MIX CHALLENGE - MC056 July 2019 - Winners announced

[Jerze]

I tried to adjust the fret noise down a little also used what was marked as tuned vocals. Timing drove me crazy just let it go though was what is was in the end.

Mp3- https://www.dropbox.com/s/addwzjuebo6hr ... e.mp3?dl=0

Wav- https://www.dropbox.com/s/sbq16pbwz1ahu ... e.wav?dl=0

Notes:
Drums- Snare and Kic to sub buss. Then All tracks to a drum buss
Tracks had Eq some had decapitator, compression delay on track etc.
Drum buss Tape and Eq

Bass- tracks went to bass buss buss had some Eq, compression, Echoboy, more compression

Acoustic GT-All track with Eq got sent to acoustic buss
The bus had a lot of Eqing compression verb

Keys-same sent to buss that had mv2, Eq, tape, Rbass and compression.

Vocals eq verb compression

Jerze

[TomImmon]

Hi guys,
thanks to the team of Mix Challenge and Chris for having the chance to mix that great song.
The "spirit" of this song is created by its unique atmosphere. I have therefore held back with corrections and only adjusted the timing of the bass drum at a few places.
I love the voice of the singer. It was really a pleasure to work with this track.

WAV:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndiaqhurerop6 ... n.wav?dl=0

MP3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ny087eraepla ... n.mp3?dl=0
(dropbox brings sometimes a box, that you should register, but you can click it away. The files are public)


Kick: Optimized timing of kick at some places, did not used the D112, instead optimized the other kick sound with SSL 4000 E, Vertigo VSM3, Disto 64 compressor and give it it’s own small reverb.

Snare: was a lot of work ;-). Used combination of SSL 4000 E für additive Eq, Neutron 3 for subtractive EQ, gates on both mics, Disto 64 compressor. Added early reflections and gated plate.

OH: removed some room nodes with proximity eq, used de-essing on harsh frequencies. Forced some usefull frequencies with Neutron3.
All Drums went into Drum room from Waves AR Chamber.
Drumbus: Disto 64 compressor and SPL Vitalizer.

Bass: was also a lot of work. I split the DI sound to work with different settings on lows and mids. Mids get some transient shaper and compression with long attack, short release. Lows go the other way around.

Git: Used all mics. Arranged them in the stereo image. Used Neutron 3 for EQ, exciter and shaping of the transients, also added some saturation with SPL Twin Tube. No Reverb, just some stereo slap delay.

Piano: hm, not all notes fits well – but i did not work on that. Used waves C6 to give the piano a more grand piano sound and some widening with MS EQ. Panned more left, but added haas delay to he right.

Vocals: Used a combination of Nectar 3 Elements, Neutron3 and Vertigo VSM3. Compressed it with BOZ +10db compressor. Also some limiting to prevent clipping. Stero slapback and a plate as effect. On some parts oft he song i added a vocal doubler and additional delay.

Choir: Saturation with SPL Twin Tube, widening with MS EQ, compression with Neutron3.

Mixbus: Bx_townhouse 2-3db Glue, basic Eq to optimze balance (53hz +0.3, 600Hz +0,7) , subtle tape saturation for the highs. No pre mastering.

I just used the provided sounds.

Greetings from Berlin
Tom

[Lwinhtoophaw]

Hello everyone,
I am new participant and this is my mix.


Wav - https://www.dropbox.com/s/gyzp19ee74hlu ... w.wav?dl=0

Mp3 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/h6xnis3mv1535 ... w.mp3?dl=0

[Snarowitz]

Thanks to Chris Wilson for providing the song, and once again Mix Challenge for putting this on. I really like this piece, very different than the others I’ve been involved with (only my 3rd MC). Also, the first I was able to really spend some time on.

After dumping the source files into Pro Tools, and listening to the session, I agreed with what Mister Fox said in the beginning about the timing working in context… for the most part. The bass really struggled to keep up at times, but to fix it without talking to the bassist meant I’d have to make some assumptions about his/her intentions.. I found the tempo to be closer to 190 bpm give/take, and I didn’t find the beat to be too far off through most of the song. Not wanting to disrupt the groove and flow, I left the drums mostly intact. I cut up the bass line into a bunch of little pieces and manually aligned them to the kick, snare, and rhythm guitar transients as needed. There where a few sloppy drum strikes and guitar strums I also aligned this way, but only a few.

I thought about using RX to isolate and attenuate the string squeak. However, after some discussion with Mister Fox, I decided that since it may be part of the of the guitarist desired aesthetic I’d leave it alone. Also, I kind of thought it worked with the song as it carries a ghostly vibe. I can certainly remove it for round 2 (if selected).

