MIX CHALLENGE - MC093 August 2023 - Winners announced

[Mister Fox]

This is an ongoing issue with the Mix(ing) Challenge...
Copying the filename of a previous entry, which might even use the wrong formatting, rather than using the provided template.

In this case (above), the mix can sadly not be associated with the participant.
See: Mix Challenge - Rules and Guidelines, especially Addendum: Statistic Sheet and Wild Card Mechanic.


For all future entries this month -- a final reminder on this topic:
Please pay attention to detail. If you don't, you risk your entry from being disqualified.



As of the moment of this post, there are still 10 days left to submit your mix.
So far I'm counting 9 entries.

[EKVelika]

Hello everyone!, first of all I wanna say thank you for this nice opportunity to mix this kind of music since I gravitate towards that kind of genre. My goal in the mix was to make hybrid sound between 70s analog warm sound and modern sound. Main focus are on vocals and piano. I used mostly stock plugins in Presonus studio one and fabfilter here and there.

On my meter it shows -18db lufs integrated and -1.4db true peak.

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

[Dodgingrain]

Thanks Gaz, this is a cool track with tons of character. Appreciate your work with Nick on sonic state over the years.

I tried to go a little more modern with the mix.
mix: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrlPR6XJ- ... A?e=hJifyQ

Drums:
Basic eq and compression. Drums feed a sidechain signal to the bass. Most of the work here is eq cuts to clear up the drums.

Bass:
Some leveling of the low end using dynamic eq and compression. Used decapacitator on the DI to give the bass some bite and blended in the other bass mics. A small amount of compression triggered by the kick drum on the bass group. Drums and bass routed to a bus to do some lite group compression.

Guitars:
Acoustics: lots of eq cutting on the low end and some lite compression.
Electrics: Eq, used quadrafuzz (decimator) for some added distortion in one of the sections.

Keys:
Piano: Piano track split into left and right for different processing, panning settings to left and right for the other piano tracks. Added some saturation to the piano low end on the left. A little bit of volume automation to add some drama.
Leslie: some panning and a little bit of eq.
Prophet: duplicated one of the tracks with some different eq settings and a short delay to provide some space in a few sections, otherwise eq and volume automation.

I've been experimenting with a parallel compression instrument bus similar to vocal parallel compression to create fatness. Used that technique on this mix as well.

vocals:
BGV's: de-essing and parallel compression in addition to some eq, panning, and volume automation.
Gaz: quite a bit of eq, compression, de-essing and automation. also parallel compressed and there is a short and long delay. Used a pair of reverbs to create space for the vocal as well, one longer reverb and a second focused on early reflections.

Mix bus:
Some tape saturation and an API 2500 for glue.

[jeffssoloband]

Dear Rocketgoldstar/Gaz and the Mix Challenge community,

Please find my submission for MC093 here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/x75tz6zy ... x0pdp&dl=0

I really wanted to embrace the 70s rock vibe with this one, so I kept things fairly dry. I started with my usual organizing (grouping the tracks), gain staging, and beat mapping. I ended up with 10 groups/busses. (N.B. I opted to use the Polarizer version of all of the vocal tracks.)

Drums: I cleaned up a lot of the bleed on the kick and snare tracks. I feel like I got better control that way. The rack tom is panned to about 2 o'clock, and the floor tom is at around 8 o'clock. Everything else is down the middle. While I used zero reverb on any of the drum tracks, I did use a transient shaper on the overheads to stretch out the sustain a bit.

Percussion (actually, just the tambourine): This just got a little boost at 4,000 Hz, a little tape saturation, and compression to even things out. It's hanging out in the right speaker.

Bass: There's some saturation on the DI track. Then I EQ'd and blended the four tracks until I was happy. I put a transient shaper on the buss to give the attack a little boost.

Electric Guitar: Not a whole lot here. EQ, some light compression, and a bit of warmth from an exciter. It's all panned to the left side.

