Mix Challenge

First time participating here, thanks for hosting and doing this!

Mixed in Pro Tools Ultimate 2018.12

I approached mixing this as if I were mixing for client, and in general people hire me to mix for them because they like the way I interpret the music so I did the same thing here. I'm guessing my mix will end up being the most different to everyone elses. Listening the provided reference mix I knew straight away how I wanted this to sound; big/loud with a bit of edge/roughness but I wanted the mix to not hurt when listened to loudly. My mix should be listened to LOUD. In my head I kept imagining hearing this live and that directed a lot of my decisions.

Overall my goals were to have the guitars loud and in your face, make the drums sound like they were in a bigger space, give the vocals some slight grit/dirt, and fatten up the bass guitar for a consistent big low end. I mix "top down". Over years I've found this faster/easier/better for the way I work. So I start with a rough fader balance, then start to EQ/Comp on the mix buss to get the overall frequency response I want and musical pumping/control to everything. That's 80% of my mix sound, the fader balance and stereo buss along with fader automation. Automation is really important to me to make the mix come alive and keep things balanced and dynamic. Then I have subs/auxes for the main instruments and address anything that needs further control there. After, if any individual part/mic needs refinement I do that on a channel basis. And as an approach I find this means I do less on each channel and my mixes to me sound more cohesive and come together faster.

For Drums/Guitar sub/auxes I used UA SSL E channel strip for aggression and punch. On Vocals/Bass I used UA Neve 1073 channel for thickness and smooth top end. I also used UA A800 tape emulation on the subs/auxes with the same settings (GP9/30ips). Every channel has Slate VCC (in VMR) on the SSL 4KE emulation and the auxes/master buss has the Slate VCC 4KE buss emulation.

I used VCA's in ProTools for automation as much as possible, and sometimes automated individual channels here and there too.

I mixed this at 96K. Years ago I found this made it easier to mix, probably down to most plugins having less aliasing at 96K. I've output as 48K.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MIX BUSS

AirEQ for some sculpting, UA EQP-1A for thickness on bottom and sparkle up top, UA curvebender EQ for some richness in the mids. BX Townhouse has a fast release doing couple of db in loud sections for the musical pump I wanted, followed by UA SSL G Comp with auto release doing couple of db which helps tighten up kick/snare. UA ATR-102 tape emulation with bx masterdesk doing no compression or mastering type things, but used for making the mix mono under 100Hz or so. Again, the fader balance and mix buss is where 80% of my mix is done, along with fader automation once I've got my static mix done.

With my mixing I normally aim to have peaks 10-12b over the average based on the PT meters. I find this gives a good dynamic mix that is easy for a mastering engineer to deal with and make loud. So they have about 5-7db of peaks to limit/clip to get to the very loud typical volumes of todays masters which isn't too difficult, and my mix and balances stay fairly intact. Loud masters are made in the mixing, not the mastering (IMHO). Every mastering engineer I've dealt with agrees.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VOCALS

All vocals had UA Neve 1073 with preamp pushed slightly, and some eq to sculpt the vocal a little. Then UA A800 tape and a bit of UA 1176 blue with fast release into UA LA-2A grey for some opto style smoothing. I knew I wanted some grit/dirt on the vocals so I ended up with decapitator with the mix blend turned down. Finally soothe to help catch any resonant frequencies and act as a bit of de-essing.

FX - Lead Vox is sent to UA 480L and to another ATR-102 tape emulation that is set up to act as a slap delay with 166ms delay. The double vocal has the same but also some UA brigade chorus and 1/4 delay from UA precision delay. Extra vocals are similar but using soundtoys H3000 emulation instead of the brigade chorus.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BASS

Duplicated the DI and used PT Sansamp and Neural DSP darkglass for some dirt and blended with DI. Both these feed into UA Neve 1073, UA A800, PT EQ3 dipping some low mids, UA distressor catching peaks into UA LA-2A grey. I wanted the bass to have big solid low end, with a bit of grit from the dirt duplicate. Auto-align was used on the dirt channel to improve the phase response and low end when combined with the DI. I also muted the bass in the intro until the second guitar comes in to give it more impact. The bass is also sent to the same vocal brigade chorus return which is something I stole from Andy Wallace years ago as I love the movement and widening on bass it gives (remember that the stereo buss BX masterdesk plugin is set to make it mono below 100Hz).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GUITARS

