MIX CHALLENGE - MC091 April 2023 - Winners announced

[SunFlake]

First time contender here .... This is fun!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R5qHP0 ... share_link

The kick drum and bass guitar needed some more oomph so I ran each track out an Aux through an Eden WTDI Bass Pre-amp effect which EQ'd, compressed and returned into a new track. That should bring up the bottom end.

I left the drums as is, there was a good room sound and the OH's were great.
I meddled with the snare sound but decided that this song needed the guitars to be more up front. I was unhappy with the gated rack drum track but since it was necessary I threw in some reverb and bit my nails.

Auditioning each guitar track I decided that Guitar 05 was a good candidate for some Eventide Instant Phaser. I set the depth and osc to about 11 OC, and ran with it.

Painted in a pan for Guitar 06, Pan at 9 and 3 for Guitar 07 and Guitar 08.

For the beautiful organ, I made a duplicate track of you so now there is Organ-A and Organ-B.

I plugged in the Eventide Rotary Mod effect to Organ-A then wrote in some rotary speed controls real time. I also manually floated faders to be opposite of Organ-B.

To Organ-B I plugged an Eventide effect called Crystals. This effect pulls harmonics out of an audio track and adds a wild delay.
The notes you are hearing are from the organ track through this effect, not from another instrument or another track.

I left the tail of this effect in at the end of the bridge and it still gives me goosebumps. You can hear the Crystals effect starting at 2:30.

I went on and plugged in BlueTubes Brickwall to Guitar 01, 04, 09, 10 and 11 set accordingly. Moving on I EQ'd all the guitars and created a Guitar stub.

Something about Guitar 03 peaked my interest so I plugged in a Nomad Tempo Delay 3D synced at 135. Ended up liking the sound and left it in.

Ahhhhh, now onto the vocals!
The vocal tracks were recorded very well. Kudos and salutations to all who were involved! I left original tracks untouched but bussed them into my UAD Neve 88RS plugin and my Eventide H910 Dual Harmonizer for some vocal thickening.

I Auxed-Out that vocal bus to a Behringer (yep I said the "B" word) REV2496. In other words, I created a new wet track with vocal reverb.
You can hear this reverb mostly in the bridge.

After futzing around with levels for a few days and running through my Izotope Ozone plugin for a touch of EQ, compression and a little limiting, I came up with this mix.

The DAW I am using is Sonar Platinum (Retro Cakewalk) running on a Win 7 machine with gobs of fantastic plugins that I've collected over the decades. Yes you heard right. Talk about Old School. I am running on Sonar Platinum on a Windows 7 box - with a few hardware modifications. It's amazing. I will never sell it.

I Hope you enjoy this mix as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

JR

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

First time contender here .... This is fun!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R5qHP0 ... share_link

Hi JR,

I can't open your file without asking for permission. Could you please change the link so I can listen to your mix?

Thank you!

Cheers,

Jeroen

[Maik_punchline]

Hi, here's my take! I'm excited since this is my first time participating. :-)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x6UZQi ... share_link

Kick:
Heavy Gate, bx_subfilter and some light EQing for more presence

Snare:
bx_cosnole Focusrite SC, very aggressive EQ and around 4dB Compressor, Gate

Toms:
Nothing Special, EQ for the "tone" and more "click"

OH:
HP at 165 kHz

Room:
HP at 115, LP at 1022 (6dB and heavy compression

Drum Bus:
Light EQing and Tape to soften above 4 kHz

Bass:
WA76 for Compression, bx Bassdude as Amp with some Crunch, EQ for more honk

Guitars:
Different Amp-Plugins, Hard Panning for Guitar 09 & 10, 02 & 05, 11 & 12, different Reverbs

Voc 01:
EQP-WA & WA76 for warm EQing and Compression up to -10 dB, Saturation with harsh hights, Slapback Delay

Voc 02:
Vocal Doubler, PSA-1 for harsh distortion

Voc 03:
Warm EQing

Voc Reverb:
Short Plate with Crunch

[SunFlake]

Thank you Jeroen, I didn't know that. It should be fixed now. Please let me know if you still have a problem opening it.

