MIX CHALLENGE - MC092 June 2023 - Winners announced

[MadMav]

Hell Everyone,

I really enjoyed mixing this one. I loved blending the the different mics to shape the tone, kind of like mixing a drum kit. If I had to choose one instrument that I enjoyed mixing, it would be the vocals. With an organic track like this I did a lot of manual riding on the vocals(and individual instruments), to keep things a natural as possible. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wW--up ... sp=sharing

[jules666]

Hi

Here is my attempt at this months challenge - fun little track it was as well

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Cj6OG ... sp=sharing

Drums & Perc
Playing with various parallel compression techniques at the moment so gave them a go here, - utilising 4 different compressors each blended to taste for the kick and Cajon. Also had a Devlock parallel track to push the kick and Cajon.

Kick:Tape/EQ/Comp/Clip
Cajon:Tape compression/EQ then a fairchild style compressor and clipper
414 & M160 panned L/R
SM57 track: panned in the middle and filtered so I used the low end only.
Cajon trigger - rolled off a lot below 250hz panned in middle and some verb
These all went to a bus with a distressor style emulator on.

OH: Panned L/R, little saturation and EQ removing everything below 200 and some slight compressions

Bass: Duplicated tracks, created 2 busses, and processed one for Lows, and the other highs. High's favoured the U47, and lows the Royer. Then also duplicated a U47 track and created a distortion track - used distressor/decapitator/EQ this was then blended to taste.
Gave Goy plugin a try on the Royer tracks and it seemed to pull out some of the room noise a little.

Guitar: Decided to pan each of the tracks hard left/right (one side had a 20ms delay). I also created 5 tracks setup to split the signal at various bands, and apply varying amounts of saturation and subtle delays (between 5ms and 90ms) to help reduce phase. These multiband tracks were used 100% wet, original dry signal bypassed.

Banjo: Main banjo had similar treatment as to guitars, though had a plate reverb applied also
Second banjo just had some subtle compression/EQ/delay and a plate reverb

Accordion: EQ/1176/clipper and a flanger effect.

Fiddle: both parts treated the same way with: Compression/EQ/Plate reverb and delay

Vocals: Magnus/Angel and Marianne all had lots of compression, EQ rolling some of the low end away and boosting the highs a little, limiter and a desser.

BGV: Bussed all these and processed as one with compression/EQ/Limiter

Vox Sends: All vox were sent to a combination of a slapback/reverb/distortion/ 1/4 note delay/microshift and alterboy (automated in)

The above were all sent to their own Stem busses which had:
Lindell Channel Strip - just for a little EQ and the subtle saturation it imparted
Waves NLS (yup more saturation! )
Clipper

Drum and vocal stems also had a Sie-Q as liked the sound I got when pushing the drive on it.

Mixbus:
Using Rear bus technique.
Everything going into an SSL compressor and Tape emulator- I start to mix into these early on in my process.
After that I put the BX-Digital V3 for some subtle EQ moves, mono the mix below 100HZ and a little stereo widener.
Then I put a multiband compressor on - excluded the low end as I felt the high end needed a little taming, no more than 2db max of reduction.
Also decided to put the Sie-Q on and just push the drive a little on this as this is the first project I used this plugin on, so was interested what I could do with it.

Quite a bit of automation here and there to allow instruments to breath a little.

Hope you like, as I have loved working on this one!

Cheers
Jules

[Mister Fox]

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


So far, we have 22 entries. To the late adopters, please take note of the "TL;DR Rules.txt" file as part of the Mix Pack.

[JamesMusic]

Hi all,

Great song! Thanks for sharing.

Here is my interpretation - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TZakNT ... sp=sharing

Lead Vocals - A large boost at 2k and a high shelf boosts 2.3k upwards, a bunch of compression, saturation and slapback.
BVs - A load of top end, compression and saturation.
Stompbox - Compression, saturation and transient designer for extra punch
Cajun - a load of lows and a load of highs added, gate and transient designer for a punchier sound, saturation and reverb
OHs - Removed some resonances, and added reverb
Bass - Split into two tracks, one for subs, heavily compressed, one for everything else with a healty dose of saturation
Guitar - high and low passed to remove bleed, saturation
Banjo - Some top end added, saturation, and a slapback delay for when it does twiddly bits
Accordion - Large boost at 2.5k, some fake stereo width and saturation
Fiddle - Reverb and saturation

Good luck to everyone.

