MIX CHALLENGE - MC067 July 2020 - Winners announced

[slazarev]

Hello,

Thank you for the Mix Challenge and congratulations on the song!

Because I am away from my studio I worked in the box with mostly stock Pro Tools plugins.

Drums:
Ended up gating kick and snare top for more punch. Slight compression on overheads and heavy compression on Rooms.

Bass:
Juiced it up a bit with SansAmp PS-1 plugin. Cut a lot of low end to make room for kick drum.

Guitars:
Cut significant bass, generally liked the sound, but brightened up the Chrs Cabs.

Keys:
Also brightened them, gave some spread with a little reverb.

BV:
Significant Reverb with longish pre-delay.

Lead Vox:
Automated delay and slap for different sections of the song.
Medium length reverb
Parrell compression with Dyn3 Compressor

The crush vocal was low and eq'd smaller than lead.

Thank you again!

Link to Mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pnN5df ... sp=sharing

[Aaron Meakin]

Hi everyone,

This was my first time doing mix challenge, and doing a mix out of study. Thought I would get involved to see how i can improve and practice on mixing.

The Mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10MKvTv ... sp=sharing

Screen shots of overall mix: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[wferdinand]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12ZPV50 ... sp=sharing

I hadn't a lot of time for this mix. I Used Waves G-channel for drums, some J37 tape machine on busses, Burnley 73 on guitars and vocals mostly. LexVintagePlate for vocal reverbs, and Little Microshift on some sources.

[Square]

Hi All,

Firstly, the stems were well recorded and organised, so thanks for that!

I wanted to try to find the right balance between pop and rock for this production as it lends itslef to both at times.

A brief overview of my main edits:

Drums - Focused on snare clarity and balance, Gave the toms priority in certain places, removed some boom from the toms and added a touch of delay to the fx version. I used a 2500 on most individual parts and an Hcomp on the Drum bus. DeEsser (slight) on the hi hats. Enhanced the transients on the Bass drum. The toms dubs were a challenge and took some time, but i like the overall effect that they create.
Guitars - panned and balanced, sub EQ, and a bit of verb. For the distorted guitars at the end I made them dominant as i think it fits the part well. Used r axx for the main comp and my Dynamagic outboard comp for some saturation. Created a haas effect for width. I found it particularly difficult to find the right balance for the lead cab at the beginning, with it either being a bit too buried or the vocal geting squashed out of the mix, i eventually settled on a bit of surgical eq and a middleground.
Keys and Synths - Panned for width, used the swells to add some nice movement in the mids.
Vocals - I kept them quite clean and true to the spirit of the recording as it sounded quite nice already, added some clarity and then saturation, I blended the backing vox into the background and the sides, I also rode the faders on all the tracks to get the right balance between the main and doubles and backing, emphasising certain parts on the backing vox to add movement. The challenge was to find the right balance between rock and pop vox styles.
Bass- Balanced it with the bass drum, side chained against it to allow about a 1-2dB gain reduction with fast attack and release to allow the punch to come through slightly, but i didnt want the Bass drum too prominent, i was looking for more of a blend of the two. I also used the Pulitser trick on the bass as well as adding some harmonics.

This is just a summary and Im happy to clarify on anything.

The song has soul and the recordings were solid, i found a lot of success with panning, balancing, and compression, with the more obvious sounding type of effects I added being more surgical to bring out what was already there. The strongest changes I made would probably be on the Distorted guitars at the end and the Tom FX. I work in and out of the box, with my outside gear aimed at producing saturation and stereo width, but mostly I stayed within Cubase 10.5 for this project.

If you would like any screenshots or more info about how I approached this, just drop me a message ^^

I look forward to listening to how everyone went about this, good luck all!

Square~

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TJ2goy ... sp=sharing

[MattRocket]

Hello,

mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bfxpq77z1ha6w ... t.wav?dl=0

screenshot1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gg5ox9g24t2d7 ... 7.jpg?dl=0
screenshot2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qqtb3lh99x899 ... 7.jpg?dl=0


I tried to create movement and to change the atmosphere of the song with the automations on voices

MattRocket

[linden6790]

Hi All,

Thank you Paint Me in Colour for well recorded tracks and the
opurtinity to practise my skills on your song.

