MIX CHALLENGE - MC087 August 2022 - Winners announced

[White Punk OD]

Thanks everyone for the insightful comments, which help me to consider what I could do in different ways.
So far I enhanced some sounds because to me the rough mix sounded quite dull, and then it came out that some notes in the main vocals stick out, so as a quick fix I did run a tuner over it with some 70 percent settings so we have still lots of nuances while I have a smoother listening experience. Planning manual mode with touching only a few syllables.
For the brass it was really obvious, it does not blend with some ribab notes either way, so at least it should deliver a brilliant, correct sound. I discovered that Nectar Elements does a good job with many instruments, not just vocals.
Ms Lala Tamar of course got no tuning. So that's the way I made my rules, the ethnic components normally would not get tampered with, but what comes from Pop/RnB/Funk gets treated according to the genre.
I did not change any timing.
So for a revision it becomes clear I have to do some tricky automation, that puts one of the two clashing pitches into the background, where it acts just as a spice.

[Los_ady]

Wow, I'm blown away!!! So much listening to all the tracks, you all Rock, and I'm grateful for every single entry!

I just arrived from a long 2-day trip from Tirana to Crete and the next day from Crete to Frankfurt! If you attend the Studioszene Mannheim Event on the 30. and 31. August please let me know and let's meet for a coffee and talk about audio

Now it's my turn to provide feedback and find the next 15 Engineers for Round 2 - it will be hard!

In the meantime I like to share another wonderful song with you from Morocco, from the artist Jbara, sending some good energy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5NA1EK ... nnel=Jbara

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Wow, I'm blown away!!! So much listening to all the tracks, you all Rock, and I'm grateful for every single entry!

I just arrived from a long 2-day trip from Tirana to Crete and the next day from Crete to Frankfurt! If you attend the Studioszene Mannheim Event on the 30. and 31. August please let me know and let's meet for a coffee and talk about audio

Now it's my turn to provide feedback and find the next 15 Engineers for Round 2 - it will be hard!

In the meantime I like to share another wonderful song with you from Morocco, from the artist Jbara, sending some good energy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5NA1EK ... nnel=Jbara

That is a really cool song.....thanks for the link. The whole vibe of the music and video is amazing. Good luck finding the 15 nextrounders, I hope I'm one of them....I've been listening to a lot of the mixes and there are lots of really good ones all with there own intepretation of how to let all the elements work together. So I understand when you say that it will be hard. And if I'm not selected for round 2, I still had much fun mixing this track, so huge thanks for providing this song for the challange!

[Los_ady]

Hey!

For the German speakers (Not Loudspeakers, I mean language here hehe) I made a short summary about the Studio Szene 2022 Event in Mannheim where you can learn more about the latest Gear of 2022 and the good vibes around the event.

Here you soon with the Top 15, it's a head-on-head game

https://youtu.be/4cLocwnpkRs <--- You can watch it here

[Los_ady]

Ladies and Gentleman,

Here we go, it wasn't easy and I learned a lot through the process, as promised, everybody received individual feedback with helpful tips that you can find here - some text is shorter, please don't take it personally in anyway - I tried pointing out the parts that I perceived as strong as well as the parts that might be better in my opinion (and why) - It took a lot of time and it's my way to appreciate your time mixing our production and providing a detailed description of your production process - thank you for being a valuable part of the community, we appreciate it:

Read all the feedback here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Green are the ones who made it clearly to round 2, Green/Orange are the ones who made it after the second listening round, Red is disqualified but I checked anyway to see if I could use one of 3 Wildcards

Common mistakes:

- Low end muddy - here is a helpful video on how to work on your low end

https://youtu.be/Pgq9IeRF8l4

- Find an initial balance to avoid too much processing

https://youtu.be/JWo6hs0BF6s?t=1084 <---- My mixing tutorial on YouTube with free multi-tracks and tips on how to start a mix and make the initial balance

https://youtu.be/qjg8YfT-5pw <--- another video from our dear friend Warren on how he get's started

- Room Tuning needed, massive imbalance in a couple of frequency ranges

https://youtu.be/6RiuwqzjqlQ <--- The correct Room tuning with head engineer (and dear friend) Charles Sprinkle from Kali Audio (Former JBL Engineer) - we just used his method to tune 2 rooms together in Armenia and he showed me more about the process this summer when I went to their HQ in Burbank/LA - check it out and get your room tuned the right way

