MIX CHALLENGE - MC053 April 2019 - Winners announced

[The Exponent]

Sorry I think I missed that one.. My goal every time I'm mixing is to provide the best of the music, I used samples to enhance the drum sound, no replacement. Anyway if it's not allowed.. too bad

Still against the rules. That way you can 'enhance' almost any other sounds too like guitar, vocals, FX, etc. Where does it end?

[Mister Fox]

I don't want to bring up this discussion yet again. If you want to do that, then please do so in here. But I will stand my ground on "no drum sample triggering/replacement".


This particular production uses two sampled drum kits:

1) Toontrack Superior Drummer 3
2) Slate Digital Drums (5 IIRC)

Both kits have a great core sound and complement each other outstandingly well. SSD5 can be considered as the "trigger kit". There is no need for sample triggering.

The focus of the challenge here is to learn how to handle the material that has been given to you. Unless it's a very, very bad garage recording (which we didn't have so far), then we can maybe talk about this. Else, and speaking from experience, to 95% you can do a lot(!) with EQ and compression before even thinking about reaching for any further tools for "enhancements" or "repairing".

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 14 days left to submit your edit

[guiZgui]

Mixing should not be about rules, the only thing that matters is does it sound good ? or do I like it ? Otherwise I don't see the point..
Personnaly I'm not looking for any gifts or rewards, I really just like to listen to other people mixes and ask questions about it. I wish it would be the case on mine instead of reminding me the rules.

Anyway I still really enjoyed working on this one, thank you morelia for providing this song

[/quote]

Still against the rules. That way you can 'enhance' almost any other sounds too like guitar, vocals, FX, etc. Where does it end?
[/quote]

[Slickster716]

I think the confusion with the guitar intro is because to me, the first part in the provided sounds intro L sounds clean and not like the rough mix, but guitar intro R is heavily processed like the rough mix. I think that is the disconnect and why maybe me and the other guy mentioned. I agree it is good to work with what is given and I am way past this at this point and. Not worried about it.

My question is regarding what is allowed for pitch adjustment. Can vocals be processed with any level of pitch correction? Because when I read no pitch shifting, I feel like this can be taken two ways. 1 is not to change the pitch of sounds with the purpose of completely changing the feel of the performance, but allowing some light pitch correction on the vocal when used in the same spirit and feel of the original. 2 , no pitch correction at all for anything, no matter what. I am new here and I really don't mean to ask bothersome questions. I just really want to get some clarity.

[RichardClarke]

MP3 link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bZEz9 ... -ypa1ElAfE
Wav link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JiE7P ... JbHjBXcrT8

Drum - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FLZyc ... zD25t30oAF
Bass - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Kw2wX ... 7meUCwfa8N
Guitar 1 - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pmvdl ... Gzbt3yUXbv
Guitar 2 - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1D1QvE ... ku-PfEeQlF
Verse vocals - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TzjXG ... lVCeM4d6Fj
Chorus vocals and master channels - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d7WmN ... tEREbKa87H




I had a lot of fun mixing this track and it has challenged me a lot. Also I have to say despite being an RATM fan I never gave Audioslave much time. But this track got me listening to them and can now say I am convert, shame I missed my chance to ever see them live.

For this mix I am a culprit for over processing here! I went a bit nuts with layers of saturation and not sure if it was really the best move, but was definitely a learning process.

Drums - My main objective was to try to stop it sounding like a digital kit. Each channel apart from the kick got j37 tape saturation on them and some distortion , eq and compression from scheps omni channel. I also tuned the kick and two snare that were supplied a little with torque, just to see if i felt a worthwhile difference, it was enough for me to stick with it, it’s a new toy and jury is out for me on it at the moment. I added snare verb which also got some of the room and oh's to try to give some more room ambience.

Bass- I split this in 3 so I could really control it. I really wanted to emulate the bass sound from Cochise as I loved the tone as well. To make my sound I made a clean low frequency section which is heavily compressed with multiband compression. Then a clean bass (low mids focused) and then also a dirty one (low cut so its just the upper grit) and blended them together. It’s a technique I am still getting to grips with but I have to say I really find it makes it easy to get control of the tone, especially when trying to get distortion in the bass without flooding the frequency spectrum.

Guitars - I wanted the song to have a bit of a sonic differentiation between the verse and the chorus and so used the DI's. The verse guitars I duplicated and used a blend of a clean tone and dirty tone. On the chorus I used Reel ADT to double track the Guitar L and R to thicken them a bit. I used some gentle tape saturation again on each of them. I also have them sent to individual L and R reverbs, the guitar is sent to the reverb opposite to the one it is panned to (i.e. if its panned to the left I send it too the right verb). I find this tricks widens the guitar image for me at times and keeps better defined (the are a few vids on this on the internet for this!)