Acoustic Guitar: I mainly wanted to bring out the percussiveness of the instrument. The low end rolls off at around 300 Hz, and I added a high shelf boost at 5,000 Hz. And it's all panned to the right side.

Piano: Am I the only one who had phase correlation issues with the piano when folded down to mono? I had to do some mid/side EQing to help it out. Anyway, I personally found the the mechanical noises a bit distracting, so I did try to clean some of it up. So the main focus is on the near piano mic, and in lieu of reverb, the far piano is blended in. During the quiet parts, the piano is panned to the left speaker, but when the drums kick in, it goes center for drama (I ripped off the idea from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody").

Leslie: I basically just blended the four tracks and added an exciter.

Prophet: #1 has an auto-panner for movement, and is panned left. #2 is panned right. That's it.

FX: The Radio track has an auto-panner for drama. The "additional mix elements" track is just automated to compensate for the dynamics in the volume.

Lead Vox: I cleaned up some of the noises, and then I mostly relied on Vocal Rider. The vocal gets a "radio" effect at the "Rifles fire..." section, and is panned left, while the "FX vox" track is panned to the right. The "Shoot, shoot..." section is panned to the left. There is the tiniest bit of hall reverb present.

Backing Vox: Frank is mostly in the left speaker, and Sion is in the right. Except during the "A young man's dream..." section, where they are down the middle. Other than that there is just some basic EQ, a heavy compressor, and a tiny bit more reverb than the lead vocals.

There is a transparent compressor on the master buss with a 2.0:1 ratio and a very low threshold to catch any rogue transients.

Feel free to hmu if you have any questions.

Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

Best,
Jeff (jeffssoloband)

[Mister Fox]

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


So far, we have 12 entries.
Please don't forget to take note of the "TL;DR Rules.txt" file as part of the Mix Pack, and get your mix sorted out this week.

[zajus]

Hi All,

As always, many thanks for the opportunity to mix this. This genre is very close to my musical heart, so special thanks to the song provider for sharing it!

My mix: MC093__Rocketgoldstar__Born_Taurus_Man__Zajus.wav

I didn't want for my mix to intentionally sound retro, but I still wanted it to carry to vibe of the peak era of progrock, so as reference points I used Steven Wilson modern mixes of classic prog rock. I think it suited the song really well. My main focus was of course the vocals and the conversation between the lead and backing vocals, ensuring the piano does not get buried in the later parts of the song. I hope you'll enjoy the result!

Regarding my processing:
Drums:
Kick: 3-4 dB of compression, EQ to reduce the mids and Analog Obsession's LOVEND (my first try with this one) to increase thump in the 60Hz territory.
Snare: A LOT (~12 dB) of compression. Normally I would not compress snare so much, it just sounded good this time. EQ to reduce some resonance around 500Hz and TripleDrive for a soft saturation in the top end.
Toms: EQ to mildly increase the high end and a transient shaper to make the decay a bit longer.
OH: Around 2dB of compression, EQ to remove low and most mids.
Tambourine: nothing at all. Automation to switch left and right channels in one portion of the song just to add a bit of movement.
Overall drum processing: Cymatics Diablo to add a bit of punch, Vintage EQ to add low end and remove 5dB around 360Hz

Bass: All below 100Hz removed from the DI track to avoid low frequency build up. Sub octave track EQd to remove all higher harmonics to avoid clash with the other tracks, and especially limited to smooth the low-end. Overall a lot of compression on the bass bus (10dB at moments), plus a few dBs of limiting. Chorus effect (set to around 10% wet) to increase the width and make the instrument cut trough the mix better.

Acoustic guitars: Only EQ to remove low frequencies.
Electric guitar: EQ to increase around 3k to make sure the guitar cuts through the mix, and around 3dB of compression using fast FET compressor.

Radio: Autopan to incrase the movement, set-up very dry.
Prophet 1: EQ to remove low end rumble and top end fizzle, stereo expander the increase the size of the sound, autopan to increase the movement.
Prophet 2: EQ to remove low end rumble and top end fizzle
Cymbal Scrapes: Stereo expander the increase the size of the sound
Additional mix elements: Just EQ to remove low end rumble, in case there was any.

