MIX CHALLENGE - MC098 June 2024 - Winners announced

[MemphisB]

I think, @rvalle and @MemphisB did the opposite to each other, both are good takes.

There are similarities in the lead vocals, clean and straightforward.

rvalle did the whole mix this way, a bit "Pop", everything in check, and might have achieved level of acceptance for some radios.
harmony vocals are rich and tight.
balances are great, especially the tonal teamwork between bass, vocals, and guitar,
except I thought the crash cymbals are a bit loud.
guitar sounds beautiful, piano is a bit in the background, and might have contributed a bit more to the dynamics.
the choir in the finale is straightforward again, nice little effects, sounds great, but does nothing extra (while some mixes gave it extra focus and color).

MemphisB turned down the bass for the first verse, which is a great idea in terms of dramaturgy, but the balance turns out a bit bright, and the hihat track with its various sounds plus cymbals are hanging out a little bit. I would have then boosted lows in the guitar and piano, and lowpassed the drumsounds and the piano each a little bit in different ways. just for a little shift in spectrum, to stay in the middle.
Then follows the big kick-in with the bass and full sound of everything. There is also deliberate kick pumping like in many old-style productions in similar genres. So, it has some Country and Folk style, very different from rvalle's "Pop".
The bass is also singing beautifully.
Nice support of tensions in the harmony vocals with volume swelling and chorus effects.
Harmony vocals and choir are beautiful but in the finale again nothing special is happening, though the reverbs fit very well into the genre.
Regarding the output/mixbus - in several of my monitorings (none is fully professional) the subsonics and low bass might be too strong.

I thought it might be interesting to point out some particular contrast between two participants.
Good luck anyway, for a good job everyone.

Great reply, thanks for the feedback its much appreciated . I did the mix on the last day on phones and I will have a look at them later
Best Regards
PM

[Tony Black]

Anyone care to comment on dealing with the stick hit?
On many, perhaps the majority of the uploads I've listened to, it sounds very, very separate not just to the kit but to the entire track, like someone is in the room with me tapping on something.

It is simply too loud in the majority of the mixes.
You want to mix it lower than the snare, because otherwise there's no volume difference between a stick it and a snare hit, which is weird.
Stick hits are background sounds, not main sounds.

Who said that a stick hit cannot be the main element in a groove? Of course you can play the cross stick louder than the snare hit. You can play with high dynamics and change the whole perspective of a groove if you bring certain elements to the front and others to the back.
I hear the snare hits more as ghost notes and therefore they are softer, including the tom hits. Listen to jazz or Bossa nova, you can hear this happens very often. In jazz music the kick drum is often more "tapped" and really shy compared to the rest of the kit, sometimes it is even hard to hear the kick.

Some grooves really only come to life IF you have good a loudness balance between each element. Hip Hop grooves on a drum kit often "need" a lower volume of the hihat because you "want" to emphasise more the kick and snare/rimshot/cross stick. Rock or metal e.g. often have a loud (open) hihat. As a beginner, I struggle myself a lot with this and I need more practice in order to be able to change the perspective of a groove. Playing a hard snare hit and a soft cymbal hit at the same time is pretty tough.

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

I hope this helps to get another perspective to the topic.

Yes of course as always there are no rules...
It was just my personal preference to have the stick hits lower than the snare so that when the snare hits you feel some "pop"/dynamics.

In my mind a snare hit is louder than a stick hit. Generally speaking.

In this case to me the snare sample we had had a "regular hit" snare tone and not a ghost note tone...

[elements]

@Tony Black So, you are mixing for dynamic impact which makes sense. Yes, I agree somewhat. I saw the snare to be more with the Toms in terms of volume and impact. It could almost be a Tom part apart from the nice contrast of the snare tone in the group.

[Strange]

@Tony Black I saw the snare to be more with the Toms in terms of volume and impact. It could almost be a Tom part apart from the nice contrast of the snare tone in the group.

Yes, these are my thoughts, too.

This leads me to the entire thoughts behind our mixing decision, which I'm interested in. Though here are mine:
First I heard a folkduo with some additional rhythmic stuff, a fretless bass and computer-drums. So I tried to be the computer-drums the "robot-part" of the song, but that doesn't work with this "natural" samples. So I treated the sounds like they are and made them a drumset. The basic-rhythm comes from kick, HiHat and sticks. Snare and toms do some additional highlights. And the kick can also give the bassfundament to the song, so I don't accentuate the transient of it too much. As a more "natural" drumset it needs a room for the whole set and maybe a little compression-glue. The sound of this drumset (given by the producer) led me to a more pop-sound for the whole song.
Next I listened to the vocals. I hear the leadsinger as the mother of the robot-baby, which she can't connect to. So I disconnected her "robot-baby" singing and made it part of the background: the "crying robot-baby" that answers mama's singing. When I tried to make the background more robotty I found this format-shifting chipmunk-sound and behind the laughing I saw, that the robot-baby isn't already a vision. It isn't future! it's present every day in the radio (or on spotify). So I let it sound like this. Except one time, when the mother try to connect again, but it won't, the robot-baby gets more and more robot-like at the end of the song. This shouldn't sound too good.
The whining fretless bass is the sad daddy in the background. He gets the mayor part when Mami's not singing.
Piano and guitar? yea, it's a folk song, so they're part of the scene, they are the platform for Mother's thoughts. I don't want to let them fight or anyone to be the more important part, one of them left, the other more to the right side.
The overall sound try to catch the radio ready, warm folk-pop request of the provider.
Don't ask me if I got it right...
But I like to read about other approaches, thanks.

[elements]

: @Strange I had a picture of a gooey robot baby. the bass to me had the picture of the feeling of a moving baby so I kind of went with that. I wanted the music to be there with the vocal to support, but also give a slightly different edge to it. I found myself starting to get a little angry during mixing as well. I wanted the vocal to get a little more edgy or at least be a little more in your face. The robot baby line almost became a bit of a school yard line. Like calling someone a robot baby. Maybe I became a little too far inside it. I do feel like the potential is there though through the frustration to basically be out there calling everyone a robot baby, but maybe that’s just me….

[scottfitz]

I have a 2yo who wanders the world of adults staring at phones, so even after the pandemic is over, some of the same problems remain. This is what I thought about during the mix.

It's tragic in that so much is lost with this behaviour and so very little is gained. What do people think they are learning when they check social media, news channels, text messages, podcasts? It's nearly always a shallow little addiction replacing what could be a meaningful life.

[Strange]

Thank you elements, thank you scottfitz. I love both points of view and more and more I know I need these reflections about a song to make the right decisions. If we are mixing only the technical way, we are all robot babies.

[Strange]

…mixing robot music…

[zed999]

I have a 2yo who wanders the world of adults staring at phones, so even after the pandemic is over, some of the same problems remain. This is what I thought about during the mix.

It's tragic in that so much is lost with this behaviour and so very little is gained. What do people think they are learning when they check social media, news channels, text messages, podcasts? It's nearly always a shallow little addiction replacing what could be a meaningful life.

So true. I'm glad my children were born and grew up before smartphones though they are not immune to the sometimes hateful effect of social media.

On the other hand my career involved designing hundreds, possibly thousands (I didn't count) of mobile phone transmission sites so it's partly my fault. Personally the only social media I use are old school specialist forums like this one and count even those on the fingers of one hand so I escaped that lure too (deliberately).

Back to this song.
I thought the performance and arrangement expressed the intent extremely well so I just mixed it and tried not to spoil that intent.

[Strange]

Back to this song.
I thought the performance and arrangement expressed the intent extremely well so I just mixed it and tried not to spoil that intent.

I agree, but what‘s the intention?