MIX CHALLENGE - MC095 December 2023 - Winners announced

[DavidB]

Hello everyone,

I'm excited to share my mix for this competition featuring the track "Home." It's been a pleasure working on it, especially since it reminds me of some of Bonobo's older tracks, and they're one of my favorite bands. I also appreciate the extension of the submission deadline, as the pre-Christmas period was quite busy for me, but I was determined to finish this project.

I'd like to extend my gratitude to @Christoph_K for providing the song. It's evident that you're not only a skilled mix engineer but also a musician and producer.

Now, let's discuss my mixing approach. I found the ambiance and background sounds captivating, and I aimed to enhance these elements to create an immersive sonic experience that aligns with the music's emotional depth. To achieve this, I applied some effects like chorus to the main acoustic guitar, a phaser on the electric guitar in the final phase, and a cloudmax effect to add sparkle to certain intro elements. I also added a touch of saturation to the drums and guitars, mainly using the LTL Silver Bullet. Valhalla room served as the primary reverb, adding space where needed. Additionally, I had a bit of fun with the autopanner, especially at the beginning, to create a sense of space in the track.

Other than that, I kept things relatively straightforward. I trimmed the lows on some guitars that had excessive percussive elements and used standard EQing techniques, including transparent digital EQ and Pultec emulations in a few cases, to give each instrument its place in the mix. Of course, I used compression where necessary.

I also have a preference for the Harrison Vocal flow on vocals, which I applied in this mix.

You can listen to the final mix here:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtpzKIYuNN-3mq1LR1n ... A?e=wiBsId

I hope you enjoy the journey through "Home"!

[pabloAT]

Dear all,
Many thanks to the song provider and to Mr. Fox for such a nice track to mix.
As tracks were recorded very well, I’ve followed a quite minimalist approach to this mix, focused on (what I’ve considered) having a good balance by combining gain staging, leveling, panning and automation, without any plugin.
Then, I’ve ‘fine-tuned’ the first mix with some EQing, compression, distortion and saturation. To do that, I’ve mainly used instances of SSL 4K B console emulations applied on all tracks.
When I was happy with the second mix, I incorporated reverb and delay instances and played around with the space, ER, etc. I applied subtle mixbuss compression and a tape machine. Intensive extra automation for individual tracks and stems was added from the middle of the mix process.
I hope you like it, please find below the link to my mix:

[Dropbox link to MC095]

Best wishes,
Pablo

[GeorgeCorg]

Hello,

This was a nice challenge with that many elements to be mixed and made a whole.

Nevertheless, when the production is that good, it's way easier for a mix engineer to make everything work, because already has been thought trough in the production stage, I love working with such projects.

I cannot say what I have done more specific, as in plugins and techniques, I guess most of my time went into resolving conflicts and making sure the details I want to be heard one can actually hear, so my take on this mix involved automation more than anything. EQs, Reverbs, bus compression, the usual suspects.

Anyhow, this is my submission:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytlsVa ... drive_link

Thanks again for the challenge and enjoy!

Regards,
GeorgeCorg.

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
A little bit more than 4 hours left to submit your mix.


Please check that everything is in order prior to uploading (filename template), and make your file accessible.

[PKmusic10]

Hello All!

Here is my entry: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12NjbtN ... sp=sharing

I had fun creating my first submission for this type of challenge. My goal in this mix was to capture and convey the very raw and emotional aspect of the song. I tried to make the vocals as clear and clean as possible, and ended up leaving them relatively dry without much reverb or delay except for specific spots for effect. To give priority to the vocal, I took many of the mono instruments and at least one of the background vocals and created a doubled track to create a hard left and right stereo image. For the acoustic guitars I added a very slight delay and then added different Impulse Responses to the left and right so that they would have their own character and a slightly varied sonic space.
I did some work to tighten up some of the background vocals so that their transients were a little more matched. I used pitch correction for one note on one background vocal that wavered on a note just to make it tighter and cohesive.
I tried to give the song both a balance as well as its due to build in energy through the progression of the song. I tried to give the last big section its energy from the drums and tried to give it the feel of a live drumset in the room. As well, when the electric bass guitar come in on that last section it feels like with enough volume it just completes the mix. At the little outro section I used a digitized sound and automated it to get slightly more digitized until when it ends, also fading it out.

I hope it is enjoyable, and I appreciate any feedback from y’all!

[Christoph_K]

Keep 'em coming. I heard some great mixes already!