JR

[unclesnuggles]

Hello everyone.
here is my mix

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kEDS5T ... sp=sharing

Mix on Cubase 10.5, Focal CMS40, ITB

At first I realigned the drum tracks, converted the stereo tracks to mono, gain staging...
I wanted to keep a "live" and raw spirit to the piece.
I mainly used the British ClassA on the individual tracks.
for DI guitars I used the IVG12 from Klanghelm, and also on 2 tracks a Lepou simulation.

Kick - eq/comp/drive with the BritishClassA
SN - eq/comp/drive with the BritishClassA
Room - Studer - comp// 1176
Bass - AmpBass by Softube / IVG12
Overs - eq/comp/drive with the BritishClassA
Buss drums - Neve 33609 / Thrillseeker
buss guitars - eq/comp/drive with the BritishClassA
Buss full guitars - eq/comp/drive with Tubetech
Vox - uad1176+LA2a
Bussvox - BritishClassA / Thrillseeker
Mixbuss - Bxdigital - eq/comp Tubetech
Organ - eq / drive IVG12
I have a lot of automation throughout the song, and comp//.

thx for the song! Rock on!

[EmClrk]

First off thank you to Jeroen for providing the track! Please find my mix link below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PpFzJV ... share_link

I based my decisions for this mix around the notes from the provider. Focusing mainly on dynamics and getting a heavy rock feel without feeling too modern but with weight and clarity.

After initial balancing I started getting the drum sound to feel more upfront and driving. I brought out the attack of the kick drum without adding too much click to keep a classic rock influence there by using transient processing and then some eq to take out some low mids and bring up some key frequencies for the punch. For the snare I tried to bring out more of the sustain by parallel compression and sending to a reverb IR loaded with white noise with an envelope shaped to control the tail length.

I chose not to use the mono room sound and made one instead by sending each track to a different folder (Hello fellow Reaper users) where I could control the levels and make one to my tastes to further bring out the sustain of all the drum kit elements and then send that to a room reverb.

I then brought up the guitars to find a good balance. I went with a wide panned pair of guitars for the choruses, a slightly more narrow pair for the verses and the remaining rhythm guitar parts were used in the middle to add bite. The wide guitars were processed through TH-U Overloud from the slate bundle into a Fender amp being driven by a distortion pedal. A different pedal was used for the right and left tracks to provide a slight contrast. I tried to create a gritty but clear tone that would bite but cut through also.

The lead guitar parts were separated into what I called Bright Lead and Warm lead and were panned narrow but in opposition and send to different verb/delays to get separation from one another. Eq was applied to bring out the bright or the warm in each case.

My main focus with the lead vocal was to maintain clarity while adding a little edge, grit and character. I added a little more body to the sound with eq and tamed a bit of brightness to allow the guitars and cymbals to sit well with the vocal.

The organ track was used to rise in and out to boost some perception of fullness in the choruses and down again in the verse with little processing on the tone.

At this point I consulted a couple of Foo FIghters tracks to get an idea of how much 'dirt' or 'grit' to try and add. The track Times Like These has a very clipped drum sound and feels very driven overall so I used that as an upper limit and used the track No Way Back as a lower limit as it retains character but feels more heavy rock standard. I tried to find a balance between these two as a target.

I added some grit to the mixbus using decapitator in parallel blended in just enough. I added a parallel drum group to bring out more sustain and grit and I also used some soft clipping on the drum bus to get some extra aggression in the drums.

Lastly I automated levels of main tracks and their reverb and delay sends to create dynamic movement between sections and tried to create a bit more atmosphere in the break section. In regards to reverbs and sense of space I wanted the track to feel quite upfront so I tried to keep the verbs to a minimum but needed a bit of delay for the vocals to get them situated.

Sorry this felt long and I hope you enjoy listening to the track more than reading this ramble.
Thanks

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Thank you Jeroen, I didn't know that. It should be fixed now. Please let me know if you still have a problem opening it.

JR

You're welcome. And yes now the link works. It would be a shame if you worked hard for your mix without me being able to listen to it

[TomImmon]

What a great song! I was immediately reminded of The Who and Nirvana.

