MIX CHALLENGE - MC098 June 2024 - Winners announced

[Strange]

The loudness balance of a drum kit depends pretty much of the groove and the genre.

This!

or vice versa: The groove depends pretty much of the loudness balance of a drum kit

[WrightAudio]

I would say the groove depends on the playing, feel and/or arrangement. You can have a sh@tty balance or lofi 'sound' but a part can still groove.

[Mellow Browne]

The loudness balance of a drum kit depends pretty much of the groove and the genre.

This!

or vice versa: The groove depends pretty much of the loudness balance of a drum kit

I would say the groove depends on the playing, feel and/or arrangement. You can have a sh@tty balance or lofi 'sound' but a part can still groove.

You are absolutely right. I was really talking from the drummer's perspective and not from the mixing engineer's perspective. As a drummer you want to have control over how hard or soft you hit the drums. Especially ghost notes can be crucial for beginners because we tend to hit the snare with the same power as the main hit ( I have the "Purdie Shuffle" in mind ), although ghost notes, as the name suggests, should be quieter in volume than your main hit. In some genres I want those ghost notes or other specific elements quieter and in others a bit louder. Same goes with a double bass hit, it is groove and genre dependent where to put the accent (if there is any).

This has nothing to do with bad recordings or poor sounds in general like you said.

[elements]

Bummer about the hearing. I spent my twenties in very loud band rooms and fortunately made it out reasonably unscathed. My ears do get tired though and I need to be mindful about volumes. It can take a few days to recover if I’ve been hitting them hard. I always wear protection when working with loud motors.

I was thinking about the rim shot volume question a little more and I wonder if it would have made any difference to anyone’s perspective about how it should sound if it was called something different?

Grinding and hammering for me rather than motors - panel work. Hammering steel is bad, you need very good ear protection for that.
Ref you needing days to recover from loud mixing I'm quite shocked you would do that to your ears. How loud are you mixing? Do you have a dB meter?

The stick (as it was labelled) or rimshot. I don't think it's naming made any difference, it was what it was - a very short sharp sound without much body. I'm surprised to read how many folk boosted it's highs, I thought it had too much already, I wanted something a little more earthy if that makes sense. My energies went into taming it, stopping it cutting through the mix so much.

That sounds bad … I do have a tendency to mix kind of loud in the phones without realising. Pretty easy to when I’m listening very intently and I want to feel the energy. I do check myself more frequently now and change listening levels a lot. I had a pair of the ADAM SP-5s. Accurate, but a little intense in the midrange which just sets my ears off a little. Now I’m a little more careful.

[Strange]

The loudness balance of a drum kit depends pretty much of the groove and the genre.

This!

or vice versa: The groove depends pretty much of the loudness balance of a drum kit

I would say the groove depends on the playing, feel and/or arrangement. You can have a sh@tty balance or lofi 'sound' but a part can still groove.

You are absolutely right. I was really talking from the drummer's perspective and not from the mixing engineer's perspective. As a drummer you want to have control over how hard or soft you hit the drums. Especially ghost notes can be crucial for beginners because we tend to hit the snare with the same power as the main hit ( I have the "Purdie Shuffle" in mind ), although ghost notes, as the name suggests, should be quieter in volume than your main hit. In some genres I want those ghost notes or other specific elements quieter and in others a bit louder. Same goes with a double bass hit, it is groove and genre dependent where to put the accent (if there is any).

This has nothing to do with bad recordings or poor sounds in general like you said.

I think, you have to mix from the drummer perspective. The drummer decides how hard he/she hits the drums to get the intended groove. As a mixer you have to catch this balance to get the right groove. Especially in this song you have to mix four seperate drumsounds and the mixer is the drummer who decides how loud he hits every sound to get the groove he feels. Yes, it's possible to get the groove with sh@tty balance, but it's random. For me, every mixing decision is a part oft the groove, too.

[cpsmusic]

Hi All,

Nice to see some post-submission discussion - the last few Challenges have hardly seen any!

I agree with those who found the stick sample difficult to work with due to its "transient-i-ness". My approach was two-fold. First, I reduced the stick's transient with a combination of clipping, saturation and transient shaping. The second thing I did was to use the stick as a "depth" sound - i.e. something that set's the "back wall" of the mix space. Dr Bob (highly recommended) has a video about this where he uses a tambourine but any sound with a transient works. Not sure how successful I was but that's what I was trying to do.

Cheers!

[zed999]

Hi All,

Nice to see some post-submission discussion - the last few Challenges have hardly seen any!

I agree with those who found the stick sample difficult to work with due to its "transient-i-ness". My approach was two-fold. First, I reduced the stick's transient with a combination of clipping, saturation and transient shaping. The second thing I did was to use the stick as a "depth" sound - i.e. something that set's the "back wall" of the mix space. Dr Bob (highly recommended) has a video about this where he uses a tambourine but any sound with a transient works. Not sure how successful I was but that's what I was trying to do.

Cheers!

You succeeded in your intention.

Guess I did similar, aiming to have the drums in the back wall, but I didn't want that back wall so far back.

[elements]

There was something I remembered about the stick sound. I initially went for a sound that had more of the body stick sound in it, but what I found was that there was a beat of that stick interfering with the lead vocal when she was singing the word baby with the lengthened a. I think it was in the second verse bit. Yes, it was kind of annoying and maybe because I was putting it up reasonably loud in the mix, but it sounded like there was an error in the vocal recording so that’s when I went and removed more of the lower mids out of the sound.

[scottfitz]

Hi all. On this challenge I decided to focus on how the track felt over other considerations. This naturally led me to keep the drum track low. I appreciate that in mixing it is pretty much never the best solution to simply hide a weaker part. However on this occasion I decided to throw out the rule book and just make something for me, something that I like listening to and so what? I recently heard a Rick Rubin interview where he pretty much just says this is a good way to go. He says to make what does it for you and pursue that in a pure sense and don't worry about it if you fail in terms of external indicators like popularity/financial success. Obviously you need your thing to actually be approved by the artists, but I think he is correct about this message. The reason is that when you can start to feel a connection with the track and care about it and make it into what you love, then it's a very carefully cherished thing. If you hope to make it simply have a standard balance for the genre and a standard level of vocal compression with a host of objectively good techniques employed on it, then I feel like this is operating on the music like you operate on a virus in one those chambers with gloves fitted into it

That said I was surprised at how well a lot of you managed to deal with that drum track and by this time I've half changed my mind on the way I did it. I also wonder sometimes if I'm avoiding doing certain tasks because I know I'm not good at those aspects. Anyway Good luck all and I've been loving all the feedback and discussions on this challenge.

[MemphisB]

Hi
I have listened to quite a few mixes and the piano is very strong in a lot of mixes. I sort of aimed at the Guitar and piano level left and right to give a base cutting out quite a lot of the low end on the piano. Drums a bit light, with a bit more bass(I like Bass lol) and vocals quite prominent on top. Some great mixes out there with different feels ,. Must be hard picking a few out for the next stage.

PM