[wkanegis]

Hi guys! I'm new to Mix-Challenge and just discovered this challenge a few days ago, so I was in a rush to get things into place before the deadline. I hope I can still submit. As far as documenting what I did, I enjoyed putting some parallel distortion on the guitars in the main chorus section with all the drums and guitars, I used panning and some band stop filters on various mix elements to get clarity and separation. If the band stop is not too wide and placed well, it can really give a clear and separated sound between a lot of the more minor elements, although I wouldn't employ it on kick, snare, or lead vocals. I ran the kick and snare through some all pass filers, of all things. A few of them in sequence can actually really thicken up a kick, oddly enough. Plenty of compression throughout on many elements, and I automated the vocals a little bit to deal with tricky things. I can say more if anyone is curious, but I have to run to work. Will be checking out some of the other mixes on here later!

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

[againstpower]

Hello everyone,

My approach to the mix was to create a soundscape with the available tracks.
Suggestion fueled by the arrangement of the song (elements that are added here and there until they fill the space), by the voice, by the lyrics, by the effects, etc. In my imagination the song moves within 3 main atmospheres that I tried to reproduce by varying the panning, the amount of delay, reverb, volume and effects used such as tremolo, chorus, ping pong delay, ring modulator and doppler.
Much of the work done in this mix challenge consisted of gain staging, panning the elements, finding the balance between all the tracks, fine-tuning the many automations used and sculpting the sound using effects plugins.
Almost every track has a compressor and an equalizer.
Tracks are grouped by similar instruments into buses.
I have used sub bus in some cases; for example the kick, the snare and the vocals for which I used multiple parallel compressors.
On the buses there is another compression where I feel it is necessary, equalization refinements, a bit of saturation where needed (guitar, vocals, drops, kick, etc). On the mixbus I have a puigtec for glue and a shelf around 10-12Khz. I used 3 reverbs: short for the drums; medium for voice, guitar, bouzuki; long for drops, piano and for glue effect.
In the intro I used a granulation effect on the guitar, a modulation on the vocal and guitar effects track.
I used a doppler effect on the bottle tracks and on part of the BG voices (the final ones), I also tried to sculpt some breaths to make them less...breaths. I treated the Hit hat during the central part differently than when it also plays with the snare drum, using reverb and delay to fill the space around the voice; effects that disappear in the last part of the song when certainties appear (I will be your friend until we are old/.../But until then I will always do it).
Finally, I also used a bit of distortion, saturation and chorus on the effects tracks.
I used Cubase 12, mixing in the box in my studio (bed)room.
I enjoyed working with the excellent production both musically and technically, thank you @Christoph_K .
That's all, I hope you like the result.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mW4At1 ... sp=sharing

[LowlandsWave]

Hello everyone! That was a challenge ... mix wise and time wise. Just found out today that we had an extra day! So this mix is todays effort.

Thanx to @Christoph_K for sharing this Wonderfull production.

No fixing or tuning just mix!

I used LUNA to mix this one, so all busses have the API summing extension on it and all tracks got the Studer800 extension on it. I tried to keep it as simple as possible

Drums:
levels, volume and basic eq using SSL 4K E channel strip
Beef up the kick with some Pultec and again on the drumbus
Room track crushed with devillock

String things all went to one bus and some tracklevel eq with SSL 4K E channel strip
Crunch guitar in the end got some parallel heat from Soundtoys' radiator plugin

pads, ambient instrumentation got some eq using SSL 4K E channel strip.

tried to stay close to the original sound of the production because of the way it was put together, the raw tracks tell the story ...

from small and brittle to full on rock track, who doesn't want to come home in world with drums and guitars? nice journey.

here's the mix:
LowlandsWave mix

[shoma]

Grettings @everyone!

This is my take on this wonderful song:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1duX8-M ... drive_link

This was really a joy to mix! Thanks to @Christoph_K for providing this song and of course thanks to @Compyfox for all his hard work and keeping this aewsome platform alive!

I used Cubase 13 Pro to mix this track.
After importing and organising the files I clipgained every track to about -12dB. Then I made a static mix to see, which part needs treatments in compression, eq or FX.

No extraordinary treatments were necessary and I mostly used CraveEQ on every channel. Vocals and the acoustic instruments went through VPRE72 for some colouring and slight saturation, 1176 and LA2A by Overloud. Some vocals also had some Spectre by Wavesfactory as an enhancement.

Reverbs I used were ValhallaRoom for small rooms, Valhalla Delay, Quantum 2772, Soundtoys SuperPlate (for the bigger reverbs). Nembrini Echoband, Soundtoys PrimalTap and Soundtoys Echoboy were used for delays. On some of the FX-Tracks I used Leapwing Stage, Mathhew Lane Stereo Delta and Ozone Imager for wideing. On the master bus i Used a soft clipper to capture some of the peaks, SmartEQ4 for a "final touch" and SmartComp2 for a little glue.

Yes, this mix is on the lower side volumewise and I did not reach -16 LUFS, but I hope that is no problem.

Google Drive is again giving me a hard time to share the file for everyone and depending on the browser sometimes gave me an error to access the file when not logged in. Sometimes it would play, sometimes I only had the option to download the file...aaarrggh...