MIX CHALLENGE - MC092 June 2023 - Winners announced

[scottfitz]

Hi all, with the bleed I was finding that the balance was difficult to get right because if you put the instruments where you think they should be, suddenly there's way too much Cajon, so you turn the Cajon down, but then you find you're at zero with the Cajon bus and still too much. Then you realise that you don't really want the Cajon spill at all then else you can't have any from the actual Cajon mics which sounds a lot nicer. I found EQ was a poor tool to deal with bleed and attempts to clean it up with that left a very thin remaining mix. You need at least a good piece of the acoustic guitar and accordion at around 150 Hz -> 300 Hz. So I went in search of dynamic control and honestly this was the first time I ever did this and was just using my ear to notice which processes were getting me closer to what I wanted. I couldn't find much in the way of online tutorials for this issue. So it was very interesting and I like to be attacking a new problem and one which there is less or a standardised approach to.

[zed999]

Hi all, with the bleed I was finding that the balance was difficult to get right because if you put the instruments where you think they should be, suddenly there's way too much Cajon, so you turn the Cajon down, but then you find you're at zero with the Cajon bus and still too much. Then you realise that you don't really want the Cajon spill at all then else you can't have any from the actual Cajon mics which sounds a lot nicer. I found EQ was a poor tool to deal with bleed and attempts to clean it up with that left a very thin remaining mix. You need at least a good piece of the acoustic guitar and accordion at around 150 Hz -> 300 Hz. So I went in search of dynamic control and honestly this was the first time I ever did this and was just using my ear to notice which processes were getting me closer to what I wanted. I couldn't find much in the way of online tutorials for this issue. So it was very interesting and I like to be attacking a new problem and one which there is less or a standardised approach to.

Thanks for posting this, I went on that exact journey with the cajon bleed though I did low pass the guitar and banjo as I thought those had the greatest effect reducing the cajon bleed overall without harm. Then I could use more of the cajon mics than I expected. I favoured the crisper sounding cajon mics to try and define it, but they're all used for their tone.

Because of all the bleed I deliberately avoided any kind of dynamic processing until the instruments that shared bleed were together on a bus including the bass (because it had a lot of bleed in one mic) but not the cajon. As a final tweak used some expansion on this bus which seemed to bring out the details a little, but I avoided compression throughout the mix apart from the lead vocal.

Bleed was the first consideration in my bus choices after I'd decided not to fight it and start again.

Thanks again for joining in some discussion. I was once a leader in my field for 2 decades (communications engineering). One thing I learned was the benefits of spilling the "secrets" far outweighed the negatives. You can tell anyone exactly what you do, but they still can't do it and while they figure it out, you're moving further ahead. Meanwhile you have a reputation for being open, helpful and friendly - more work Music mixing is even more like this. You can't buy experience or train your brain in 5 minutes, it takes thousands of hours of concentrated work AND good taste. I don't think anyone has anything to fear from anyone else, you can't fake this.

[scottfitz]

Hi all, with the bleed I was finding that the balance was difficult to get right because if you put the instruments where you think they should be, suddenly there's way too much Cajon, so you turn the Cajon down, but then you find you're at zero with the Cajon bus and still too much. Then you realise that you don't really want the Cajon spill at all then else you can't have any from the actual Cajon mics which sounds a lot nicer. I found EQ was a poor tool to deal with bleed and attempts to clean it up with that left a very thin remaining mix. You need at least a good piece of the acoustic guitar and accordion at around 150 Hz -> 300 Hz. So I went in search of dynamic control and honestly this was the first time I ever did this and was just using my ear to notice which processes were getting me closer to what I wanted. I couldn't find much in the way of online tutorials for this issue. So it was very interesting and I like to be attacking a new problem and one which there is less or a standardised approach to.

Thanks for posting this, I went on that exact journey with the cajon bleed though I did low pass the guitar and banjo as I thought those had the greatest effect reducing the cajon bleed overall without harm. Then I could use more of the cajon mics than I expected. I favoured the crisper sounding cajon mics to try and define it, but they're all used for their tone.

Because of all the bleed I deliberately avoided any kind of dynamic processing until the instruments that shared bleed were together on a bus including the bass (because it had a lot of bleed in one mic) but not the cajon. As a final tweak used some expansion on this bus which seemed to bring out the details a little, but I avoided compression throughout the mix apart from the lead vocal.

Bleed was the first consideration in my bus choices after I'd decided not to fight it and start again.

Thanks again for joining in some discussion. I was once a leader in my field for 2 decades (communications engineering). One thing I learned was the benefits of spilling the "secrets" far outweighed the negatives. You can tell anyone exactly what you do, but they still can't do it and while they figure it out, you're moving further ahead. Meanwhile you have a reputation for being open, helpful and friendly - more work Music mixing is even more like this. You can't buy experience or train your brain in 5 minutes, it takes thousands of hours of concentrated work AND good taste. I don't think anyone has anything to fear from anyone else, you can't fake this.

