MIX CHALLENGE - MC056 July 2019 - Winners announced

[SeanieLloyd]

Disqualified booo! Oh ok, I did 'skim' the rules but yeah I see it's literally a 'MIX CHALLENGE' (the clue is in the title I suppose) so understand that my mix doesn't meet the rules.

Still had a nice time with the stems. Cheers again to all involved!

[Mister Fox]

There are currently things in motion BTS - maybe you will get a chance really soon to actually work on a REMIX Challenge.

Until then, or see you next month.

[s&f]

Hi Chris, Mister Fox and the Mix Challenge community.

Cool song, it was fun to work on! Please see linked below links to my interpretation of the mix.

WAV 24bit 48k - https://www.dropbox.com/s/nw9g8g7dl8tjw ... c.wav?dl=0
MP3 320kbps - https://www.dropbox.com/s/7dtrubfuvs3ee ... c.mp3?dl=0

Here are some notes on the mix process.

- Created a tempo map from the original drum performance
- Referencing the tempo map I tightened up timing in various places while retaining the natural ebb and flow of the bands performance.
- Phase aligned drum set
- Phase aligned bass DI and mic
- Kept only the one best sounding mic for each guitar stereo pair. This eliminated phase issues and created a more defined stereo image when panning them hard left and right.
- Retuned lead vocal from original file
- Lo-fi effect on intro, before drums come in, to sound like an old cassette tape demo

Lead vocal
Boost in the low end and top end, compression and saturation to help it cut through mix, long decay reverb and delay that raises volume during long vocal notes
Backing vocals
High passed at 200hz, compressed heavily and lots of reverb
Acoustic guitars
Boost around 400Hz to fill out midrange of mix, high shelf boost to just side signal for extra width. Compression for more consistent strum attack and a touch of reverb
Keys
Cut low mids and lows, boosted above 2k, gentle compression, delay effect and reverb
Bass
On DI some pultec style bass focusing, and distortion added to mic, heavy compression on both
Kick
Blended mic and sample to taste. Boosted lows and highs, scooped out quite a bit of mids, light compression, reduced sustain with transient shaper and gate, some subtle reverb
Snare
For both mics, Gated, boosted lows and highs, scooped out 400Hz. Long decay reverb
Overheads
Panned 75% left and right, some compression to even out cymbal hits, touch of saturation, wide cut at 1k, wide boost at 12k
Drum bus
Pultec boost in lows, subtle boost at 4K, boost in highs and subtle roll off of ultra highs, parallel compression for punch, limiter to rein in some snare peaks, some saturation
Tambourine
High pass at 2k and a boost at 12k, a delay effect during outro and a limiter to tame peaks
Master bus
Light bus compression to glue things together

And a couple of screenshots - https://www.dropbox.com/s/kw3au6zd5ny32 ... 1.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ryrftbf4dzs1c ... 1.png?dl=0

Cheers,
JamesMusic

very nice mix

[s&f]

Hi everyone, here's my remix. Hopefully shared correctly but I'm sure I'll be quickly educated if not.
Not mastered - lots of headroom so feel free to crank it up.

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lA_e5l ... sp=sharing
MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dIrvot ... sp=sharing

To my ears the song had such potential 'epic-ness' to it, I chose to go down an orchestration/soundtrack route and try and make it as BIG as I could.
I decided to go full-tilt/no mercy with the timing. Dividing every hit etc and nailing to the grid. No copy/pasting though, so the part remains exactly 'as played' but now with a rigid tempo of 90BPM. Took ages, but though it was a worthwhile route to go down.
As I was adding alot of orchestration using samples etc, having everything set to a rigid time made more sense too. Makes programming and creating those parts SO much easier.

Added some choppy 'Col Legno' style parts. I haven't got any good sample libraries, so I've created my own here by recording normal 'long' type string parts, and then chopping them up. Takes ages but sounds more interesting than the regular long sustained notes. Also drives the song along. It is a slow tempo, so adding the double-time strings gives it a bit of movement.
Added 2 cello's, 2 Basses, 2 single (different) violins. It's kind of a Frankenstein sextet.

