MIX CHALLENGE - MC046 August 2018 - Winners announced

[intuition]

What a fun song! I've been following these forums for a few months and finally decided to register and try a mix here.

EQ on pretty much everything.

Drums: Layered in a snare and bass drum sample from Superior Drummer 2. Also deleted the first bass drum hit because it was way out of time. A little compression and reverb on the snare and overheads. Used the tom mics for ambiance.

Bass: Reamped with EZMix Aggro Bass preset, a favorite of mine. Blended the wet and dry signal.

Guitars: Used all 4 tracks. Gate on the main two. Automated the stereo width to help make the mix sound more dynamic/less flat throughout. Blended in a tiny amount of reamped signal on the 2 "extra" guitar tracks to give them some more balls.

Vocals: A little distortion, compression, and delay on the main vocals. Other vocal parts got reverb. Also used a touch of Trackspacer on the guitars in M/S mode with the vocal bus as the sidechain source.

wav: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l96m1p77c2elu ... n.wav?dl=0
mp3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fcp8b6uc050fm ... n.mp3?dl=0

[Sam Doy]

Hi All,

Please find my input to the competition:
wav: https://drive.google.com/open?id=12Q3zn ... zV02H5Lk3E
mp3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mqzsB ... iI8XenL884

I love punk so it was interesting to mix this particular song. Great song, by the way.

Regarding drums, I first applied eq and compression for individual drum tracks to get overall sound as punchy and raw as possible. Special tricks for Drums: plate reverb with snare, some drum samples to complement original snare/kick tracks (it was allowed this time ) and drawmer S73 for drum bus. I had some trouble with the overhead sound, though, but applied a secret trick (i.e. certain vst plugin) which has saved one mixing session in the past. For the bass track, I applied some compression to even out the level and some eq to get the right sound for the mix. For the lead vocals, it was all about the selecting right tracks and to get the levels right and shape the sound with eq. Vocals were having a lot of dynamics so compression was needed in more than 1 stages. I used some slap delay and reverb in lead vocal tracks but not to BG vocals. No much differences with the BG vocals mixing, compared to lead vocal tracks, except eq and compressor settings and panning. Guitars needed only a little bit EQ and leveling/panning.


I did the mixing with reaper.

Kind Regards,
Sami

[Studio Saturn]

Yap drum augmenting has to be allowed all the time. I was so interested to mix this song more than ever cause of the freedom given from the artist. This is why we buy slate trigger not to look at the GUI.

[SBV]

Hi everyone!
A bit of a late entry, however I didn't know about this site until recently.

Link to song: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eh6ql ... 2-3Ix77WB8
So I want to explain a little about my take on this song.

First and foremost, this is a punk rock song, so I didn't want to process it too much. I felt it was important to keep the dynamics,
but still get each instrument out there.

I will now go further into detail in my thought process and what I ended up doing with the mix.

DRUMS
As explained in the description, there were a lot of tracks that I didn't need.
I ended up using the Tom L track as some sort of room mic, and I excluded the trigger samples.,
since I managed to get the oomph out of the original recordings.

Overheads:
Overall ok sound. Ran it though a virtual SSL 4000E, boosted some high end and some low end.
This gave the drum kit a bit more air/clairity, and a bit more punch

Kick:
The kick sounded flat and lifeless, and was hard ho hear in the mix.
I ended up boosting up high lots of HF boosts, some LF boosts and i sucked out some 600hz.
Also compressed a bit just to keep it in order. This made the kick drum cut through the kit very well.

Snare:
Fine sounding snare, but also a bit flat and lifeless.
To really make it stick out I boosted hi’s and low’s, while leaving the mid as is.
Tiny amount of compression was applied, plus a gate to keep those screaming cymbals out of the snare sound.

Snare bottom:
Not much I did here.
Did some boosts to get out a bit of grit and character from it

I did a small amount of parallel compression on the whole kit, plus a bit of plate reverb to widen up the overall sound.

BASS

I ended up duplicating the bass and hi/low-pass both tracks so I had one track with the low bass and one with the treble.
I only worked with the DI-signal. Didn’t put on any amp sims.

Lo-bass:
I felt this had to be distorted and gritty, while still keeping the original bass sound.
First and foremost I put on a tube preamp to get a bit of saturation.
I then did some small low and mid low boosts, and used a destressor to get out a bit more punch and saturation from it.

Hi-bass:
Put on pretty big HI boosts, and ended up saturating the hi-bass sound some more before I put it into a modern 1176.

I didn’t want the bass to stick out too much, but rather be a very nice foundation to the whole mix.