Here is my mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x8u0q6676pbrq ... n.wav?dl=0

Drums: For the snare I first duplicated the track and used extreme EQ and transients to turn it into a gate track for the actual snare.
I mainly worked the snare and kick with the waves C6 to get the sound and envelope in the right direction. Abbey Road saturation then gave the necessary bite together with a transient shaper.
Room and OH has been compressed and slightly EQed.
The floor tom only needs a little EQ, while the rack toms have done a lot with saturation and nonlin reverb. A tape emulation and waves ArtGMastering plugin were used as limiters in the drum bus.

The bass was re-amped to an SVT and compressed 2x. The organ was made a bit more aggressive with an EQ and some harmonics.

All guitars were re-amped with Softamp or Ampire or bx_rockrack, partly compressed and provided with some delay or plate.

The vocals were pre-treated with Nectar Elements and then processed with the Milennia EQ. Compression and saturation followed again with Abbey Road.

In the guitar bus, waves' ArtGMastering plugin was used as a limiter and to broaden the sound, additionally compressed with SQL Iron.

The vocal bus got tube saturation, some micro shift and a dynamic EQ to make the vocals cut through a bit better.

An then all busses (except drums) goes to the so-called Scheps Rear Bus to give some extra glue and punch without loosing the transiensts.
In the master bus, only the townhill was used for the glue. A little base EQ and a minimal limiter for some pesky peaks.

Many tracks were also cleaned up and dynamically leveled in the mix using fader automation.

Expose readings:
Integrated LUFS: -16.3 LUFS
Short Term LUFS: -15.0 LUFS
True Peak: -2.79 dBTP
Peak: -2.83 dB
Dynamic Range: 10.1 DR
Loudness Range: 2.3 LU

Greetings from Berlin
TOM

[Havol]

Hi everyone !

Thanks @JeroenZuiderwijk for providing this track ! I had a lot of fun mixing it !
Here's my link :

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

Vision
I took "Learn to Fly" from the Foo Fighters as a reference. And I wanted to add more impact and dynamic as demanded.

Master
Just a SSL comp and a Pultec EQ. Some level automation here and there to add some dynamic.

Drums
Normally, I would have triggered the kick and the snare. As this is not allowed here, I tried something different. I duplicated the tracks and heavily processed them with gate, EQ, transient shaper and comp. Then I blended them with the originals one to have that sound. On the other track, nothing too fancy : EQ, Comp, limiter. Everything is sent in a room (plus a plate just for the snare) and in an aux for parallel comp.

Bass
I duplicated the track : one for the Highs, one for the Lows. For the highs, I heavily saturated them and for the lows I used a bass enhancement. Blended them together plus sent them into an aux for parallel compression.

Guitars
I decided to used all the tracks. For reamping, I used the SLO-100 from Neural DSP to approach the original tone. The hardest thing was balancing everything up. Nothing really special after that, I just added some highs for the lead parts.

Organ
Pretty nothing to do here. I removed the mid to open the sound and used a limiter.

Vocals
Nothing special here. Gate, EQ, comp, De-esser, saturation, limiter. Then some automation for the send into the reverb.

That's it ! I hope you will like my mix

Good luck everyone !
Havol

[Michael_K]

Great mix challenge.
This track can go in so many different directions!
I chose to stay as close to the original sounds as possible. I love the grunginess it creates.
Kick and snare: additive eq, dbx compression, subtractive eq
Remaining drum track: eq + dbx compression.
The OH compression is linked.
Drum Bus; API compression, saturation.
Bass: eq, saturation, cl1b compression
All guitars: eq and ff c2 compression individually and fairchild on the guitar bus.
Vocals: The 2 main vocals are panned slightly eq and opto compression on each track, the bussed to to a stereo track which goes into an cla76 in stereo mode.
FX sends:
medium length low feedback slap-back style delay on vocals and guitars.
Small Hall reverb on most tracks except drums.
Short plate reverb on drums.
Very low level additional delay on vocals.
Good luck to everyone!

Here is the mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kF_fxJ ... EK1T5/view