MIX CHALLENGE - MC073 February 2021 - Winners announced

[DimitrisPalantzas]

Here is mine:

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HeGciv ... sp=sharing
MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19V18o2 ... sp=sharing

I was probably inspired by what Treeeye wrote about ''Selga'' meaning in Latvian 'Deep place (in the sea, in a big lake, in a wide river) far from the shore'. I really liked that image/scenery -> soundscape and had that in mind while mixing.

My initial thought was for the Jembe to go stereo. So, I panned the two mics hard left(AT) - hard right(SM), turned up the AT mic by 1dB to create some difference, grouped them, brought down the width at 38% and made mono everything under 260 Hz. Also, cut 4 dB at 1.2k and added some reverb within ableton's default send.

Shaker: I wanted to modify the sound of it because it sounded to me a bit too raw and plain near those dreamy guitars. Shaped its envelope with the stock compressor. (4.5 ms attack and 1.12s release). Added ableton's 'Erosion' effect at sine mode. (It degrades the input signal by modulating a short delay with sine wave. This adds aliasing/downsampling-like distortions that sound very ”digital”). Also gererously boosted the highs. Panned it moderately to the right and then added a subtle reverb slightly to the left.

I decided to go with the individual drum tracks as that hihat (HH1) kept me very sceptical about how it should sound. Pretty unconventional but interesting choice for a post-rock production. Gave it some distortion with ableton's 'Overdrive' to make it similar to the sound in the loop and added reverb in a very surgical way as that hihat really determines the overall feel of the track, I think.

Tried to imitate the drum sounds of the loops, and from there shaped them as I wished.

Chorus kick: Boost mids about 3dB, saturation, a little overdrive and transient enhancement using 'Transpire'

Chorus snare: LP filter at 12.4k, saturation, some ping pong delay filtered around 2.5k and reverb (with the lows being cut at 850 Hz).

HH2: Overdrive


Verse drums: The group has a ton of ableton's default send reverb. (It just worked :-)

HH: LP filter at 8.5k
Verse snare: LP filter at 10.8k with some boost of 30% resonance. It is very slightly panned left.


Bass DI: Cut mids(600Hz) by 2.6 dB, boost 20 Hz by 2.5 dB (Call me crazy). Volume automation for the chorus parts to get quieter.

Bell: Panned halfway to the left.

Bridge Riser: Panned slightly to the left


GTRs Rhy3 and 4: Panned hard left - hard right.


GTR Bridge: A ton of ableton's default send reverb.
GTR Bridge2: Panned moderately left. Some of ableton's default send reverb.

The solo guitars have a kind of strange sense of balance but I really liked how it came out.
The group is panned slighlty to the left and has a ton of ableton's send reverb. (Don't get me wrong :-)

GTR Solo1 SM: Panned halfway to the left.
GTR Solo1 AT: Center.
GTR Solo2 AT: Panned slightly to the left.
GTR Solo2 SM: Panned hard right


GTRs Rhy1 and 2: The group has a lot of TAL-Reverb-4 with a hi cut for the highest areas.

GTR Rhy1 SM is panned hard left.
GTR Rhy1 AT is panned almostly hard right.


GTR SOLO Verse SM: Panned moderately to the left. Boost highs by 3 dB. Some reverb with a hi cut at 1k.

Bell: Panned halfway to the left.

Bridge Riser: Panned slightly to the left

(The tracks that I didn't mention don't have any effects and stayed in the center).


I used ableton live and the majority of the plugins used are stock.

-19.6 LUFS (Integrated) EBU R128.
-2.4 dBTP (True Peak)


Many thanks to TREEEYE and the mix challenge staff.

Feedback would be highly appreciated.

[Hruiz]

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

I really loved the tones of everything on this track.
I feel like when it came to mixing, I really just wanted to tighten things up and help them find a nice little space in the stereo field.
any EQ I did was to just carve the space for other instruments.
To me, getting the drum kits to sit where I felt the song needed was the most difficult.
Another difficult thing was getting the bass to sit right with the kick.
That kick was almost washy, with ghost notes, and I loved it. Made it a bit of a challenge when it came to molding the bass and kick, but I hope I did it justice.

This is my first entry here and I'm stoked to play a part.
Thanks for letting me mix your tune, and I hope you enjoy!

EDIT: I've noticed the incredible amount of detail you all went into when it came to mixing your track; so I will do my best to give you all the dirty details.
[*Anything in asterisks is just more detail into the process, if you are fresh starting down the mixing path, or are just unsure as to what I am saying.*]


I'll start with this, I discovered this site as I was going to bed, so when I woke up I had about 4 hours to mix it.

