this, enhanced some presence.
main enhancement with Noveltech Character. some further mid cut and presence boost, then a gate because of the open mic noises.

brass section
a bit of automation.
all tracks simply have Nectar elements (used analysis) for autotuning and some sound regulation, including resonance defeat, and a little fattening reverb.
so far, I did not make them too bright, to merge with the ribab in some more "african" style.
brass bus has a gate, then SIR reverb like the vocals, and the Lindell 354 3-band comp.

---
the mix was rendered at 48k and then converted. if you love it, please ask for the 48k version.

[White Punk OD]

addendum
I had to cut work at that point for other projects.
if my concept is liked, I will spend another day on vocals, for the remaining ringing freq (came with saturation and comp) and some manual tuning.
of course, to do what the client's mixing notes say.

happy mixing everyone until deadline

[Ohbeejuan]

Mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jc2o8wr08qlfo ... n.wav?dl=0

Hey everyone. This song was interesting to mix. My mix itself was relatively simple. I started by just doing panning and levels. After that I spent some time getting the main loop and the bass to play nice together.

For the main loop I ended up using some saturation and some basic EQ to get it where I wanted it.

The bass I used a couple of instances of a plugin called Pre X7 (tube pre) to add some character to the bass, then ran it into SansAmp. I also do something periodically with bass where I bus the track to an aux track and add saturation via the Black Box and then a chorus. I bring that up under the original track and it can widen the bass and make it dance a little bit.

The guitars I just did some basic EQ, but the Wah guitar I took it from mono to stereo via a stereo delay with one side set to 0 and the other side set to 24 ms. It's not spread that wide, but it does allow it to become a bit more prominent without stepping in the way of the vocal while being balanced left to right.

The main vocals I ran through a dBx 160 and that wasn't quite giving the sheen I wanted so I ran it though an 1176 as well. I bussed that to an aux track and slapped a delay going into a reverb and brought it up until I liked the mix between the direct vocal and the wet effects.

After that I ran everything to a submaster fader and did what I did like 3 times already and bussed it to an aux track with a delay running into a reverb into a stereo spreader to give the mix some glue and cohesive sense of space.

On my submaster fader I used a SSL bus compressor going into a Shadow Hills mastering compressor and then into an instance of Ozone that had a slight bit of EQ and a maximizer with a soft limiter setting on it to just knock down some of the transients a bit.

The last thing I did was run my mix through a Black Lion summing mixer that has a transformer in it.

[Los_ady]

Hey @White Punk OD ,

Thanks for your questions and greetings from now Tirana everyone! We will record the Band Bondeko which came from the US to record in Albania together

To your question:

Go with 440Hz

The Ribab is tuned and played by ear, the instrument is played with the finger which serves as a "Capo" like on the guitar so there is no standardized tuning - anyway, that's the authentic sound we all love from Africa so don't get too crazy with tuning.

Hope this answers your questions!

All the best and have fun

[Los_ady]

Thank you to everyone who joined our Mix Challenge and thank you for your kind words, I really appreciate it!!!

Looking forward to listening to your mixes! Thanks also for taking the effort to describe your mixing and thought process, there are so many different approaches!

Wish you all the best and hear you soon!

[pabloAT]

Hello all,

Many thanks to Los_ady for providing such an interesting track to mix, and to Mr. Fox for carefully chairing this serious game.
For this mix, I spend 80% of the time trying to get a good balance before adding the first plugin, and a lot of frequency cleaning. I found it was the key for such a busy song before moving forward.

I focused my mix on two main aspects: vocals and groove. Roughly speaking, this is what I did:
- Grouped percussion kits into a stem, where I add a mild compression with a 609-like emulator, followed by a tape machine. I used a subtle reverb for gluing and giving some ambience.
- I split the bass into 2 different tracks: one with the accent of long notes at the beginning and close to the end of the track, the other with the main bass track. For the former, I applied a Fairchild-like compressor, for the later a bit of functional compression and a touch of Dimension-D, wrapped in a Class-A 73 preamp emulation. Both tracks were sent to a stem with a tape machine.
- For guitars, I’ve mainly used LA-3A compressors for shining the sound. Everything was to a stem with a Tascam-like tape machine and a subtle hall reverb.
- Winds benefited from 81 preamp emulations and Fairchild-like compressors for heaviness, with a bit of ambience reverb and sent to a tape machine.
- Lala’s vocals benefited from 3 instances of very subtle compression each: Pie, LA-2A and distressor for final taming.
- I split Fiona’s vocals into verse and chorus. For the verse, I applied a 76 compressor, a 902 deeser, a MV2 compressor (to bring back the voice’s bottom) and a distressor. For the chorus, I used a Pye-like compressor, a distressor and a 902 deeser, finishing the chain with SketchCassetteII. Vocal tracks were sent to a stem with a Pultec, a tape machine and a clipper. For vocals I used Echoflex's tape echo (subtle), delay and a plate.
- All stems were sent to a MIX BUSS, with instances of saturation and G-bus compression, closing the chain with Slate’s 2-channels virtual tape machine.

[Dropbox's link to MC087]

I hope you like my approach.
Best wishes,
Pablo

[Franz]

Hi Ady,

A simple question about something that intrigues me: unless I'm mistaken, on the two tracks of the wah-wah guitar (22 and 23)
there is a spring reverb effect. This is the only guitar track with an effect. For me it's very annoying because it gives a
precise acoustic direction for this wah-wah which suddenly seems to have nothing to do with other guitars.

But what really bothers me and again, unless I'm mistaken, I don't hear this spring reberb effect on the wah-wah on the original mix.
Where is the error?

That said, we can of course work around this problem (just an additional complication) but it would have been simpler and more
logical to provide ALL the guitar tracks WITHOUT effects.

Hope to read you soon

Franz

[Luiz De Caro]

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

Segue a minha Mix dessa excelente música.

[andreybenassi]

This is my mix, I gave absolutely my best!

It was really fun and challenging to mix!

The song has a lot of low-mid elements so it was definitely a big challenge to make something that worked for me and sounded good at the same time.

I used the original mix as a reference but just for a few key elements, I tried not to focus on the ideas or effects of the original song.

I did a lot of automation to try to bring the melodies to the forefront, but they didn't clash so much with each other or disturb the vocals.

My Mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1flQ8vv ... sp=sharing

[paglia]

Hello everybody. I spent a fun afternoon in my home studio. As a drummer I tried to enhance the rhythm part without penalizing the other instruments.
I love to sculpt the sound using harmonic distortion, I hope I did it in the best and pleasant way.
Thank you


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gPa_2M ... sp=sharing