I used clip gain to balance the performance levels, fader and pan automation to generate some added interest. Various compression plugins, some in parallel, were utilized to fortify the punch of the drums, wash of the cymbals, and presence of the guitars (Waves API, CLA-76/2A, SSL, and Puigchild, MCDSP Retro comp). I automated some panning during the ghostly howls, and toggled a few effects, keyed only on certain words. I also automated a side chain keyed off the vocal, to duck some instruments behind the LV at times. A couple EQ plugs balance tonality as needed (FabFilter ProQ2, Overloud Gem).

I really liked the eerie vibe I got from this song. I wanted to make sure my mix highlighted this trait. Using combinations of compression and saturation plugins, followed by delays and reverbs, I exaggerated the ghostly howl and did my best to keep it clean utilizing automation (Sound Toys Radiator, Decapitator, PrimalTap, Crystalizer, Little Plate, Tape Echo, Waves IR-L, and Studio Reverb).

Lastly, I ran the mix through the dynamic EQ in Ozone for a little extra bounce, and for added warmth and “glue” OTB through a couple hardware compressors doing a small amount of reduction (very slow attack, fast release, low ratio, high threshold) (IGS Volfram, Buzz DBC-20, SSL clone).

Had a lot of fun with this one, hope you like it as much as I do.

WAV:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zb2tdB ... sp=sharing

MP3:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DP9tBI ... sp=sharing

[jonsubs]

Thanks to the organizers and to the artists.

This is my mix contribution:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


The client invited artistic freedom. I was inspired by the concept of a dark “ghost” feeling, and decided on a bit of an eerie ethereal feeling to this song, that also contributes to softening some of the timing issues.

Some of the artistic choices include:
- Kick is boomier than normal
- Bass reamped with more harmonic content, and leaning towards the middle frequencies to have a more tonal contribution
- background vocals pushed back quite a bit
- As an artistic effect, I added a faint drone based on the guitar track. Its purpose is to add stereo movement, some overall tension and contribute to set rhythmic balance
- Also as an artistic choice I added a moment of buildup reversed guitar in that silence after the intro guitars. It's meant to act as a bridge between the sections because I felt the silence was too long, and I also wanted to start setting up the "ghost" feel of the song. Up to the artists if they'd like to keep this bit.

This is a screenshot of my buses that shows most of my effects and routing:
https://ibb.co/G79dJdT

[Piranha]

Mixed the song in kind of minimal top-down approach: when I noticed something sounding bad I fixed in the bus, before going to the single tracks.
Started with static mix for volumes, then with guitars that I tought being muddy, using a couple of instances of the mighty Cobalt Baxter on the bus tu open the hights and slim down the lows.
Then came drums, working on the overheads removing mud and excess of lows, then drum bus trying to get the maximun impact with compression (bx_townhouse), tape saturation and eq (again Cobalt, SoundDrop filter and MEqualizer).
Bass D.i. is phase reversed and massaged with Bass Professor, amp was compressed with bx_opto and distorted in paralled.
Keys where too fat, so I made them smaller and (tape) saturated them, like in old piano recordings. Hard compression on piano via DC1A to avoid big volume changes.
Voice has the solid IK76/LA-2A combo and equed and saturated via IK Neve 81.
WAV:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/emir372p70e35 ... a.wav?dl=0
MP3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vy8jn0ezio6s7 ... a.mp3?dl=0

[Blang]

Hey fellows,

My goal for this mix was to enhance the heavy, dark sound of the song. I also wanted to add some dynamics, for it has a driving groove but it’s very static. By automating/muting parts I tried to achieve this.

Here is my mix:

WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=16jfFy ... UUR6B85RrX
mp3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=14Ai04 ... y952kIqTPi

Notable mix features:

Drums: I wanted them a bit distant and not too defined. I used a devil-loc (compression and distortion) too enhance the room of the kick sample. To make the snare have a similar vibe I created a parallel track which I tuned an octave lower with Little Alterboy > added a bit of D-verb Room > Devil Loc.

Bass: The bass was quite static already so I added distortion to enhance the heaviness/aggression. This was done with 3 parallel tracks panned L, R and a bit to the right. 2 times Unfiltertered Audio Indent and the Waves J37 saturation cranked.

Vocals: for the chorus I sneaked the untuned vocal in for an eerie ‘chorus’ sound.

Spring Reverb: Going for a raw sound: I used the AIR spring (panned left with a long pre-delay) ) and a stereo waves GTR spring. I primarily sent the vocals, snare and intro guitar to these verbs.