Piano: EQ to focus the sound on key frequencies and make it cut better through the mix, a touch of saturation on top end for the same reason, and binaural pan to separate the stereo tracks a little bit more.
Leslie: Only EQ to remove Low-end rumble and a touch of chorus

Lead Vox: Multiple stages of compression adding up to around 12dB, de-esser, EQ to shape the sound (a small bump in the mids mainly), TeleVox FX for the "radio" section. Stereo Expander for the FX Vox and Sion's middle section yelps. Ton of volume automation.
Backing Vox: Haas effect used in various degrees to best spread the vocals in the stereo field, around 10dB of compression and some de-essing.

Plus a lot of automation all over the place.

For sends, I'm using a touch of parallel compression for the kick + snare, plate reverb for kick, snare and vocals, room reverb for more drum ambiance, slap delay for the piano and an asymmetric stereo delay for vocals and electric guitar.

On my submix channel I'm using several things: TDR Kotelnikov compressor for a ~ 2dB of compression of the full mix, followed by FerricTDS tape emulation which adds nice warmth to the mix, TesslaSE MKII mainly for a little more saturation and to make the top-end sparkle a little bit and Voxengo Overtone GEQ to finally shape the sound. Lastly I run this through bx_masterdesk to ensure I'm within the limits.

Cheers!
Stepan

[trackerjack]

Hi everyone,

thanks to Gaz and Rocketgoldstar for providing this amazing and beautifully recorded song, and excellent learning opportunity. I enjoyed this very much.

Link: https://drive.proton.me/urls/XKTPZB938W#YA5EP4mSp7HT

My mix took a similar approach to the original (which I really liked), trying to keep faithful to style, hopefully while adding a slight personal touch (by making it worse probably, haha).

I tried not to go overboard with compression, keeping drums - overheads in particular - fairly open and balanced.
More coloration than compression on the drum bus.

Similarly with piano and vocals, instead focussing much more on balance and automation, in places much more granularly than I had tried before. And having tons of fun during the process.

I chose the split vocal tracks and did not try the Polarizer plug-in. Still intending to give that a try at some point, thanks for including those as an option.

The first night was spent on house keeping, ordering, grouping, trimming, clip gaining, little bits of phase adjustment, finding a rough balance and listening, getting familiar with structure and lyrics, taking notes.

Next went on to do basic sound-shaping, hi-passing some of the sources, tweaking drum and bass parts slightly, tried some vocal compression which I later replaced. Fine tuning balance. Trying not to solo much. Wrote some basic automation for key and FX parts. Printed a vocal reverb for a bit of vibe, which I thought would be replaced later, but then decided to keep it in the end.

Follow-up sessions were mainly spent on writing automation and later adding some of the additional FX, while making adjustments to tone and balance.

It was very interesting to hear how the mix morphed closer to the original over time, still somehow unintendedly.
I certainly didn't switch back and forth, or aim to replicate, I just did what I felt is appropriate.

Although as mentioned, I really enjoy the original mix so this is mildly surprising. There are still quite a few differences however.

This is my first challenge and I'm super excited, with no expectations other than learning and having a good time (those parts worked out brilliantly). I hope I've copied the rules and didn't screw up.

Mixed in Reaper (5.982) and mainly on headphones (DT 990 PRO).