Cheers,
James

[dstra]

Hi everyone,

It was a pleasure to mix this song. My goal was to make it sound natural and keep the live feel. Here you can find the result: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rwAVKr ... sp=sharing

Tracks
Vox Magnus: eq, dynamic eq (tame some lows), compressor, widener (comb filters), reverb
Vox Angel/Marianne: eq, compressor, reverb
BVox Magnus/Angel/Marianne: eq, reverb
Guitar: eq (i.a. reduce ringing at 4.4kHz), widener
Banjo: eq, compressor (automated), widener
Banjo Solo: eq, compressor, widener
Fiddle B: eq, compressor (automated), widener
Fiddle A: eq, widener
Accordion: eq, widener
Bass: eq, transient designer, bass enhancer, eq, compressor
Stompbox: phase inverter, eq, widener
Cajun: eq
Overhead: eq (low cut), delay (=predelay; track acts also as room reverb for the cajon), compressor (reduce the volume of the cymbals)

Special effects: church reverb for "Lord" in last chorus

Buses
vocals bus: compressor
instruments bus (guitar, banjo, fiddle, accordion): compressor
drums bus: compressor
bass bus: compressor
main bus: compressor

Tools
DAW: Ardour (Linux)
plugin bundles: Calf, LSP, Zam, Dragonfly and others

Hope you enjoy it!

[Barry M]

My first time participating in these challenges and really enjoyed the source.

As the brief suggested, I wanted to find my own groove and decided on a crunchy old school mix down to low grade tape @7.5ips.

On area I immediately wanted to focus on was the groove between acoustic guitar and drums/percussion. So I kept the AC dead center along with the drums, so as to add cohesion.

Every channel ran thru BLA Omnitec 67a preamp, for a little colouration and gentle tone shaping with the eq.

Channels of note were the bass, which went through UAD pultec MEQ-5 to boost some of the 200 area & Banjos which got some Kiive Tape in lo-fi mode to take the edges off them.

Lead vocal has the Omnitec pre followed by UAD 1176 LN and the Neold U2A. Vocal is being fed to a slap delay and a touch of hall. With the FX delay done with Audio Damage's Rat Reverb

The only reverb I was was IKM Fame studios, of which I was mostly the B room (Although BVs also got some of studio A for height). There is
also some plate & chamber in very small doses.

Mixbuss consists of P42 Climax to add a little sparkle and subtle compression, followed by BX Digital for some general eq duties. Then P440 to add a +1 db lift tto the very lows. Finally in the chain is IKM's Ampex 440 driven hard, with 256 tape @7.5ips, with record Hi EQ turned up a notch to compensate for the loss of highs.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pZYmDC ... drive_link

[NGGstudios]

After a couple of mixing competitions that i missed, finally i catch a good one. Tracks are really well recorded and the song is very catchy.

My aim was obtaining the beauty of real performance with more clean but not hi-fiish listening experience.
First thing that i checked was phase issues, then general gain staging for my plug-ins to work correctly.

For Vocals, i panned according to my taste and did some eq fixes with Fabfilter, then i grouped vocals through a bus(tape saturation etc.) and a fx bus(reverb etc.) seperately. I blend these together. Finally i ride vocals volume for mmy taste.

For Percussion i wanted natural but punchy hits, so i did parallel compression besides some necessary eq moves.

For Bass, performance was ok but needed to heard more groovy. I used slate mixing rack for this purpose.

For Guitars and Banjos, i tried to give these tracks more air and stereo widening. Eq'ed correctively with Fabfilter, added little saturation with waves saturator.