The solo I wanted to go a bit more interesting in keeping with the Audioslave/RATM style and so added some weird tape effects just to make it feel a little less like a straight rock solo and give it more colour. It was more of a pot shot thing but I think the end result is kind of palatable and a little different. Sorry if you hate it!

Vocals - I found all the different tracks daunting at first (see my earlier post in the thread). In the verse I tried to focus them a little more central. In the Chorus I wanted a lift and a slightly different tone so widened them. I really liked the double track on the lead and felt it started to remind me a little of Page Hamiltons vocals in Helmet which I have always liked. There is also some delay and verb on the vocals just to try and make them sound exciting.

Other comments - I also have a general parallel compression for the mix with the guitars, bass and vocals, its one of those weird things, if I take it away, I really miss it, but I think I have a lot to learn about using parallel compression! I also put the SSL compressor on the master bus, slowest attack and auto release doing 1 db compression just to tighten it a little.

[Mister Fox]

This question hasn't been answered yet. Apologies...

My question is regarding what is allowed for pitch adjustment. Can vocals be processed with any level of pitch correction? Because when I read no pitch shifting, I feel like this can be taken two ways.

Tough question really. I think micro-adjustments to the vocals are fine.

The basic gist of "no pitch adjustments" was to change the key of a song or create additional harmonies that just aren't there. Same goes If an instrument is of, or drums not "tuned to key" (some people do that). In this case - don't do it.

Happy editing.




Also - RichardClarke - you posted twice. Want me to remove one of your posts?

[RileyJordan]

I tried to make the sampled drums and amp sims sound more lively by adding a lot of distortion, as well as on the vocals. There were a ton of vocals given and it was challenging to balance them all and treat them properly. In this mix I tried to avoid my common mistake of scooping too much in the mids, and I boosted a lot of low end on the snare. I put a lot of effort into the volume automation of the overheads and guitars to get them to sit right as the sections change.

Mixed in Logic Pro X, all stock plugins aside from the free Saturation Knob (pretty much everything), SGA1566 (snare), and Ozone Imager (overheads).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bftcpeempmqa8 ... n.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ih0yie1s4u9u1 ... n.mp3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gxlx8yl32e3ua ... M.png?dl=0

[RichardClarke]

Also - RichardClarke - you posted twice. Want me to remove one of your posts?

Sorry i think i must have pressed submit twice If you can remove my 2nd post that would be really appreciated!

[Jamesirving]

Here's my mix for MC053. Like a few people have mentioned the big challenge was making the drums feel as organic as possible. They were kind of blown up on the rough, I wanted to offer some of that explosiveness but with less of the pump and also while leaving a little more space around them for everything else to breath. I only used 1 kick, 1 snare, the tom, a consolidation of the 2 HH sounds, OH and snr ambience. Lots of parallel processing coming in and out to add dynamics. The bass is duplicated and re-amped. Lots of EQ and sound shaping on those channels. I duck the 'amp' channel out in the verses, again to add dynamics.

Guitars - I made the front sound as small and crappy as possible to give the front some punch when the band comes in. I only used the one GTR there. The other 4 I put through the scuffam amps on various settings. I duped the R side gtr for a slightly cleaner verse tone. Again some parallel processing to add depth and width. Solo has a ADT on the opposite side. All the GTRs have a multi mono room with the panning flipped to balance them out.

Vocals - I was pretty judicious with my comping. got down to 4 channels of verse vocals and 8 of BVs. A host of saturation, compression and fx on them. I wanted to be true to the close sounding vocals on the rough but with a little more clarity on one center 'lead' vocal to give the song focus. Again, plenty of parallel crush and widening. A couple of really short slaps on there to add density.

Lots of automation to add dynamics and signpost the changes.

Overall I have taken on the Andrew Scheps Mix template. It is readily available online and I would recommend anyone to at least pop it into your DAW and have a play around. There's a video explainer that you pretty much need to commit to watch to figure all the ins and outs. It evolves really quickly into something more personal, at least it did for me, but as an ethos it really broke the barrier of a strong starting point for mixes. There's no snake oil and the ideas aren't unique but as I say, if anyone has the time I would recommend it.

mp3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pvzak9u4djy57 ... g.mp3?dl=0

wav:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n9ztn8ejin1aj ... g.wav?dl=0

screen shots: