MIX CHALLENGE - MC053 April 2019 - Winners announced

[OctopusOnFire]

Hi everyone,

Here's my mix for this month's challenge:

WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/87vhbh7wp2wje ... 1.wav?dl=0
MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fc0udkpwru12j ... 1.mp3?dl=0

Thanks to Morelia for providing the files, it was a very enjoyable project with a lot of potential. So I tried to take what was there and make it bigger and badder.
Generally, the elements in the mix have lots of compression and saturation, as you'd expect in this kind of song. I'll skip that (just see the pictures) and focus on the specific things I did for this mix. I'm always happy to answer any questions, anyway.

Drums were a critical part of the mix and the snare came already with its own sound, so I focused on it first. I wanted to expand it so the main hits were even more prominent than the ghost hits. For this, I created a trigger track, removing the ghost notes, that feeds the sidechain of an upward expander placed in the main snare. After that, I had room to work with the verb of the snare in a new track (Sn Stem - room), give it more of a gunshot quality to it and automate it throughout the track, coming up in the most aggressive parts (it's very apparent in the last 2 riffs). Nothing special on the rest of the drums (I just created an artificial room).

Bass has a duplicate track heavily distorted (with little radiator and UAD RAW)

For the guitars I used a combination of Amplitube 4 and Ownhamer IRs. I like that they have IRs from the rear of the amp, and it adds a lot of texture for guitar driven mixes.

I divided the vocals in 2 groups, for verse and chorus, but they have mainly the same treatment. I wanted to emphasize the effect of layering multiple voices, so other than the usual, I added Multiply to add some dimension. Other than what's in the picture, I used IK multimedia's Mic Room beforehand on every track to condition the voices a little better.

Nothing to note about the FX, just a little automation to add a particular verb on the "we fly" part.

On the mixbus, I used some sort of parallel mix (MIX 1), only for the guitars and voices. It's got an 1176 and an exciter. The Mix bus itself has an imager to mono the lower frequencies, compression and saturation. The "BitShiftGain" is adding 6 db to make it peak around -3db and neither the clipper nor the limiter are adding any loudness. The clipper is doing some stuff, but the limiter is set at -1db and not catching any peaks.


That's it, hope you guys like the mix and good luck to everyone!


EDIT: Forgot about the screenshots.

The Drums and Bass:

The Guitars and Vocals:

The Shouts and FX:

[fjuarez3]

Not sure how this works but going to try and get this uploaded. I know its a mixing contest and I hope I did it right......


https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[OctopusOnFire]

Not sure how this works but going to try and get this uploaded. I know its a mixing contest and I hope I did it right......


https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

You've got the rules and everything you need to do explained right at the beginning of this thread. There's also a dedicated thread somewhere in the forum.

Long story short, you need to upload a wav and mp3 of your mix. For the naming format just check the beginning of the thread, or download any mix from other participant and copy it from there.

[jeffssoloband]

Dear Morelia (Paul Sanderson) and the Mix Challenge Community,
Here is my entry for MC053:
WAV file (for download): https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9u0zax37xxbv ... d.wav?dl=1
MP3 (for reference): https://www.dropbox.com/s/eojb2iuvs7ft3 ... d.mp3?dl=0

My Process: (NB- all was done ITB in Logic Pro X, no samples or additional tracks were added. Also, I did not use any tracks from the "Processed Guitars" folder.):

• To start:

The tempo track was easy enough, since this was recorded to a click, so first task was gain staging and basic high-/low-passing on the individual tracks to get rid of any unnecessary frequencies. Then, after listening to some Audioslave for inspiration, I re-amped the guitars, and was on my way.

• Drums:

I started with the SD drum tracks. I added J37 (Waves) to most of the tracks to add saturation and give the samples some extra life. Then the usual EQ and compression were added. The SD tracks were then bussed to an aux channel where they were hit with Ozone 8 Vintage EQ (iZotope) and a bit of parallel compression with Kotelnikov (TDR). The SSD tracks were treated a bit differently. The kick and snare were both hit hard with Smack Attack (Waves) to really emphasize the transients. Then the three tracks were bussed to their own aux channel where they were also treated with Vintage EQ and then squashed with the U73b Compressor (Audified). The SD buss was then sent to a third buss where the SSD bus was blended in, and the combination was printed.

• Bass:

The bass was EQ's with a little boost at 400Hz, and then was re-amped, followed by the Ozone 8 Vintage Tape for some crunch, and finally Ozone 8 Vintage Compressor to give the transients some punch.