Processing then, breifly:
Vocals - 'Ghost Limb' sounded like a great excuse to use the reverse reverb trick, so did this on the second verse. Totally OTT!
Multi-band compressed (Waves C6) some mids to try for a smoother vocal tone. Added a loop of the word 'limb' as it's own little part.
Put the Falsetto vocals on a different track and EQ'd those slightly differently, took a bit more of the 'edge' off them at about 5k.

Drums - kept all original drum parts. No samples. Waves SSL 4000 Channel strip for EQ and Compression on each drum track.

KICK - didn't use the Kick Sample provided, and thought it was a well recorded 'Real Kick'. The example mix had quite a clicky heavy-metal sound to it, but I went for a fatter, chunkier job. Big boost at 84hz followed by a big scoop at 200hz.
Snare: Used more of the C1000 mic than the top one in the end. The overheads picked up enough of the top I reckon.
I couldn't quite eq the original overhead/cymbal part enough to make the parts jump out that I wanted though, so I did overdub in a few places using my own Splashes and a China/Trash.
Added chimes and a reverse cymbal too. I have no shame.
Drum Bus: SSL COMP 'Glue' about 4db.

Bass guitar (DI Only): Studio Devil Bass Amp Pro. 8x10 cab, added a fair bit of drive and high-mids.
Sidechaining: Dipped the bass guitar about 4db with the kick drum.

Acoustic Guitar: Only used 2 of the provided tracks. Notched out some of the harsher frequencies - around 3k, panned the LDC left a bit and SDC right a bit. Reverb.

Piano: Nice piano part. Such a great hook. Added a reverse piano note and about 4 tonnes of plate reverb.

Mirrored the piano part with Mellotron strings and removed the acoustic guitar on the 2nd verse. Sounds creepy and I like it.
Also makes the 'nice' jangly middle-8 seem like a huge relief when it comes in.
Stuck a solo horn part on the middle 8 too.

Put a couple of little 'breaks' in for tension in a couple of obvious places.

Bus FX:
TC Electronic M30 for more subtle 'Hall' glue on most tracks.
Lexicon MPX for massive 'Plate' effect reverb.
Soundtoys Echoboy for slight 'slapback' style delay on vocals in places.
Nothing on the master bus.
SONAR X3e Channel Strip with S-Type Console Emulation on each channel.

Look forward to hearing any comments and listening to everyone elses takes on this track. Thanks to Christopher Wilson for recording and sharing and Balaban And The Bald Illegles for writing the epic song!
Excuse my spelling. English IS my first language, I'm just thick.
Sean

that was very creative. very nice. I enjoyed a lot to listen to it!!

[gaurav.talreja]

Hello Folks,
Love from India!
First of all, kudos on the production Christopher Wilson.The way I have approached the mix is based on the challenge to make an average sounding recording a real professional one,with the best of the harmonics to shine out and have a sense of spatial balance.I have not touched the production and composition,but the trick is to enhance the given recording and make it bigger and wider.Nonetheless, I have been quite rebellious to the approach but within the framework of the rules set-forth.I worked on Logic ProX and mixed this track in the box.

The following are the links:
MP3
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mctKh ... zejYvPp-9h

WAV
https://drive.google.com/open?id=16E2Ml ... eF8RdpIxfN

1. The most essential part before processing is cleaning the tracks and gating.

2. Panning/widening and spatial placements done kept in mind that all instruments are recorded in the same room to give it a project recorded feel in a semi-live studio setup.