At first I wanted to make something crazy/wierd with the mix but ended
up trying to make it sound as pleasent as possible and just deliver
the music to the listner the best I could with my vision applied. I
hope you will like it.

Vacals:
This is the most important part of the song and I wanted to make this
sounds as pleasent as possible.
The singer has very bright upper mid-range tone of voice so
I would recommend recording this lady's vocals on not so bright
sounding microphone so it would sound even better.

Anyway, I've made serial compression on vocals (CLA 76 and API2500).
First commpressor used with slow attack and fast
release to make it more upfront, second one with faster attack and
slower release to compensate a little. I've used TDR NOVA dynamic EQ
to cut 8kz, 3,7khz, 2,7 khz (these were hurting my ears) and cut 300
hz to not overwhelm.
Next is trick I've found on yt to brighten vocals while not making it
harsh - EQ 10khz boost -> deesser at 10kzh - > EQ 10khz boost ->
deesser at 10kzh
I also used deeser just a little at 8khz for sibilants. Reatune for
slight pitch correction.
Backing and Soft Voc are with above setup with slight differences in
amount of commpression etc.
For Low LV I made HP filter at 100hz and LP at 2khz.
Glue compression on bus and slight 12khz boost on Scheps 76.

I've sended VOX to reverb (Acon Verberate and Abbey Road Plates) and
to saturation with boosted 110hz for warmth (Scheps 73) with Delay
(ReaDelay)

DRUMS:

A lot of clearing harsh freq on OH + parallel commpression - hard panned LR
I couldn't make the kick as I wanted to. It was hard for me, there are
like 3 commpressors and EQs all with slight changes + saturation
Snare and toms are sent to the saturation bus same as vocals + reverb
and little distortion (Krush) (one extra reverb (ReaVerbate) on snare
for some parts of the song)
TOM DUBs have delay applied and flanger (Nebula) I used also transient
designer to shorten sustain a little (Couture).
Rooms havily commpressed cutted almost everything above 2,5khz - too
much cymbals in rooms imo.
Glue compression on bus (MasterMixBusCompressor), tiny saturation +
12khz boost and 50hz HP on Scheps 76 and reverb (Acon)

BASS:

serial compression - CLA-76, API2500 and dbx 160 + saturation (sausage
fattener) and slight sidechain with kick.

Guitars:

All guitars are sent to reverb (abbey road plates)
Lead Cab - added just a little distortion with SGA1566 + eq + comp
Verse Cab - dynamic EQ for harsh freq + eq + comp
Chrs guitars - eq + comp + reverb (acon)
P Chrs Cab - EQed so there's only mid range left for phone-like efect
+ delay and flanger (nebula)
Crunch - saturation (IVGI2) + eq + short reverb in mono (ReaVerbate),
slight sidechain with vocals so it could cut through guitars
Glue compressor on bus
All guitar tracks which were doubled are panned hard L and R

Keys:

nothing fancy - EQ, compression and reverb on Pads. exceptions are
Lead keys (only eq and saturation) and Bulid (raw)

More less that's all. If I missed documenting something there are
screen shots below.


My Mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ns3Hc_ ... sp=sharing

Screenshots:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DNK6Jk ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ymCbz9 ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13T7uPX ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pFO2OL ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1beLlI5 ... sp=sharing

[FromAtoZMix]

Hi there,

First of all many thanks for the great song ether for mixing/listening. It was a great experience.

Here is my mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/io8lv0db5d06j ... x.wav?dl=0

Here is the entire catalog, screenshots plus description.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p3xhwf02h79z ... oT3Ma?dl=0

One more time thank you that was a lot of fun to mix.

Cheers

[White Punk OD]

Hello artists, band, host, and engineers!
Hope you will enjoy my mix.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JsMB2s ... sp=sharing


I thought, the song should really rock, so I did some more classic stuff, and wanted the lead vocals to sound natural.
There is also a strong, sweet Pop factor, supported with the keyboard sounds.