GUITARS

I ended up using 3 of the tracks: SM57, Guitar Extra and the guitar room mic.

Guitar SM57:
Panned hard to the right, added a tiny bit of saturation, and boosted some 600hz, 800hz while taking out some of the hi’s.
also mild compression just to tame some spikes.

Guitar extra:
Panned hard to the left, with no saturation. boosted some mids and low mid, while adding a tiny bit of 1.6k and 4k.
This made both the guitars cut through the mix, while sounding pretty different.


Guitar rooms:
Didnt do too much here. but sent it to a room bus to give it some more width.
It also has a low db lvl compared to the main guitars.

VOX

Chris verse:
Gave it a tiny bit saturation, while cutting some unnecessary highs and lows, and boosting some hi mid.
Put on some tape slap and delay. Reverb did not sound good in this type of song

Rich vox:
Hi/lowpassed a bit here as well, while boosting a bit of low and hi-mids. Also ran this though.
Had to tame this track with some compression. Slap and delay used here as well.

Mark vox:
Put on some saturation, while boosting some hi’s to make it cut through the mix. Also a bit compression.
Slap and delay here

Rich vox 2:
Huge hi-treble boosts, and some low boosts. Rode the compressor pretty hard on this track.
Slap and delay.

Chris chorus:
Ran it though a preamp, while doing several small boosts to get out the clarity. Compressor to keep it consistent.
Slap and delay, pluss some reverb here

So no major things here, only small stuff to tidy it up, and make it a bit more punchier and wider, while still keeping the original feel of
both the song and the band.
Hope you like it!! :-)

Stephan B. Valois

[White Punk OD]

SBV, I think it's very good, every sound works for me.
especially I love the depth and 3D impression (room..) .

[ultradb]

Cheers

https://www.dropbox.com/s/16925rpsyrtqn ... b.wav?dl=0
[url]https://www.dropbox.com/s/inetgrmzglgbk ... ?dl=0Drums
On kickdrum I blended drum trigger thack and recorded one. send it to a buss
same did for snare. some eq and compression on top.
On drum bus I have Console 1, Slate VMR and U-he satin.

Bass guitar
to make it sound beefier I added MBassador followed by COnsole 1 and Slate VMR

Vocals
to add some mojo I added Echo boy with slapback delay. for compression and EQ Here I used Console 1 as well

Guitars
I used all tracks except Extra Warm one, it sounded not good to my ears and has nothing to add to the pack
Fabfilter Pro Q to cut some nasty stuff around 4kHz. also there is Satin on the guitar bus, to add some hi end

On the main out I have Softube Tape and Slate VMR and console 1 just to keep everything under control, no extra compression or EQ

[kevdomos]

Hi everyone!

this is my first entry here and it was superfun

here it is:
WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AClCC ... AuxuFBfgZX
MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o8nEG ... UUqjx3LHaM

I mainly used Studio One stock plugins on it, and the Ik Multimedia Birtish Channel

good luck!

[VasDim]

Hi all,

For all track are used:
- Waves Q10;
- Db ProComp.

AUX Effect;
- Waves TrueVerb;
- Waves SuperTap;

I have not used Trigger Tracks, Toms and Guitar Ambient C3000.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/imad5a55i76d9 ... m.mp3?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p2v865quyn814 ... m.wav?dl=0

Good luck to all.
VasDim

[RadPi]

Hi evry'one,

Had a lot fun mixin' this!

I did several mixes and one I liked best is here:

wav:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1F0vhj ... VPqpL35hGC

mp3:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uqxIU ... j8WLvw-Z6Q

I used all tracks and minimum edits to preserve original energy and tonality

Drums:

polarity changed on some tracks

kicks - gate,eq
snares - eq,
overheads -eq
toms - nothing, only pan

Snr Group - gate,eq,comp,rev
Dr Group -eq, sat, lim

bass - overdrive, chorus,fuzz,multiband comp,lim,sat

guitars - grouped than multiband comp,lim,sat,rev

vocals - grouped than comp,multiband comp,lim,sat,rev,fuzz

I've tried to mix not to hot

Hope you'll enjoy!

[topmop]

First attempt at any mixing challenges any advice would be nice.

WAV- https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7gs66qkbylrb ... tdfya?dl=0

Drums-
Completely scratched snare bottom and all the toms

Kick- parallel compression to make it thick
Snare- Kramer HLS and Smack Attack plugins
OH- CLA 76

Guitars-
lots of panning left and right to make it broad as possible

Vocals-
All using PUIG child 660

All reverbs are Manny Marroquin Reverb and vocals use H Delay

All done through Pro Tools Standard.
No samples used.