3. Drums and Rhythm:All mono tracks were cleaned to remove bleed, mainly for the kick drum.
Using spatial placement/panning,Eq using Fab Filter,Bass drum trigger track also used to compliment the main one.Harmonic exciter used for enhancing the kick ,Kramer drums used for individual instruments of the drums.Tambourine panned right and wet processing used along with compression

4.Vocals-Lead tuned vocals used and mono tracks to be kept mono to ensure the imaging is coming from the centre.Logic Linear phase eq , Necktar 2 used with CLA-2A and S1 imager.Then bussed out for ambience and delay ,Manny M reverb and H-delay.Parallel compression on delay

5.Bass guitars- Amped out logic bass amp and centred with S1 imager.Very subtle room ambience

6. Acoustic guitars-All tracks used for mix.Placement to fill in entire stereo spectrum and widener used on the summation track.Summation track/group processing the guitars using fab filter q3- and slight exciter used with room ambience and delay.

7. Keyboard-Eq and widener used with small amount of compression , auto panner used.

8. SSL bus compressor used to glue tracks together with ozone used to eq the out,no pre-mastering.Used wlm plus for loudness.

regards
Gaurav.Talreja

[SDB_12]

Hi all!

First post here, just registered today. What a great community!

Below is my entry. The song to me, needed to sound big and atmospheric, mysterious and longing...a little dark but punchy...with a driving bass. I picture some fog, dark streets, alleys, etc. while working on this Really fun!

So we are supposed to talk about our process a little...so here goes:

I always start by importing all the tracks and balancing/panning to try and match the rough, or get close. I'm not diving into EQ or crazy things, just balance. Then from here I want to improve it.

Next I'll address any issues. I'll go through and check phase on drums, bass tracks, etc. to make sure it's all good. On this particular song I thought the Overhead mics were picking up a nasty clicking sound from the ride...so I ran them through a deClicker plugin by izotope RX to smooth it out on those sections. I also moved a few kick/snare hits to be more in time, but not too many. Overall the drums should have the same feel, just a few edits here and there for timing.

For this track, overall, I put the Console 1 Neve emulation across all the tracks...so a lot of my main eq and compression (mostly in parallel) was used with this plugin. It's emulating a Neve desk...and the eq is really smooth and musical...the compressor also...very smooth and musical. I thought it would fit this song well.

I like to simplify things, so at this point I probably imported my mix template. It's just a bunch of auxes to assign tracks to so I can make sense of stuff. So I'll go through and route it all where it needs to go. I probably started with drums for this song...trying to figure out what they should be doing. The biggest challenge for me was getting the kick super big and full, but not too boomy and overpowering. I used a transient designer, and a gentle gate/expander to tame some of the kick tail. Then quite a bit of eq to shape it into the track. The real kick and sample they provided were bussed to one fader that I mainly worked from.

For drum compression, I mostly rely on parallel compressors on auxes. The whole kit was sent to a Chandler Zener (UAD plugin) that was mixed in under the main drums, and also I like to send kick and snare to a dbx 160 (softube/native instruments) for more impact...also mixed in parallel. Some of the drums were sent to a room reverb, and the snare to a couple rooms as well as a spring for some vibe. I'll often work on the entire drum master fader for overall shaping as well, if needed.

For perc I wanted a bit of width and vibe, so I added some delays, devil loc to crush it, some lofi, eq, and also sent it to my parallel Aphex (Waves)...for a bit more bite.

Looks like for bass, I used the DI for the full bass sound and low end...and the amp mic to filter out the sub bass and add a bit of distortion. Both of these were then bussed to my main bass aux...where I did quite a bit of EQ, and a little compression with an 1176 (UAD). I also wanted some really low sub bass in this track to give it that longing, mysterious vibe...so I added a pitch shifter, knocked the bass down a full octave...then blended that in at about 20%...immediately following that I put on the bx_subfilter to boost some of that extreme low end for growl. The bass also went to the Aphex a bit...for more bite.

Next were acoustics...I chose the best mics for each...so the intro has 2 mics, and the rest of the song had 2 mics total (1 mic per take)...panned left and right. I got rid of the doubles as I didn't feel the song needed them. The intro is a stereo guitar so sounds more narrow, then it opens up to the two panned separate takes when the band kicks in. Overall, some deEssing on the guitars to get rid of finger noise and nasty stuff, then some Neve eq, a little parallel compression, added Kramer Tape to the right guitar, a little dynamic eq and then the Helios EQ from UAD to really give each track it's sound. I then put some dVerb on each guitar track as an insert set to a really short room and blended low, to push them back a bit and put some air around them. They were then also sent a bit to another room reverb, and a little spring for vibe.