Yes exactly, I think this is the whole point of the Mix Challenge discussion forum and why it is so much better for learning techniques than a competition like Tourna-Mix which may have high quality source materials but leaves those who are struggling potentially stuck indefinitely. I agree with the idea that you learn more by being open in an environment of openness because even if you are by far the best engineer in the group, you still only give out 1 report and get something like 75 reports back. Even if some of the ideas coming back aren't all that useful to you, what tends to happen is that pretty much everyone has something to make you think or re-evaluate something you did, or make you question why you didn't try xxx idea, or cause you to realise that you really do need this auto-align plugin now (even though it wasn't required on this particular project). Additionally I think it's correct that you do not need to fear the idea of 'handing your skills away cheaply', certainly not when addressing a community of around 100. Maybe if you are broadcasting live mixing sessions like on PureMix.com then you need to be charging money for that content like they do, but in terms of quick text descriptions of your approach to 75 others on this track for example, it's a bit silly to be too competitive about it and better to treat it as a great learning environment with the added bonus that you might just win a prize too

As a response to one of the processes that you applied zed999 I would suggest you be wary of grouping your bass track into an expansion bus with other instruments which have a different dynamic shape. The problem with this is that the bass has so much energy all on it's own that any unnatural dynamic changes can make the whole track lurch around or 'wobble'. The way you've done it may be fine on this occasion, but when I read that, it was a red flag for me in the way I think about dynamics. I would say in this challenge I spent approximately 30%-40% of my time fiddling around with the bass track and in fact on the last 3 mixes I've done it's been something like this. It's often the most difficult aspect to mix in my opinion and definitely this example is a case in point. I used to think that the drums were the hardest instrument but at least with the drums you have a certain amount of consistency to the performance. With the bass you can lose half the sound when the player crosses strings and you're expected to make this all sound even! You don't want many hard and fast rules in mixing as I understand it, but I would say that it's probably a good rule to just never group the bass with other higher pitch instruments for dynamics processing. The reason is because it is so sensitive to dynamics processing and rarely shares characteristics with the other material. Grouping the bass with the drums is what I do and I think that's the only one that should be tried.

Anyone can feel free to correct me on any of this.
Cheers

[zed999]

After reading your interesting post this morning and just now going to check, I find I didn't bus the bass after all, it went straight to the mix bus where there was no processing. I'm sure for the exact reasons you wrote about.

I won't edit my post now you've quoted it. For anyone reading, apologies for the confusion and to @scottfitz as you wrote a great explanation of why not to do what (as it turns out) I didn't do.

Technically, yes drums and bass bus together often, but not this time for me. I should make notes, but hopefully I remember correctly that I decided not to to avoid and pumping of the bleed in the bass. Possibly over cautious - that might have sounded good anyway in this one exception.

Your note about levelling the bass notes reminded me I made huge cuts to one frequency (was it D?) as that note was so loud. It was a note deliberately emphasised by the playing which I'm sure works well live and loud but problematic for mixing. First thought was my poor monitoring, but IIRC it was still loud on headphones. After those cuts I boosted the LF with a shelf and used Basslane (free version) to add side harmonics. I know I was able to get more deep bass (I won't call it sub, but on the edge) for the lower notes this way without the "D" booming out so much. I used a straight eq for the cuts. Usually I might have used a dynamic eq but... the bleed again.

[eccentric]

To close this out, I am actually also surprised to read so many comments regarding "phase aligning" the already phase aligned multi-tracks. The material was checked/adjusted with Sound Radix Auto-Align 2, and this was even mentioned in the "Words by the Song Provider". I understand that microphone distance (e.g. drums) are still a thing. But I've read things like "flipping the phase on the drums compared to the cajon close mics". I actually asked the Song Provider to take another look during the integrity check - and he fixed this before you all got access to the material.

Damn, i missed the target by +5LUFS... disqualified, shame on me! ...

Regarding the Phase-Alignment in my defence i have to mention that i also use Auto-Align 2, which definetely shows a phase shift between 0,65ms and 3,3ms for the drums alone, which is a tremendous amount if you want to retain transients.

Otherwise, Keep up the good work! It really was fun to mix this one!

[jax]

I'm sorry I messed it up!
It's a good lesson for the future.

[Pitta]

Hello!

Thanks Mister Fox for your hard work and also for the patience with all this misbehaved girls and boys. I had to mix this, minus prep, in one day. I, unfortunately, never finish a mix in one day.

For what is worth, the link to my mix should work now.

I've tried to create a semi circle around the vocal, having guitar and banjo in front to the sides, fiddle and acordion a little back and further back, cajon with bass in front. I think I haven´t fully acomplished with the cajon as it needed a bit of presence too. Always hard to balance that.

Cleaned a bit of the backing vocals bleed in lead vocal using Goyo-voice separator. I wanted to put those BV with the long notes in the back and wasn't getting it without the cleanup. Goyo it's a free plugin and it works well if you don't abuse it. Heavy on CPU, better render it.

Pedro Pitta

[Barry M]

I put an underscore in my username by mistake and rendered at 44k without thinking, as its my standard render template.

I also got pulled up on the time of the track. Mine was a few seconds too short. Why is that a problem if it's silence?

Overall I really enjoyed the mix/song.

[jeffssoloband]

I also got pulled up on the time of the track. Mine was a few seconds too short. Why is that a problem if it's silence?

Most mastering engineers like a little room at the beginning and ending of a track.

[Barry M]

Next time I'll read the brief before havin a "smoke".