I started by breaking up all the parts, found all the pairs, and kit's, and bussed them all together.
[*for those that don't know what I mean; the verse drum kit(kick, snare, HH, ride, etc.) ended on its own buss, the chorus drum kit ended on another buss, each guitar was paired to their own buss. As another example, GTR RHY1 SM and GTR RHY1 AT, were summed together, to then end up on a single fader.*]

Once I finished organizing the session (color coded and labeled) the way I wanted to see it, I moved onto gain staging.
With faders at 0, I played the song through. Anything that was peaking above -9, I brought down with the clip gain feature in my DAW, I work in UAD LUNA.
[*Gain staging is going to assure me that when I add compressors, transient designers, EQ'S, or anything that adds harmonic content, I will continue to have the headroom I want and need to do more, if it fits the song. As I'm gain staging, I am also trying to get a feel for the song, and begin to get an idea of what I feel this song needs and wants * ]

After listening to the song a few times insuring I'm happy with where everything is metering, I took a break.
I went to the reference mix on sound cloud, found the things that stuck out to me with the mix they posted. For example the bass guitar sat very out front, and they love reverb. Took note of where things sat in the stereo field, and thought, how can I improve on this?
Ate food, sipped on some coffee, and found some post-rock music that I love to listen to, and just listened.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE PAN:

After about 20 minutes I reopened the session and got to work. Hit play, and started panning - starting with the verse drum kit.
- Kick sits center
- Snare sits center
- HH sits to the right at about 10 in my DAW
- Ride sits center but wide (more on the width later)
- Shaker sits about 20 left
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This process with the verse drums was pretty much the same for the chorus drum kit.
Except both hats were panned a little wider maybe at 15 or so, so when they played together they did a small ping-pong thing which, naturally occurs with the rhythm.

when the djembe came in I wanted it to peak through without getting in the way of what was happening with my center image.
So I panned it a little left and off center.

All the random fun little ear candy stuff, like the bell, I found a spot for throughout the stereo field. The bell for example sitting further left, about 35-40 Left


- Bass is center

- The synths and pianos were bussed together. so the entire piano/synth buss was panned about 97 Left and right.

- All rhythm guitars are panned hard left and hard right, but the guitar that was doing the most work with some of the melodic movement, sat on the right side. I was already placing a lot of tasty ear candy to the left. I wanted to balance it out!

- All Leads are center
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE FADERS:

When all was done and I was happy with where things sat in the stereo field, pulling and pushing where I felt it was necessary.

Because all of my instruments were bussed together, I built my mix into my buss faders.
[* This allowed me to control the over all mix I was happy with on the single buss fader, pushing and pulling the entire drum kit, or the summed guitar tracks, or the pianos and synths, together at once.*]

Only when I felt the balance was nice over all, the natural dynamics hit the way the song wanted them to, did I move onto the EQ.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EQ FUN:

This is where it gets more difficult to break down for me. There were so many eq moves, it's hard for me to explain all of it. But, here was my mindset and process. I recently had a conversation with a friend with EQ and building a mix, it's a little bizarre process, but I wanted to give it a try.

With everything that was panned center and worked together like a unit (the drum kit, and centered guitars, piano's, etc.) I mixed as most would, listening to the whole stereo spectrum.

when it came to the bass tone, I REAALLY wanted to hear that growl, it's such a tasty tone they captured.
attempting it to sit right with the kick was me actually shelfing the bass guitar, and emphasizing those mids. I always find bass mids to be super shmexy. The thump of the song I left to the kick, and if I had more time I would have played with it some more, but I was on a time crunch with this mix.

But when it came to the guitars panned hard left and right, this is where it got weird. I had never done this before so I gave it a shot. bx has a plug in that allows you to solo just the Left, Right, Middle, Sides, or fold the entire track to mono. I started with soloing the left side and slowly carved away at the guitars till it sounded good sitting with the balance I had.
With guitars it was mainly high passing, and a small scoop to the low mids, maybe 3db. I pulled out just a tad off the fizziness of the high end with a very broad bell curve

I moved on to the tracks I aimed more left, like the Djembe and bell. With those instruments it was more high passing and maybe pushing a little attack, maybe 1k ish area for the djembe, again, small moves, maybe 4db tops.

I then moved onto just soloing the right side, and repeated the process.

When I finally allowed the entire stereo spectrum back in, I was VERY surprised with how much width everything was given, just by molding one side at a time. When I folded it to mono to see if I accidentally did something weird to the phase, everything was clear and I felt confident about the decisions made. I was genuinely surprised.