Piano just has a bit of eq, some parallel compression (from the Neve emulation), then sent to a room verb, and a hall to separate it in the mix a bit and sustain the notes. Nothing crazy.

For vocals, the main track had a bit of eq, and parallel compression (Neve emulation)..then that is sent to a parallel compressor (in this case the Zener Limiter from UAD won out)...then both of those tracks go to a main lead vocal aux...where I did more processing. I tried this new Resonator plugin I got from the Slate bundle...that gave the vocal a cool vibe when mixed in really low. So that's on there, followed by Decapitator for grit, a little EQ7 in pro tools to notch out a few spots, then into a DeEsser and a tape plugin (Softube Tape). The vocal then sent to the Aphex, a chamber, a spring, the EP34 delay from UAD, and a plate (Lustrous Plates from Slate). All blended to taste.

BGV's all had a bit of individual EQ, then bussed to a main aux with an La2a (UAD) and a dynamic eq (Waves F6). Some of the individual tracks were then sent to a bit of the spring, chamber, plate, and EP34.

Overall, everything except for drums and bass are also sent to a stereo unlinked 1176 compressor and blended in under the full mix. Gives it some movement and presence. This is something I picked up from Andrew Scheps, called the Rear Bus technique. I also have 4 other buses (Bottom, Guitars, Air, Wide). Bottom collects drums/bass...Guitars is all guitars, Air is keyboards (and other things like strings, horns, etc. when I have them)...Wide is for all BGVs and Effects and has the bx_2098 EQ on it set to M/S and stereo widening to 150%). Lead vocals go straight to mixbus.

On the Bottom bus, I had the Deflector compressor by Kush/Slyfi (distressor emulation). On Guitars I had the AR-1 compressor that just came out by Kush Audio. Nothing on the Air bus this time since it's just the one piano.

All of these, including the 1176's are all sent to the mixbus where I had the bx_Townhouse (plugin alliance) compressor, the Curve Bender (UAD), bx-digital eq, and Softube Tape.

I hope that makes sense and isn't too long! Was just going to submit with a brief description, but then I read we are supposed to explain what we did in detail...

24 Bit 48khz WAV
https://www.dropbox.com/s/le5ccfixwenip ... 2.wav?dl=0

16 Bit 48khz MP3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gsseoe6sbzg6y ... 2.mp3?dl=0

[Olli H]

Fun project to mix. When I listened this song I immediately decided to make a late 60’s influenced mix. After some tests I decided to pan drums to the left and bass to the right. And somewhere in the center is acoustic guitar.

DRUMS
In my mix drums are mono with a little bit stereo room.
No special tricks.

BASS
I used only DI. It goes through PM-Basspeg

KEYS
Quite heavily compressed to create a dirty saturated sound

GUITARS
I didn’t clean up completely squeek-sounds, but I might do it if I get to the second round.
One guitar in the center as main groove creator. Other guitar on the right to make a pair with cymbals on the left.

VOX
I placed vocal in far distance with delays to give right atmosphere for this strong and dominant singing style.

MIX BUS
Only two eqs.

MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Mfo8C ... 8JlMFF1YnG
WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RfWcN ... RE9Jbc2Cl7

[rxchad]

Hello,
This is my first Mix-Challenge.

wav:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/omycs88civ96j ... D.wav?dl=0

MP3:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/091jezkjszmxn ... D.mp3?dl=0





I have a love-hate relationship with analog. Since I love it, I tolerate its relative inconvenience and try my best to find ways to integrate it into a DAW world. My front end is a Pro Tools HD rig that I use for initial setup. every track is routed to an aux. Each aux has a VCA master, giving volume control easily at the beginning and end of the aux channel. each aux is routed out of the converters to my analog mixer (Audient ASP 8024). Here, I utilize the channel sends to access outboard gear for my groups prior to the mix bus. Here is what I did in particular.

