MIX CHALLENGE - MC091 April 2023 - Winners announced

[SDB_12]

If your PM is stuck in your outbox, then @JeroenZuiderwijk didn't read the message yet.

For the sake of interaction and the overall learning factor of the community, please (also) ask your questions for Mix Round 2 in public.

Thank you @Mister Fox !!! I finally got it to go through, and @JeroenZuiderwijk has graciously taken the time to reply to me. But, for the sake of discussing/learning I'll also post it here. The feedback I received was to turn up the intro/outro theme guitars, so I was just asking for clarity on which guitars those were. I also asked if there was anything else specifically that he Jeroen would like to hear changed, and he didn't have anything in particular and gave some good advice to listen to the other top 15 and see what I like about them, and then do what I feel is best. Great approach, and that will be my plan! I'll be tackling my mix tweaks tomorrow and uploading R2 soon

Thanks all!

[SDB_12]

What's fun is that, I listened to all the mixes, not all the way through, and I disqualified all mixes that I felt had a lot of levelling issues. I generally put in 16 mixes at the same time and removed those I felt should go out. Then I filled those spots with other mixes and repeated this until getting through this. Even with this being very fast and maybe unfair because I don't listen through it was very interesting how different my top choices were against the provider's. And it shows that you shouldn't take this competition as being the best mixer but as being the best at interpreting what the provider wants. I like this aspect of the competition.

Don't feel obligated, but care to share who your top 15 were? Since you did all this work

[Davias]

Thanks for the reviews Jeroen !

I tried my best with the drums, but I need a better multiband gate I guess ^^ one day I hope to get it. congrats and good luck to the 15 selected

[jules666]

Hi @JeroenZuiderwijk ,
Thank you for giving me a chance to go into round 2.

Link to version 2 is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MDpTdr ... share_link

Glad you liked the bass guitar, I have brought the level up for chorus.
Vocals: reduced the "wet" sound overall, and a reduced further during the chorus.

Also with regards to the chorus I have used some volume automation to push it a little more, the bass guitar has everything below 90HZ cut for most of the song, and when the chorus kicks in I am removing that filter so more lowend pops through to try and thicken the chorus up. Snare is pushing into the verb a little more also now in the chorus sections.

I reduced the vocals in the bridge and brought that section down a little lower in volume, so the guitars coming back in had more crunch.

Taken your comment regarding the "scooped" mix on-board and looked at the low end a little more, brough some 50-60Hz up in kick to thicken it up. Reduced some of the high end on the main guitars, this seems to give a little more balance to the mix.

Swapped out the Waves J37 I had on the master bus, to a Kiive Tape Face as I was trying that out - liked it enough to also add on the guitar and drum bus.

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Thanks for the reviews Jeroen !

I tried my best with the drums, but I need a better multiband gate I guess ^^ one day I hope to get it. congrats and good luck to the 15 selected

Hi Davias,
Before you go looking for a multiband gate; I would advice you to start simple with mixing the drum. 1) phase align the tracks 2) balance the volume...the overheads are your starting point with drums in my opinion... 3) EQ the tracks to remove frequencies that are not needed 4) apply compression on the kick and snare, And some heavy parallel compression on the drum buss. I think then you have a good starting point to start the more heavy handed creative drum mixing work and giving it some attitude :-)

Jeroen

[Davias]

Thanks for the reviews Jeroen !

I tried my best with the drums, but I need a better multiband gate I guess ^^ one day I hope to get it. congrats and good luck to the 15 selected

Hi Davias,
Before you go looking for a multiband gate; I would advice you to start simple with mixing the drum. 1) phase align the tracks 2) balance the volume...the overheads are your starting point with drums in my opinion... 3) EQ the tracks to remove frequencies that are not needed 4) apply compression on the kick and snare, And some heavy parallel compression on the drum buss. I think then you have a good starting point to start the more heavy handed creative drum mixing work and giving it some attitude :-)

Jeroen

Thanks for the tips ^^ Usually I start with kick n snare, and then I add the rest to taste, but I had so hard time to remove the bleeding that it made it sounds a bit drummachine like (which was then weird because of the loose tempo too ^^) , I used some short reverb to bring back some tail to the gated drums... I think I should look into expanding when the tracks are so busy, coz unless I'm ultra precise with the gate, it quickly starts to sound unatural

[zed999]

I would also not try and use a traditional gate, they aren't really fast enough.