All eq decisions were made on the busses not the tracks themselves. As, I was happy with the balance and tone of the instruments, and wanted to mold them as one unit and not as separate tracks.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE COMPRESSION:

From the start there were a couple of things I knew I wanted to compress. The Bass guitar, and the drum kit.

With the bass compression, it was used to level out the extreme dynamics. Because I loved the dynamics of the bass guitar, I was very light on the compression. The primary objective was, only catch those major transients, so the bass was just flicking the compressor.

The entire drum kit felt separated and not exactly like one cohesive instrument. So I put a compressor on the drum buss, to, as they say, "glue", it together.

From there the only bit of compression I used was on my 2 buss. This was to tie the mix together, again, flicking the compressor, doing 2db of compression at most. The one thing I did not want to do was destroy the incredible dynamics of this tune!
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SUMMING AND LAST BIT OF COLOR:

When I was happy with everything was sitting the final textures were reverb and summing.

ALL of my verbs were mono verbs! The only exception was the verb on the snare, as I wanted that to bloom out to the left a bit, but still cover the stereo image of the snare itself.
If I had the time I probably would have been a little more creative with the verbs, but because time was of the essence, I sort of avoided trapping myself in the hole of submitting a half mixed tune.

As I said, on my 2 buss I used a bit of compression, choosing one that added a bit of warmth and color, but I also summed it through the Neve summing mixer, which also aided in the "glue" of the mix.

If you made it this far thanks for reading!

Thanks for the opportunity to mix this tune, and I hope to do more!

Stay happy and healthy!

[leventenagy960115]

Hi everybody,

Here is my entry:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e5Oq6f ... sp=sharing

Description:
For drums I made my own mix: Kick (Eq + Compression), Snare/Snatch (Eq + reverb + saturation), etc.
For Bass I duplicated the track, (one is high passed + amp simulation, the other one low passed+compression). On the drum bus RBass+Paralell Compression.
For Guitars, I made separated groups and subgroups, I time aligned all (the two mic recorded ones). I used eq for all guitars, for two guitars I also used a clean git amp simulation.
For piano and synth, I used eq + compression.

I used multiple times Valhalla Supermassive with different settings to make depth and with for the mix.
This is only a brief description there are also some panning tricks and others, unfortunately, I don't have enough time to write them all.

Good luck to everybody!

[FUS]

Hello
At the beginning, I would like to thank the organizers and artists for the opportunity to work on such a nice piece. It was pure pleasure.

Here are the links:
wav: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9asg9r0e4bf0s ... S.wav?dl=0
mp3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hfoiozcfhjmtf ... S.mp3?dl=0

Screen:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xaxnz6093s2sv ... 0.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5q2ig9nm8qncr ... 6.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zd7zi5x9a5s8s ... 5.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ntwb91btulx1 ... 3.jpg?dl=0

Work stage:
I mixed hybrid. I cleared some of the tracks in the DAW (Presonus Studio One), grouped the selected ones, placed them in the panorama, set the volume balance. I tried to use a small number of plugins.
I also didn't want to interfere too much with the recorded audio material.
Bass: REED, Opticom
Drums: Little touches of the EQ… I really like the pre-mix drums version and for sure the artists wanted that effect too, so I used this track.
Guitars: 1176, Coffe, EQ, Schoeps
I also used MicroShift, EchoBoy, Decapitator and STA-Tube on selected tracks.
I used automation on the tracks.

Then I sent the grouped tracks to the Midas Venice analog mixer. I processed the material with EQ. I sent some groups to Thermionic Culture Vulture for saturation. I also used digital effects such as chorus, delay and reverb (Lexicon, Roland, Line6)
I used Antelope Orion 32+ converters to print the mix. I also used its on-board processors like Gyraf Gyratex X and EQ.
Finally, the material was compressed by Manley Variable MU (Acustica Audio) emulations to glue the mix together (0.5dB compression)

Thank you for the opportunity to participate.
Good luck everyonene!

FUS
Martin

[Pavel Nebesky]

Hello guys,

Hopefully I am on time started to mix to late, but the song is so nice so I had to try.

Here is my mix

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xhkdseczfbep6 ... y.wav?dl=0

Explanation will follow, just wwanted to be on time.

Regards, A.

[satchboogie]

Hi !

Thanks for the opportunity.
My main goal was to keep the verses and the choruses intimate. The main point was to try a good balance between the different mics and did some reverb automations. I did sends for reverbs and played with their compression and eq.
Plugins used: bx_v2, townsend comp, smart reverb, comeback kid.
Master: townsend, spl iron and studer.

my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n2kFcK ... sp=sharing

satch

[Mister Fox]

It is the 22nd February 2021, 00:35 UTC+1/CET - the first Mix Round has officially ended

Another very warm welcome to all new participants and as usual, a huge thank you to everyone that is spreading the word about the Mix Challenge. Please help get the Songwriting Competition as popular (less than 3 days left).