There is not that much of automation here, as I could make use of the natural performance, vocals got some fair amount like always.

Vocal sound used quite some multing.
First was a process with TDR Nova GE and the auto-deringing algorithm (works a bit similar to Soothe).
I used Noveltech Character with dialing in the lower frequencies.
There is a parallel track that is hipassed and compressed, to support some brilliance.
The vocal bus has a wired rack of parallel compressors plus direct signal.

Choir vocals got hipassed with a very sharp Tchebyshef "Engineers Filter", just for the fun, and it separates very well from the main.
Also, I did put allpass filters with different settings each time on every choir track, to avoid the "bee swarm" effect (same person singing multiple tracks).

Guitars:
P Chrs Cab and Lead Cab went to a bus that has a "Glaceverb" that is panned opposite to the direct sound.
Crunch git has only SSL 4000G with quite usual settings.

There is a "room" bus that has also the overheads, and it is parallel compressed with mpressor, to let it pump a bit.
Part of that goes to the instrument bus.

Not in the instrument bus is the drum + bass bus, that has also the dubbed toms.

Snare was processed with a self-made gated IR pulse, and all drums have also Little Plate.
Some drums have the Aries Beta algorithmic reverb, that supports huge modulation.
Crunch 3 has a phasing effect additionally, but it was made with Valhalla Frequ-Echo.

Pad and Rhodes have a bus with Phil's Cascade to help them with some analog shine.

The swell sound got some time shift to end exactly with the beat.



The said instrument bus has a trackspacer function from the vocals, that was created with TDR Nova GE.
Intensity of that was automated, to let the vocals sit in the band, and still be heard always in a dominant way.

Bass has a soft side-chain ducking from the kick in.


Thanks to the song provider, this one will become a hit one or the other way!

(I will post screen shots in an hour or so, in the next posting.)

[White Punk OD]

my screen shot collection:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


Additional remarks go here, so I have no edits in the posting of the mix.

Ld vocals have a slap echo for rock'n'roll, and a room IR pulse.

There is a support effect on lead vc with that panned +/- 3,6,9,12 frequ shift formula, but it is only audible in some short, high-pitched parts.
"Ld Vc mult 2" is bandwidth-contained with HP 7.6k, LP 8.7k from bx_cleansweep, which has only 6dBoct and is very smooth. Then compressed, then distorted with a saturator. This creates a lot of stable brilliance. Sneaked in at quite low level.

Support vocals have no echo nor reverb!
Except the "male" vocal was formant-shifted a tad higher, then comes the strange sounding "Morph Verb" plugin with a plate setting, and finally a vibrating auto-pan (sine LFO), so it is kind of everywhere and nowhere, to add more fun.
The two parallel compressors glue and clamp all vocals together at once in the final vocal bus, and they have a direct signal bypass also for punch.

Rhodes has a little timing correction at bar 81, I simply cut out 3 bars and shifted them some milliseconds to go earlier. I felt there was some lagging, according to the flow of the song, and how the drummer speeded up for a moment.

Bass has a HY-Chorus! The effect is hipassed, so it should not mess with the body sounds.

The room bus was tricky, because it had to fill in all the "live" impression and energy, and had to create the integrity of the drums, while not pushing away the vocals. So it was multed to instrument bus and to master in parallel.
Kick and snare are sharing a sub bus with a bit of a dark DragonFly Room, and strong compression.

[GB Real]

wav: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fzoKTU ... sp=sharing
mp3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hCU5uS ... sp=sharing
capture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bv5T15 ... sp=sharing

My submission for this challenge. I referenced your released tracks, and also Misterwives Reflections as it has a similar vibe. I played a bit with the pad and the low vocal double which you may hear poke out a bit. i pushed back the swell in a lot of places. i pulled a lot of click up on the kick. I made two copies of the bass track and made a widened bass track as well as a thicker bass for the spacey build up sections. In general I was pretty heavy on compression 'n limiting. Cheers!