• Intro Guitars:

"L" and "R" were panned hard left and hard right, respectively, and "Fills" was straight up the middle. The three tracks were bussed to an aux track where they were hit with EffectRack's (Soundtoys) "Radio Bad Connection" preset with a few tweaks, followed by Bitcrusher (LPX stock), and then printed. All of this was to drive the Lo-Fi-ness all the way home, as well as provide a huge contrast from when the song really kicks in.

• Rhythm Guitars:

Just like the intro guitars, "L" and "R" were panned hard left and hard right, respectively, and "Fills" was straight up the middle. I was getting some annoying amp noise through between the staccato riffs, so a fast noise gate was inserted on each track. The three tracks were then bussed to an aux track, where they were hit with Ozone 8 Vintage Tape for saturation, a tough of H-Comp (Waves) for "glue", and finally Little Plate (Soundtoys) for a bit of reverb. The results were printed.

• Guitar Solo:

Re-amped-->fuzz pedal-->IR from a MESA amp-->noise gate-->EchoBoy Jr (Soundtoys)-->then printed.

• Vox Verse:

All nine tracks were used throughout. "Smooth-", "Aggressive-", and "Low-1" were all panned center, while "2" and "3" were panned at various degrees of left and right to increase the spread. All nine were bussed to an aux channel, hit with the U73b, a bit of tape saturation, ChromaVerb (stock) for reverb, and printed.

• Vox Chorus:

"1 main" was hit with H-Comp for compression, followed by EffectRack with Decapitator and Devil-Loc instances for an edgy crunch, followed by EchoBoy Jr for a bit of echo. "2 dub", "3 left", and "4 right" were panned center, left, right, respectively, bussed to an aux track and hit with U73b, high-passed at 800Hz, low-passed at 3200Hz, and finally ChromaVerb. "Harmony 1 & 2" and "Low 1 & 2" were panned at various degrees of left and right, and the four were bussed to an aux channel. There they were hit with Vintage Tape for saturation, U73b for compression, and ChromaVerb for reverb. The two aux channels were then blended into "1 main", and the result was printed.

• Vox Shouts:

"Shout 1" was panned at 9 o'clock, and "Shout 2" was panned at 3 o'clock. The two were bussed to an aux channel, hit with Vintage Tape, compression, reverb, and an image widener. This was printed.

• Putting it together:

The eight printed tracks were loaded into a new session. Each track was hit with NLS Channel (Waves). The Stereo Out channel has Ozone 8 Imager instantiated that kicks on and off throughout. It is bypassed during the verses, and engaged during the chorus, bringing more focus to the low-mids, and spreading the high-mids. Ozone 8 is next with Equalizer (to help shape the overall curve) and Dynamics (with the compressor set with a high threshold to catch any sneaky transients) engaged.

I think that about sums it up (pun intended!). Feel free to hit me up with any questions/ comments/ concerns. Thanks for listening, and good luck to all.

Best regards,
Jeff

[fjuarez3]

Thanks!

I uploaded the WAV file and renamed the files. I tried to create a clean mix with no compression at the volume recommendation. While keeping it simple it was hard to still keep the energy of song. I wanted to keep the feel of Stone Temple Pilots/ some Alice in Chains in the song. I hope you guys enjoy.

[yoruhitp]

I will participate this time as well

wav: https://colabo-share.s3-ap-northeast-1. ... ruhitp.wav
mp3: https://colabo-share.s3-ap-northeast-1. ... ruhitp.mp3

• The figure below is the whole track.

• Each track is using the CLA MIXHub.
  The figure below is the whole of CLA MIXHub.

• Drumbus track use FPGAFX of Antelope Discrete 4.
  The figure below is the Drumbus setting.

• Guitar solo track use FPGAFX of Antelope Discrete 4.
  The figure below is the Guitar solo re-amplifying setting.

• About effects
  1. Guitars intro: I am re-amplifying with the CLA Guitars effect. In addition, EQ sounds like a phone.
  2. I use Abby road Chambers to add reverb to the OH, and add a gated reverb effect triggered by a snare and kick.

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 7 days left to submit your edit

[SergioITASCO]

HI all, here my 2 files and a mixer screen shot, nothing fancy but I hope you'll enjoy it.

Feel free to ask any question.

Cheers,

Sergio

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XmUhkF ... sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S2z0bP ... sp=sharing

[Koki21]

Wow, what a great track! Unfortunately, I don't think I will be getting the time to join you guys I will try to come up with something quickly, but I think I will have to sit this one out.

Good luck guys!

[Clueless]

Nvm