The room mics are the kit, the close mics are more for balancing the drums for example some bass to the kick without adding to the whole kit In that context there is little to be gained by cleaning up the close mics. If you do that and particularly if you rely on them for your main sound, there is every likelihood of for example making the cymbals pulse with each "cleaned up" close mic hit. Solo it might sound like part of the snare timbre, but back in the mix you may find your snare was made of gated cymbals, your snare disappears and the cymbals pulse. I successfully used a 3 band volume shaper on the kick because you can loose the high frequencies quite quickly after the initial slap, but the snare needs them and it didn't work as I described, so I bought it back with a plate reverb which was judged correctly as OTT. It did add some depth though. lol

I made that mistake primarily (my excuse) because I automatically panned the overheads left and right as labelled, found them phasy and decided I couldn't rely on them. Since then I've found if they are both centred they make a perfect, beefy stereo kit exactly positioned where you'd want it. Next time I'll take more care auditioning the tracks!

[Havol]

Thanks @JeroenZuiderwijk for voting for my mix and giving me a chance in the round 2.

Here is the link to the version 2 : https://drive.google.com/file/d/19Dlpcz ... sp=sharing

I made some adjustments :

• I fixed the volume automation between the verses and chorus to be more subtle

• I reduced the volume by 2 dB for the vocals in the bridge and added a little delay

• I totally spread in stereo the choirs in the last chorus

I hope you will like it !

Good luck everyone for round 2 !

[LowlandsWave]

Hello Jeroen, thank you for the opportunity to send in a mix for round 2. Also a big thank you for the way you handled the feedback on the mixes, wow what a job!

Following the comments you pointed out on my mix I did the following:

YES, THAT VOCAL could come down quite a bit ...
I reduced the volume, losing some power of the vocal. I compensated that loss of power by adding some top end and parallel compression. Ending with just some reverb to make the vocal sit. Still kept the vocal quite dry

Those additional guitar parts are audible now, really helps if you actually engage the amps on those guitars .....

During the chorus there is an extra layer of distorted guitars, I adjusted the eq on those to get some more impact in the chorus

Added some extra contrast between the chorus and verses. automated an eq filter to let some more lows come in at the verses

Turned down the delay on the lead guitar to get a more in your face solo sound.

Here is my mix for round 2: url=https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApnJoqaFPBt4ql0aoWF ... 7?e=E69VIE]Mix for round 2[/url]

Good luck everyone in round 2!

[SDB_12]

Hello!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t15ed4ugk0kl7 ... 2.wav?dl=0

Here is my revised mix for round 2, again, thank you to Jeroen for the great song, and for taking the time to really go all in and give feedback to everyone who participated!

The only note I had was to turn up the intro/outro themed guitars, so I did that. But as we were all encouraged to take things even further and see what else we could do to improve...I did just that.

Since I had a bit more time to play around with round 2 than I did on the first round, I spent some time and did a bunch of tiny moves throughout mostly to really add to the excitement and energy of the mix, some volume rides here and there, etc....I really dug in to make things pop and punch just a bit more, trying to bring more clarity and punch, but still keep it full and warm. I really wanted the chorus to hit hard, so I worked more on that. In the bridge, I decided to make the guitar breakdown section more mono...so that when the band kicks back in, it really spreads and hits. I also thought the bridge vocals could use just a little more effects in my mix, so I brought those up a tad.

Overall, my first mix was a bit more raw and natural, and I wanted to preserve that but also bring things into the next level with a little more punch and polish. A bit more modern I guess you could say. The Foo Fighters were a great reference for me on this one.

Looking forward to hearing all of the other round 2 mixes and for any additional comments

Thanks all!
Seth