I hope this is helpful - Another common tip from me is: Daily Ear Training - Invest in EarTraining Software and do it 15 - 45 min daily

Your Ears are like Muscles and by daily training and mixing games, you will recognize frequencies way faster

So, congratulations to the 15 Mixers who made it to round 2 - please read the feedback and fix your mix accordingly <3

Looking forward to hear your new versions - Tip for the Green/Orange Engineers: Either you fix your Mix or you go all in, put the faders down, find the groove, find the vocals and built the rest around it and try it with a new balanced mix

@andreybenassi
@Christoph Stoll
@Christoph_K
@dstra
@Franz
@JeroenZuiderwijk
@Mac So
@mixedbyadn
@Mork
@MrFlat
@O'MIX
@pabloAT
@Ronson79
@rvalle
@UHLS

Thank you one more time to everybody who participated as well as Mr Fox for all the organization and taking care that the rules take place.

You all Rock!

And Thank you for purchasing our Mixing Tutorial at Mix Innovator, I really appreciate it.

If you want to learn how I mixed the track, check out my course on Mix Innovator "From Demo To Single"

https://en.mixinnovator.com/tutorials/f ... rld-music/

We Have a 50% off Coupon for every participant, simply use ady50 at the checkout

Appreciate it!

[Vanderdude]

Hi Ady,

I will definitely check out all the tips you provided in this post. Thanks again for bringing us this wonderful challenge to be mixed!
I also noticed I couldn't find any feedback on the excel you provided. Could this still be possible? I know you've already chosen 15 songs but it's still important for me to try and learn from specific feedback. Of course if you still could find some time for that.

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards
Koen (Vanderdude)

[Los_ady]

Hey man @Vanderdude

Oh no, I hope it's not the same issue as last time because I use Excel sometimes offline - I'm very sure I listened to your mix because your name was also very special haha let me check again, maybe it didn't save after going online or I shut down laptop and some data didn't save.

But I was sitting 7 days listening and carefully giving feedback to all - I listened to it again and provided you detailed feedback!

Apologies for the inconvenience

[White Punk OD]

Congratulations to all the "green" guys!

Hello Ady, thanks deeply for working so hard and commenting so kindly but truthful.

Let me apologize for carrying away your song so much.
Actually I won't become a general mixing engineer, so these wonderful tracks are an opportunity to achieve my own goals.
I learned a lot here, and I'm happy that the instruments came out not too bad. The clicky and boomy stuff of the hand-beaten instrument which name I will never memorize, in the meantime I found out how to clean up.
Now about the vocal, if there is some good Soul, Blues and RnB, I try to reproduce the old masters, here are my most loved examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QiGyZx27aE
24:40 51:40 1:46:00 2:07:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WEtxJ4-sh4 2:17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSIOp_K5GMw 0:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiF6-0UTqtc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lPQZni7I18 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyYnnUcgeMc
(man, _this_ was money for them all... - and all those hotel bands that did cover versions)
In short, I want to be touched and rubbed by the low frequencies of a voice, and I just cannot feel the vibe without that, I fully not understand what the contemporary "western" productions nowadays are about at all, I listen to music from Japan, Russia, Africa, Philippines.
So, that's just me, I still hope someone might find it interesting what I did.

BTW I liked the mixes of Christoph K. and Franz very much. There were 5 more, but i did not write down the names while I listened.

[Los_ady]

Thanks for your input @White Punk OD I'll check out the productions!

Yeah I feel with you, I love also this raw and lovely low end in the voices but here the instrumentation is a bit too much to add even more from Fiona, I lov it especially in intimate songs, or on Marvyn gaye, ayayay - and the coolest part is that the voices are MAAAASSIVELY compressed (From Marvin Gaye to Stevie Wonder to Queen to Bob Marley) literally one straight line, so heavy compression is on it and emphasising this tasty low end

Thanks for your input, absolutely love your way of seeing this contests, to stay creative and I'm honored you can use this tracks for your creativity

[White Punk OD]

yeah thx again, I definitely want to improve, good luck with the finale! (on another note - otyken and olox might be a bit unexpected)
BTW I used Lindell channel X (by PA) for the compression and low end.