MIX CHALLENGE - MC097 April 2024 - Winners announced

[O'MIX]

Hello,

Thank you for this opportunity to participate in the next round and for your analysis and your fairly relevant and fair comments.

What I have done:

A little more effect on the vocal lead (less dry), reduce the bass vocals, increase the snare drum a little, reduce the volume of the cymbals at the end and make the song more lively overall, final compression and equalization different (a little more defined) and more accomplished, suitable for a completely finished production.

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

Good listening and good luck to all participants.
Hello from Brussels
Patrick

[A Future in Noise]

And now comes my question, it's not clear to me what I have to improve in my mix to make it completely to your liking, and I really don't know what to do, I don't know if you meant that there is too much accumulation in the 1000hz or if the smile balance is too exaggerated, I open the DAW and I'm left blank :S

Are you saying that the eighth-note hi-hats need to be quieter?

I'm not entirely sure that the best way to go is for me to declare exactly what my preferences are. Has it occurred to you that you guys are sound engineers and I'm a songwriter? I am primarily interested in chord progression, melody ... and maybe bassline - these are my tasks. What if all you mixers (15 – 90 people) would stick to your respective visions, instead, and convince me that you're right and I'm wrong? (But that's probably not true either.)

[juhu]

Hello,

1) Enjoy my Round 2 update:
http://tinkerstate.com/mix-challenge/MC ... uhu_R2.wav

2) Documentation of changes made for Round 2 (click "Show" to expand):

► Show Spoiler

• Automated faders on almost all of the parts in order to bring out the Call-Response phrases and enhance the overall dynamics, thus improving the musicality of the mix
• Tamed the Autopan on Electric Guitar in Verse sections
• Made the Strings more audible where necessary
• Tamed the Cymbals in Coda section
• Tucked in the Snare a bit more using slight additional Drum Bus compression
• As for Toms, the added ambience (see below) should make them sound less like a carpet beater
• Added significantly more ambience, since my Round 1 version was definitely on the dry side: specifically, added a Room FX and a Chamber FX, both as Send Busses; then fine-tuned the send amounts from individual parts carefully in order to craft some depth and cohesion to the sound, thus bringing the musicality of the Round 2 version to the next level

That concludes my Round 2 changelog. Good luck to all fellow participants!

[PauPeu]

Hi!

Here’s the link to my mix to round 2:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G81HGv ... p=drivesdk


tomorrow I will edit and expand on this post, I have not time right now.

Cheers!


EDIT:

First of all zanx to the song provider for selecting my mix. The acoustic guitar’s “secret” is a generous bump in de low mids, tube saturation, and discrete reverbs. I’m glad you like them.

The e guitar have a guitar rig 6 preset and a tremolo effect + a send to a slap back delay on the right channel.

In reference to the second round mix, I took care of all the suggestions you made

(The superhighs in the hi-hat bothered me a little, is ture that in context is not a big deal.


Plus:

I lowered the drum bus compression and the level of the toms, so the drum sound is now a little more punchy and less muddy, also turned down the reverb send.

Adjusted the lowmids in the tonal instruments so it breathes a little better

Turned off the low pass filter in the bass so now is more articulated.

I brightened the string section a bit so it’s a little more audible.

And finally I put some dynamic compression in some frequencies that bothered me in the main voice.

The MIX BUS have a slight high shelf a little clipping, discrete saturation and compression.

I hope you like it!

[Mister Fox]

It's the 26th May 2024, 00:30 (UTC+2) - the 2nd Mix Round has officially ended.


STATISTICS

• Unfortunately, not everyone has sent in an edit, we therefore have 3 disqualifications
• We have 1 Wild Card uses to advance into the next round (@SyroniC_GP)
• We have 2 participants that decided on not to advance through the use of a Wild Card (03 available this month, @Havol and @hjchjc)
• We have 0 submissions after the deadline
• We have 1 submission that could not be downloaded by the time of this post and are therefore disqualified (re-checked 26-MAY-2024 0:30 UTC+2/CEST)

I will reach out to @A Future In Noise and forward all entries/statistics by sometime tomorrow (Sunday, 26-MAY-2024). Please have an eye on this thread for more feedback and a possible Mix Round 3, or an announcement of the final results.



I'm now opening up the room (again) for Q&A's and giving each other feedback (which is highly encouraged)

Please check out all other games on the community. Most notably our Songwriting Competition - which is currently in the Voting Process. Get acquainted with how this game works, the next one starts on 01-JUN-2024.

Please also consider becoming a Song Provider. Our Song Pool is in trouble! No more material means no more Mix(ing) Challenges. The genre is not important.


See you on the flipside.

[A Future in Noise]

Just out of curiosity, @floodo : you said something like that you had no reference (song). I'm not sure I understood you. Three references were mentioned from the very beginning.

[juhu]

Three references were mentioned from the very beginning.

As the topic of references conveniently popped up, I'm curious whether there were any mixes that came across so obviously inspired by one of the 3 suggested references, that you could immediately hear which reference was being used just from the overall sound and feel?

[A Future in Noise]

Three references were mentioned from the very beginning.

As the topic of references conveniently popped up, I'm curious whether there were any mixes that came across so obviously inspired by one of the 3 suggested references, that you could immediately hear which reference was being used just from the overall sound and feel?

No, there were not. No outright plagiarism, fortunately. And to tell from the overall sound and feel - I suppose Carly Simon's I'm so Vain is more similar to Get a Grip than the other two songs mentioned. But I can't tell whether that similarity is a result of different mixes, or the song itself (whatever that means).

[floodo]

Just out of curiosity, @floodo : you said something like that you had no reference (song). I'm not sure I understood you. Three references were mentioned from the very beginning.

Yes, you mentioned 3 references, but a few paragraphs before you said that you worked by intuition, that you did not think of any reference, I found it interesting to mix without specific references, although my mix is inspired by folk music, I only took from that genre the volume levels of the different instruments to make the static mix, I hope to be understood, some Spanish expressions here in Argentina are very difficult to understand in other languages, even among Spanish speakers from other countries.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[A Future in Noise]

... although my mix is inspired by folk music, I only took from that genre the volume levels of the different instruments ...

The expression folk music exists in Swedish as well (it's spelled: folkmusik). One example could be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7etbccrTWk

Quite a long distance from Steely Dan, The Monkees and Carly Simon. Whereas for example folk music from the US probably belongs to the country and blues genres? What folk music in Argentina sounds like I have no idea. But probably not like the accordian in the video. Yes - language can sometimes be a barrier.