STATISTICS:

• If I didn't miscount, we have 77 submissions this month (77 prior to the deadline, 79 including entries after the deadline)
• We have 2 submission after the deadline (as of 22-FEB-2021 0:35 UTC+1/CET)
• We have 0 submission that could not be downloaded by the time of this post and is therefore disqualified
• We have 0 submission that has been withdrawn (but counts as entry within the deadline)
• Overview of Submissions - is your entry within given parameters? (PDF - updated: 26-FEB-2021, full sheet)
• Overview of Submissions (disqualifications only) (PDF - updated: 26-FEB-2021)

INFORMATION: Statistic sheets have been updated



INFORMATION:

Until the end of 2020, I provided a data sheet each month showing all entries and what values they have in terms of loudness (LUFS ILk), maximum signal strength (dBTP), if they are in the correct bitrate and sampling rate, if they were downloadable, etc. You can read about the whole process here.

I want to continue creating the overview sheet throughout 2021 as additional learning tool for the Mix Challenge. This data sheet is not an automated process. I will post separately once I have the data sheet prepared and uploaded (which will be linked to from this post you're reading right now).



I now open the field for everyone to give each other feedback (highly encouraged). This will be independent to the client feedback however.


Please watch this spot for the client feedback and Mix Round 2 participant announcement.

Good luck to all participants.





The Songwriting Competition 42 (SWC42) is still in full swing.
The deadline is 24th February 2021, 23:59 UTC+1/CET. The genre is "Psychedelic Rock" - interaction is highly encouraged.

Please spread the word!

[Mister Fox]

Hi everyone - a short update.

The statistic sheets will arrive later tonight. I am mostly done with it, but I want to run an additional check with username associations before I publish everything. This will happen throughout the afternoon (German time), and I will update the post above late evening. After that, the evaluation process goes into full swing.


In the meantime, please don't forget to check out Songwriting Competition 042

[Mister Fox]

The "Overview of Submissions" PDFs have been uploaded.
You can check them through the upper post (post #100).

Apologies for the waiting time.


As mentioned in July 2020, this data sheet is used for giving an overview of all entries, and whether or not they are within given parameters (loudness, sampling rate, bitrate). I would like to continue this from now on, as this is adding to the learning process. Please take note that creating this is not a fully automated process. I am using Wavelab 10's "Batch Analysis" tool, but the layout and highlighting the issues, is time consuming. If you do not find yourself on this list, please let me know.


We have a disqualification rate of 35,05% for February 2021 (77 entries, 27 disqualifications, not counting the 2 submissions after the deadline).

In comparison to previous months:
December 2020 (22,67%, 75 entries, 17 disqualifications), November 2020 (31,15%, 61 entries, 19 disqualifications), October 2020 (33,70%, 92 entries, 31 disqualifications), September 2020 (32,60%, 46 entries, 15 disqualifications), August 2020 (28,57%, 35 entries, 10 disqualifications) and July 2020 (40,37%, 109 entries, 44 disqualifications).

On average, we have a disqualification rate of 32,02%.




A commentary on this month's entries:

While I really do like to see new faces on the community (welcome, everyone!), I am also a bit sad to see that the established rules are often overlooked. Or there wasn't enough attention to detail given. Most prime example are still 48kHz mixes while the source material is 44kHz, or exports in 16bit (sometimes even both: 48/16 mixes!). Another big problem is the username association - please use your forum username in the file in some shape or form, else your entry is just forfeit due to a careless mistake.

I can only emphasize this again: pay a little bit more attention to detail. Mistakes happen, they sting. But ignoring established rules is a no-no in my book. This is why this Statistics Sheet exists - to show you what went wrong, to also help the song provider that might not be as "skilled" to notice certain issues, and to create a fair playground for everyone.
.




I (re-)open the field for everyone to give each other feedback (highly encouraged). This will be independent to the client feedback however.


Please watch this spot for the client feedback and Mix Round 2 participant announcement.
This will happen sometime within the next 14 days.

In the meantime, please check out the Songwriting Competition 042 (February 2021)? The Deadline is 24-FEB-202! 23:59 UTC+1/CET

[elroms]

Hello, I'd really like to understand why I got disqualified. If I insert the wav file in my DAW (Cakewalk) it shows that it peaks at -1.00 dB, while on your sheet it says -0.70dBTP, which is out of the range.

What tool do you do your measurements with? And overall what should I have done, set the peaks at -2.00 dB?