Title;Statistics - "MC101__MellowBrowne__TrapHouse__Pistolpete"
Loudness_Value;-16.1 LUFS
Sample Rate;48.000 kHz
Average RMS (AES-17) Left;-17.39 dB
Average RMS (AES-17) Right;-17.64 dB
Max. RMS;-14.19 dB
True Peak Left;-3.65 dB
True Peak Right;-3.68 dB
Bit Depth Left;24 bit
Bit Depth Right;24 bit
Here is my Mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ww2jDS ... sp=sharing
Being rap and hiphop are my primary music I listen to, I really had fun mixing this song. @Mellow Browne really has a great cadence and did a fantastic job rapping in the pockets and nailing the "trap" rap vibes with this one. Kudos to a great song (even though I didn't understand the lyrics due to not knowing the language). Its funny actually becasue whil listening to it on repeat, My mind started makeing up english words to what it sounded like you were rapping... lol. funny how minds work.
Equipment:
PC (AMD Ryzen 7) with Cubase 10.5 and way too many plugins
Interface: Steinberg UR22
Monitors: I do have some old Fostex PM5 (25 year old monitors that I still use) hardly good for mixing as they are not EQ/tuned at all but rarely use them due to my living situation and thin walls. Use mostly at very low volume to check stereo/mono relations and just overall bass, mid treble balance. Not relaly accurate enough for much else.
Montoring/analysis plugins I use: WLM Plus (LUFS meter and DB meter), SPL Hawkeye monitor/analysis plug with many different windows (frequency, phase, histogram, LUFS, DB meter, spectragram.
Monitored mostly in 2 sets of headphones while mixing (due to a small apartment and thin walls and respect for my neighbors). Sennheiser HD280s and HD650's. After my 1st mix was bounced I sent it to my phone and listened in my car a few times as well as on cheap bluetooth Sony headphones while at work. Made a few mental notes of corrections I needed to make over the week of listening and did a 2nd mix, fixing the things I found wrong with the first one.
Anyhow the mix...
Session Prep:
importing files, cutting out dead noise, coloring and ordering tracks, using pink noise at -15 to bring all tracks to a nominal audible level and setting a premix balance/gainstage.
I've mixed a lot of hiphop and rap over the last 20 years ,but haven't done much as of recent "trap" type rap, and 90% of how we used to do rap mixing/recording was a 2 track stereo beat with vocals recorded to it. Mixing this with all the tracks really was fun. With rap, at least what I focus on is, loud vocals, the audiance needs to hear clearly what the artist is saying, usually compressed quite a bit to sit nice in front of the mix, backups are usually hard panned L and R with separate delays/verbs and similar modulation effects. Sub bass must hit clean and hard with little rumble and the kick you want to make hit hard where things vibrate off shelfs and break.. lol. Hats and percussion usually are panned wide L and R as well. The rest I just kind of fit in where needed.
As usual I do very little direct processing except on key tracks and focus mostly on using a lot of parallel FX sends:
Parallel FX sends:
- 808 FX send - Abbey Road Saturation (waves)
FX Kick - BX AMEK 200 Console
FX Drum COMP - Soundtoys Devil Loc
FX melody - Puig Child and REQ 6 EQ
FX Verb - Abbey Road Plates, REQ 6 EQ
FX OVEN VOX - The Oven (saturator and EQ kind of tool)
FX Vox Tube - Blackbox HG2
FX VOX Comp - Abbey Road RS124 comp
FX Vox Verb - Abbey Road Plates
All of these FX sends were used in different combinations throughout each track in the project. Some were automated but most are static volume.
Vocals:
Since trap music generally is autotuned to the moon and back, I doubled the main vocals on a 2nd track and added a extreme autotune effect to it and a vocal rider so that it compliments but not overpowers the mains,. More of a thickener. The main vocals I had a hard time really getting the sound I liked where they were clean, but gritty and compressed.
Main vox plugs _ scheps omnichannel (eq, comp, de-ess, Maag EQ 4 (tuning the air and adding a little analong warmth on the low end, de-esser to taim the shrill sss and shhh and a noise gate to eliminate any plugin/analog hiss/hum.
Main Vox - Sends were combinations of verbs, saturation, tubes and compressors as well as a few side chain sends to similar instraments in the frequency range to duck the vocal and let the vocals be forward.