Kick (mics blended)--- Fab Filter EQ3 (individually).....into Audient mixer....send to DBX160XT (4:1)...returned and sent to mix bus straight up the middle.

Snare (mics blended)----Fab Filter EQ3 (individually)....into Audient mixer....send to DBX160SL (4:1)...returned and sent to mix bus straight up the middle.

Snare FX----FabFilter reverb
---------------special effect was reverse reverb plus flange at intro

Drums----EQ3 plus S1 widening

Bass---blend of both amp and DI-----Audient mixer---WA76---console EQ----up middle

Guitars---blended stereo----FabFilter EQ3 and ProC----Audient mixer----Warm WA2A----EQP-WA

Keys----FabFilter ProC to ProQ2------stereo to Audient mixer
---------------------------------------------aux send to reverb

Extras----just tambourine. ----added reverb blended to track. panned tambourine hard left and slight right for reverb tail

Lead Vox---- FabFilter ProC followed by 3 instances of ProQ3 using dynamic control-----Audient mixer----Purple 1176----channel EQ

Lead Vox Aux Sends: 1. FabFilter Timeless (just a touch)
2. FabFilter Reveb Pro-R
2. Kramer Tape--------slap and saturation

Backing Vox-----panned to stereo------EQ3-----Audient Mixer-----slight channel EQ.


Mix Bus sent through Unfairchild 670 on Lat/Vert to Manley VariMu to Maag EQ to Lavry AD122mkiii converter to Tascam DA3000 at 24bit 48K.

[Chriswilson83]

Hi guys,

Listened and made notes on everything up to here now. I count it as 35 entries so far :-)

[LocalMusic]

Hi everyone,

heres my submission for this months Mixing Challenge.
I think it was a very interesting and cool song to mix and it was fun to try getting working and good sounding result out of it. At least for me, as I dont often mix acoustic rock songs.

Some words on what I did:

EDITING / PREPERATION:
- Used Clip Gain on all of the files to get the Input Level to the channel to my taste
- Did some editing, especially Time Streching on Keys and Bass to get it working with the drums and guitar
- Got rid of some of the silence on the Lead Vocal track

DRUMS
- Some EQ and compression on Kick and Snare, but nothing too crazy. Just sound shaping to get it working for my mix
- On the Overheads I pushed the side-signal a bit to make them sound wider, a bit of compression afterwards
- DrumBus is compressed and gets a little distortion. Also I parallel compress the drums.
- Kick gets a bus that runs once into the DrumBus and secondly parallel to DrumBus, so that it can still drive the song
- Snare is sent into a special reverb with modulation on it

BASS
- Used both DI and Amp sound and processed them together
- Applied some distortion and EQ to make it sound nice and deep but still have it cutting through the mix in the right way

GUITARS
- Had the Intro Guitar going in mono, then I cut away the top and bottom end, added some distortion and vintage sounding effects to make it sound as if it came from an old radio
- The other two guitars were panned left and right (but not hard-panned), to give space to the mix
- To one of them I just did some compression and EQ to support and shape the sound it already had
- To the other one I applied lots of compression and distortion to create a contrasting sound

KEYS
- The Keys themselves only got some slight compression, but got sent to a complex combination of reverb, delay and modulation

VOCALS
- Lead Vocals are crazy compressed, and EQed before they are sent to reverb, delay and some ADT
- Created a "Far LV"-Track, that got the same processing but different sends so that it sounds much further away
- Backing Vocals just got some compression and sent to reverb, delay and ADT

MASTER BUS
- Compressed with a G-Master Bus Compressor for the glue

Heres my Mix:

MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ap9mvbu4ubh ... c.mp3?dl=0
WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mtvepjn9c4o9f ... c.wav?dl=0

Good Luck everyone with this competition!