Plug-ins used:


Piano: TDR Nova

Lead Vocals: ReaEQ, Klanghelm MJUC (mk3), Waves DeEsser, Vitamin (only active during battle / guitar solo part)

Background Vocals (group): REQ2, Waves DeEsser

FX Vox: MJUC (mk3), Klanghelm SDRR2, OldSchoolVerb

Bass (group): MV2, ReaEQ

Drum bus: ReaEQ, MJUC (mk3)

Kick (group): OmniChannel, ReaEQ

Kick (condenser): ReaEQ

Kick (dynamic): ReaEQ

Snare: Scheps 73

Toms (group): ReaEQ, ReaComp

Cymbal scrapes: ReaEQ

Tambourine: ReaEQ

Acoustic guitars (group): ReaEQ, RCompressor

Electric guitar (group): ReaEQ

Organ/Leslie (group): ReaEQ

Prophet (seperate): ReaEQ, Waves EMO-F2

Mix Bus: SSL Comp (side-chained gentle low-shelf (ReaEQ), automated threshold and make-up gain), Fabfilter Pro Q3



Additional FX:


Medium-short plate on lead and bg vocals (recorded from CXM 1978 Automatone, send via ReaEQ)

Drum ambience (reverb send drum bus and snare): ReaEQ, Waves IR-L

Reverb send electric guitar: RVerb

Delay send electric guitar (momentary): Valhalla FreqEcho



Other tools used:


Voxengo SPAN, TBProAudio mvMeter, ISOL8, Youlean Loudness Meter



I really had a blast with this.

I haven't checked out any of the mixes that have been posted yet, I was trying to keep my head clear and dig in and have fun.

So I'm looking forward to hear what folks have come up with.

Also, being previously unaware of this forum, to go back and have a look at older challenges, too.
This looks like a nice place.

Good luck all!!!

cheers,
Tom


Edit: Wow. Some great mixes in here, keep it coming, guys and gals...
Really loving some of the vocal tones you are getting! (I shall be taking notes, haha).

Edit 2: Feeling like a bit of a donkey for missing a particular element, lol.

[alanvaldez]

Hi! A big thank you to the song provider, this song was a pleasure to mix!

Mixed with Nuendo 12

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

First listened to all the tracks and used the tempo track.

Kick used the Neutron gate on both tracks, then the Melda Auto align and grouped both channels.
Used the Melda Mdrumstrip and the Rbass

Snare: first converted to a stereo track and then Mdrumstrip, all eq and fx are from that module

Toms: Mdrumstrip and routed both to a group track then used again the Mdrumstrip to and then Rbass

Overheads: Mdrumstrip neutron Sculptor
Routed everything to a group called drums and again the Mdrumstrip and sculptor, Kramer Pie, Msaturator to add some saturation and enhance high frequencies.

Tambourine: Nuendo eq and melda mconvolution ez

Cymbal scrapes roomworks and Nuendo eq

Acoustic guitar: Cla Unplugged + grouped and used the mautoalign on both to eliminate some issues with phasing.

Electric guitars: grouped and used mautofix then melda eq, magma reverb and Izotope DDLY dynamic delay.

Bass: grouped all channels used deeser on one of them autoalign, then on the bass group used: Difix, spectral dynamics (melda) Jjp Bass and mv2

Main vocals: grouped and used the Jjp vocals, CLa 2 A, Cla 76, Neutron Sculptor, nectar deeser, and nectar delay.
Vocals were sent to another track to be used as a sidechain with the spectral dynamics (Melda) keyboard, guitars, and other that were masking with the vocals

Leslie: TG12345, Melda auto pan and nectar delay

Piano: mcompressor GW Pianocentric spectral dynamics

Prophet¨GW Mixcentric

Radio: Nuendo Doppler fx used on all radio parts, this was automated with 3 Doppler fx that do different things. Nuendo Distroyer and magma reverb.

Choirs, all vocals were grouped panned and treated almost the same with some automation. Fx used Api 550B, API 2500, vocal rider, Nuendo Deeser, GW tonecentric, neutron unmask, mflanger, and msaturator.
On the master bus I used the Ozone saturator only to give some brightness, ssl compressor and the Ozone maximizer only to have the loudness required.

A lot of automation everywhere and done!

[Hoek]

Well hello there!

Never heard of Rocketgoldstar or Gaz Williams before, but now that I have, i'll be sure to check them out some more! Awesome stuff!