Tremolo Reverb: Lo-Fi (protools) > EMT140 plate C 5sec > Soundtoys Tremolator. It's on the vocals (send -level automated) and a tiny bit on the piano.

Hope ya dig it!

[Franz]

Hi Chris and Mister Fox,

A bit "special" the title to mix proposed this month.
It is true that there is a specific athmosphere and to retranslate it at best,
I opted for an "old-fashioned" mix. Indeed, there are plenty of defects (rhythmic,
guitar neck noises, continuous cymbals, etc. ..) and we find many instruments in
the frequencies from 200 Hz to 700 Hz (guitars, piano, snare ....and voice ) that it
is a question of placing correctly so that one distinguishes everything.
So as it was said at the beginning of the contest and as usual: let's do with what we have...
The most difficult part of the mix is to keep this "raw" side and the “ghostly” vibe.
In practice rather sophisticated equalisations and reverb very worked. So I used my
old analog hardware with satisfaction.

And the result is there : https://www.dropbox.com/s/vvbgz7a7szy9l ... v.wav?dl=0

Cheers

Franz

[Slickster716]

Hi


Here is my submission for this mix contest.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jSL4l ... I7UuQBomzL

I enjoyed the song very much. There are a lot of pieces that need work that I found challenging, and I wasn't able to address all of it. Namely the timing and the guitar fret buzz/sliding. But i did make some improvements to the guitar sound. And i think the timing can be worked on in round 2 with some time commitment. The editing that I did do was to use clip gain to normalize the dynamics for most of the tracks.

I used bx_ssl e channel/ and softtube tape on each channels. I used fab filter Gate on the drum tracks. I added some reverb to the snare and also created a room send that i sent all tracks too, but it is very low in the mix. I used the ssl Eq/dynamics to add some punch to both the kick/snare. for the overheads i used the maag eq to add high end. The OH channels were widened in the intro and at the end, and the panning was narrowed in the
'verses'.

The bass has some compression from the ssl dynamics, and it is using a bluechorus stomp box to add some depth. I used a neve style eq/preamp to add saturation.

The guitars have a send to echoboy delay and a SUBSPACE reverb, which i really like. The guitars were widened using izotope stereo imager. I used fabfilter q3 to add low end into the eq. I tried to make the slide noise less noticable by creating an out of phase track that matched up with the slides. I also used some notches/comb filtering between 4k-11k to try to reduce the fret buzz. I couldn't find a transparent way to completely remove that noise so i settled for reducing it for now. The intro guitars have a leslie effect that opens up at the end. I also used Renisannce AXX. I used one set of Mics from each guitar for the intro/verse, and then in the middle part where the guitar part changes to the higher part, i used the other guitar mics.

The piano has a secondary role in the mix. at times i wrestled with trying to bring it forward but it is still not up front, which is fine. The Keys have an fx send to fabfilter timeless/ SUBSPACE reverb. and i use the plugin alliance spl vitalizer to help unmask it. There is automation applied to bring it louder towards the second verse. At the end another FX opens up using the unfiltered audio Byome plugin that has a chorus modulation.

The vocals had R vox compressor applied to even dynamics, as well as MJUC to add saturaiton and additional compression. I used R Bass to enhance some of the low/ low mids. i used a stereo delay for the vocals.

The background vocals have izotope nectar elements eq/dynamics and space added. each phrase was clipgained to try to keep the dynamics in check.

All tracks were had fader rides added through automation and panning automation. The piano Pans flip in the middle of the song. some of the panning gets wider towards the end. The ending has some additional volume/energy.

I spent alot of time trying to fine tune the mix, and I know I still have some improvement to make. I feel like for the time being I did the best that I could. I hope to grow and learn from this and get better each time. I would love to continue to work on this in the second round If i am so fortunate. Thanks so much

[iMax]

Hi,

I had a bit of a challenge with this one, because initially I was not sure if and how much to edit here, but opted for no editing in the end, as I got used to the vibe of the song and tried to keep it as much as possible.

WAV
MP3

Drums: Waves SSL on the inidivual tracks, Airwindows Buttercomp on the Drum bus, plus some parallel compression and reverb
Bass: EQ and compression using Neutron 2
Guitars: Scheps Omnichannel and compression on the guitar bus to treat them as a whole
Piano: Neutron 2 plus Waves PS22 to add some spread
Vocals: Sonible SmartEQ, Scheps Omnichannel and Waves RComp plus Lindell TE-100 on the Vox Bus, Hornet AutogainPro MK2 for volume riding, Soundtoys Little Plate for reverb and Waves H-Delay for a hint of delay
2 bus: Airwindows Console 5, Waves SSL G Comp, Airwindows ToTape5 and Museq for overall shaping

Cheers!