For Strings and Accordion, i needed them sound as possible as audible without eating guitar's sound. eq'ed and saturated with slate plugins.

Lastly i checked with level meter for required levels. There is no instance of a plugin on master bus except a level meter.

My Entry : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x66EN1 ... sp=sharing

[doobop]

Hello to all!

First Ι did a rough mix. That gets me to know the song better, to understand the parts, and to give me a feeling of how the elements of the song should sound to my ears.

Then I get into the processing, I used a lot of compression some instruments mild some others hard, a lot of EQing but very minimal Reverbs. I didn’t use any delays or gates because I want it to sound as natural as possible and keep the feeling of the live recording. No automation either.

Hope you like it!

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dkytbv1hd0hvh ... p.wav?dl=0

Cheers,
Doobop

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Big thanks to Salige Syndere for providing this fantastic song! It was a pleasure to mix, because of the song itself and the quality of the recorded tracks.

I had no problems with all the bleed between the mics. I personaly like the natural ‘glue’ it can provide for a mix. I also like the live feel of the song. I did use volume automation but didn’t overdo it to preserve that live feel of the music.

I personaly wanted the drum and fiddle to be driving the song so I paid special attention to those elements in the mix. I wanted the leadvocal to stay dry without letting it float on top of the mix. So I did use a lot of plug ins to sculp the sound the way I wanted it to sound. The backinvocals needed some contrast to that dry sound in my opinion so there is lots of verb to make it sound like a big choir.

This is my mix:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ahp8xH6KRIfbggxixnq ... u?e=I4fXkb

Here are the technical details of my mix:

The rythm tracks sounded excelent, I only used some hpf eq on the Cajun tracks, the stompbox has got compression and some bassexciter to make it a bit more powerfull.

The basstracks got a hpf at 20hz and a low shelving filter (-2 dB) at 42 Hz. I used the Blockfish compressor (digital fishphones) to give it some attitude with the saturation halfway and the ‘air’ button engaged. To reduce some ‘boominess’ (is that a word?) I used a mutlibandcompressor (ReaXcomp) to compress 0 – 140 Hz (no make up gain). Oh and some bassexciter.

The accoustic guitartracks have a HPF at 170Hz and a LPF at 16KHz and a boost at 4,5Khz.
It has got a Fairchild clone compressor and transient killer to reduce some of the spikey transients. The tracks go through a stereo width plug in.

The Banjo tracks have a 1073 clone EQ with a high shelf boost at 12K and a regular EQ with a boost at 4.2Khz and 900hz +hpf at 200Hz

The Fiddle has got a stereo effect with a delay panned hard left (15ms) and right
(24ms). I used lots of saturation…the saturation plug in I like is very subtle so I used three in serie, followd by a 1073 clone EQ, again for a high shelf boost, and some aggresive compression and some reverb by Acon digital verb.

The accordion only has got some saturation and a hpf.

The leadvocal I split into different eq-bands for different treatment. The midfrequencies go through a distorion mixed in at very low volume, the high frequencies go through a fuzz distortion mixed in at an even lower volume. The busstrack has got some saturation, a fairchild clone compressor, an eq boost at 4Khz. The total of that goes through an optocompressor, tube simulator, de-esser and a harmonic exciter. I know it sounds like a lot but it is all subtle adding something to sculp the sound I had in mind.

The LV are sent to a stereo effect (pitch delay left right) with saturation and some eq

The backing vocals only have some compression and reverb.

All the tracks go to a Lexicon PCM90 room verb and some delay.

On the masterbus there is a subtle boost at 3.6 Khz, some High shelf at 8Khz. And some compression from the WA Bus comp.

Cheers,

Jeroen Zuiderwijk

[AlexShieh]

Hi Everyone

The first attempt at this type of music style

Because it is a living recording, try to minimize crosstalk and interfere with each other to make the sound field cleaner.
My goal was to make it sound natural and keep the live feel.
EQ and compressors were used on All track (UAD, WAVES).

This is my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wSxLIM ... sp=sharing

I hope you will enjoy it