Adlibs
were both processed parallel and direct and each ADlib track was treated differently, Ads was sent to L channels and pitchshifting/autotune added, a delay added and tune to cut out the lower end of the frequencies
Adlib Delay was panned R and treated with EQ, compression, primal tap delay, a crazy modulated delay (mutant Delay) and also an autotune tuner on it (BX crispy)
Hook 1, 2 and 3.
These were panned Hard L, center, Hard Right, zero direct processing was done to 1 and 3 and just FX sends were used. Hook 2 I just used a EQ to lowcut anything below 120hz. Only a compressor and a verb FX send were used on these as they already sounded pretty good as is. I did add a FX send to the low bells and to one of the leads to duck the hook slightly.
Hook Adds and Hook bells
were each treated differently, mainly either delay, or reverb or panning tricks. The goal here was to really accent them and help create space and movement.
Hookadd1 (butch vig vox)slight telephone effect and mutant delay,
hookadd2 bx aura reverb and pulsar w495 eq.
Hook3bells Scheps omni channel and Panman and hook bells
Mixbus:
in most of the rap I've done int he past, the mixbus usually was multiple compressors, saturation and lots of crunch.
Well I did the same here:
Hype(saturation, compression, tone, stereo) > BX clipper (clipping to just barely touch transients) > black box HG-Q which is a quad channel tube eq > SPL big for wideness > BX townhouse compressor to again crunch the mix > X-noise (to tame some slight very high frequency hiss and chirps > SPL PEQ to add back in some clean airband highs > BX V3 limiter mid/side limter to bring the levels down a bit with even more crunch.
Stereo out - Waves L1 just to protect from overs, no crunch.
808s are a staple to Rap music. As the song provider mentioned they wanted something somewhere between the 2 references. I focused an a nice clean very little rumble sub bass.
I used a new plugin called Bx Boom which is similar to waves Rbass to add some low end harmonics and thump, used a limiter to capture the right snap to the transients but not overdo it to blow speakers, maxbass to turn down the main bass and instead add harmonics to help with translating on smartphones and other newer mono devices and CLA mixhub as a channel strip to EQ, compress and highcut.
Kick
I also focused on to get the right snap and thump, to make them hit hard whether a car stereo, headphones or a smarthpnone. I used "Kickshaper" which is kind of a hybrid channel strip with saturatoin and tuning make for kicks. (really like this plugin) Extra compressoin was added directly and a FX send was sent to the 808 for the sub bass to duck the kick to help it punch through and not distort.
Highhats-
I wanted panned wide and wanted some motion and bounce to them. Chose a synced pingpon effect with Panman, a Lindel 80 channel to tune and a gate to eliminate any noise. These were panned hard right but some of the FX sends were panned hard left to open up the signal across the stereo spectrum and Panman was set to pingpong left to right to help create motion.
Claps also played a big role in this song, even more than the snare, so I tried to give them a chorus/doubling effect to help them be louder but not quite peak the transients, used Scheps Onni channel for Eq compression and dessing and used Vcomp to compress afterwords. Doubler 4 was added to spread the signal an give more of a loud smeared clap instead of a sharp transient clap.
Keys, leads, synth and piano
were all panned left and right accordingly but not hard panned. I tried to keep frequencies separate on the L and R where they didnt' clash much. Most of the direct processing on these channels was just channel strips and some reverbs or movement panning related plugs to bring the instruments out in the 3d stereo field and create spece between each one. Mainly parallel processing was used also.
Overall I really enjoyed mixing this song a lot. I wish I had a better studio environment like I used to have when I mixed hiphop back in the early 2000's where you could literally feel the song from the subs and monitors in a tuned room. Well now I'm in a small apartment studio so have to make due with what I have. The song provider really has great vocal talent for rap, as someone who also has rapped for a long time, I was impressed at your delivery and cadence as well as creative focus and placement of adlibs, backs and effects. I really hope you like what I did with your song. I tried to keep it very similar to the original but also added a few creative effects based touches I felt were dope!
Best of luck to all and also, Happy Holidays!
I did stay on the more bass-heavy side, and kept my filtering and ear-candy more subtle (no tape-stops or other mutes that might violate the challenge rules). I enjoyed trying to get the bounce with the kick and 808 to come through, and think TDR’s Kotelnikov on the two bus helped get there. I enjoyed mixing your song, thanks again for contributing!
A friendly reminder / update:
) -> SmartEQ 4 (dynamic EQ) -> bx_control 2 to keep everything under 200 Hz in mono and slightly widening the mix -> Kush Novatron (soft comp) -> SIR Standard Clip just to catch some peaks.