I gave it a go, I had fun and this is what i carved out:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QLOjwy ... drive_link

Carving was done 100% inside Reaper over the course of a few weeknights.

I had no clear image in my head what I wanted to achieve, it more kinda came along as i was tweaking but I guess we could say it's some kind of attempt on a modern take on a classic sound. With maybe more distinct but fairly dry drums.

Plugins used, including but not exclusive to:

FF pro q 3 (most tracks) an pro c2 (alot of tracks) and Saturn ( for radiovox)
Brainworx console ssl 4000 e ( quite a few tracks)
Soundtoys decapitator (lurks here and there)
UAd 1176, la2a and Studer tape, spl transient designer, neve 33609 and fairchild 670
Waves Rbass, ssl buss comp. api 2500

As for fxs I set up 5 aux tracks:

Plate: soundtoys little plate
Room: FF Pro r
Delay 1 short: Echoboy
Delay 2 long: echoboy
Paracomp: waves ssl comp

Mixbus gets a couple of db gr and perhaps some tube warmth from UAd Fairchild and a little (3 db) 100 hz shelf boost from uad massive passive, there was also a tape emulator.

Drumbus gets some studer Tape and waves api 2500 on the track, doing some 3 db gr and some further compression in paralell courtesy of the waves ssl bus comp. added 2 db pultec lowend.

Well induvidial drum tracks got the usual carving and compression, some transient designing too. I kept the drums (mostly) on the dry side with just the short plate (0,7s) for the snare. The oH gets a touch of my room verb. kick and snare might have gotten a touch of Waves Rbass added lows.

Same is true for bass and guitars, nothing out of the ordinary, so let's focus on the main elements, Piano and vocals!

I took out quite alot of low mids from the piano and highpassed around 190 hz, boosted 2k area and highpassed 8k, also took away some sustain and added attack using spl td and spl de-verb and put on a splash of chorusdelay. the main mic is pretty centered and the room goes a little to the right and is more mid-focused.

I opted to use all the included vocaltracks in the mix package as opposed to going the Polarizer route. The main lead vox channel is routed with the Mic rear( about 8 db lower) to a group track where all the processing took place. I did some tuning, i did some carving: 206 hz, 381 hz, 467 hz and 951 hz. then boosting highs and high mids with soundtoys Sie-q. Good old combo 1176 and la2a for compression, quite alot on the 1176 7-10 db gr. less so on the la2a. Soundtoys radiator for saturation and some deessing and some sooth2ing. Vocals are in various amounts sent to short (stereo) and long delay as opposed to any reverb.

Backing vocals tracks were all bussed to a group and treated with delay and some phaseshifting from Soundtoys Phasemistress ( and eq and comp)

There was a bunch of automation done allover the project.

Well, I could go on forever but you probably had it with technical jargon. Plus I really should get going.

Thanks everyone for the opportunity and thanks for listening and any possible feedback.

Good luck to all contestants!
/Hoek

[FoxholeStudios]

Hi All,

First time posting and submitting a mix. It was a pleasure working with this track and source audio. Great song!

LINK TO MIX: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/aqq5gtql ... tu42n&dl=0

Some intel on the mix -

Kick: EQ and comp (1176). Slight gating.

Snare: EQ and comp. Light saturation. Slight gating.

Toms: EQ. Light comp

Overheads: EQ. Slight compression and leveling. Fab filter Pro-mb

Tambourine: Not much...get it to sit in right place

Acoustic guitar: Stereo field. Subtle compression and warming

Electric guitars: not much...some EQ + Trash to add bite.

Bass: EQ and layered. Phase correction. Decent amount of compression and touch of chorus fx

Main vocals: EQ. 1176 comp. Saturation. Lexicon 224 verb + echoboy for some delays

Leslie: Mainly used top mic. Saturation + EQ

Piano: EQ. Light compression. Imager and tape echo.

Prophet: Light comp/eq. Driven with some Trash

Master: Light bus compression...Shadow Hills