I ended up using the DI's for the main rhythms and put it through UA Friedman Dirty Shirley with my own custom IR's running in Redwirez mixIR plugin. I own the actual Friedman Dirty Shirley amp as well (and even the pedal version) and I love this amp. It's basically a modded JTM45 and I thought it would be perfect for this song. I was going to re-amp with my actual amp but I tried the plugin with my IR's to confirm that it was the right sound and loved the plugin sound with my IRs so much I kept it. David - what guitars did you use for the main 2 rhythm tracks? I LOVE the sound combined with the Friedman DS. I love the playing too, the rhythmic strums in between the chords etc are great. I panned these opposite to the reference mix.

Anyway, the guitar buss has the UA A800, UA SSL E channel, and soothe (to tame the high mids a bit so that it's not too harsh listening at loud volumes). The individual guitar channels have some minor BX SSL E to adjust and balance as needed, but the overall guitar sound is from the main aux and mix buss. The solo guitar also has the Massey THC plugin to give it some more distortion and make it a bit more "wild".

FX - Main gats are sent to UA Ocean Way reverb tweaked to my taste, and the solo guitar is sent to the same vocal slap delay, brigade chorus, and to UA Galaxy tape echo emulation.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DRUMS

First step I do with drums is use auto align to make sure the phase relationship is good, and this makes a MASSIVE difference in making the drums sound fatter. When I A/B this its incredible to me how much more solid and big the drums sound. As mentioned I wanted the drums to sound like they were in a bigger space, so I duplicated the room mic and used auto-align to delay it further while still maintaining good phase. Ended up probably in the 200ms area later (but with the exact timing and polarity flipping that auto-align suggests for that timing). This makes it sound like the mic was further away (like in a bigger room). I then compressed/EQ'd this track and sent it to the UA Ocean Way plugin to extend the sound further and seperate it from the original room mic sound. OH's I normally like loud and to capture the whole kit, here the recording was mostly just cymbals so I clipped gain the whole song so that the cymbals were lower and I could use the OH's louder for the main drum "picture".

On the drum buss I have the UA A800, SSL E for the EQ punch, and UA Neve 33609 for some slight compression pump. I then have a parallel drum buss sub with kick/snare/toms that has the UA A800, BX SSL E (would use UA version but running out of processing), and the UA API 2500 to slam the drums and that's blended in about 15-20db lower than the main buss. This buss also changes level relative to the main drum buss throughout the song as I want more or less of it. Individual channels have BX SSL EQ for tweaks where needed and UA transient designer on toms. OHs/HH/Rooms have soothe to tame the high end when needed.

FX - Snare/Toms and "Extended Room" are sent to UA Ocean Way reverb. Snare and Toms are also sent to UA AMS AMX16 on non-linear setting.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LINKS

Worth noting here that "dot" revisions are my own internal revisions that aren't part of typical client feedback rounds, so in this case "1.1" just means I tweaked the V1 mix once before "sending to the client" (or posting here in this case).

Wav - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1R44CX ... 0xlHYi6Hcl
MP3 - https://drive.google.com/open?id=10DExR ... VvuR1PAaBu

Remember, listen LOUD.

-Hook

Hello, this is my entry:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x01tqe63b9jcn ... F.mp3?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/731elkjxonif8 ... F.wav?dl=0

Screenshots:
sorry, I didn't take any. but if anyone likes the way I mixed, I'd be willing to share the project (it was made in Logic Pro X)

A couple of corner stones:
I imagined a banda like Sex Pistols. dry, dirty and punchy. but there are several "cues" to put reverb and delay so I was and I still am in doubt hehe. I did put lots of effects and reverbs, only the lead vocal I let as dry as possible. though, I thought about putting a slap back in the vocal all the time, but eventually I decided to let it dry as possible.

as I understood the song, it was supposed to be RAW, I also let some "plosives" in the voice as I thought it was very characterful.

I think my mix as a "dark" mix. but it's easier to listen loud though, hopefully.

The solo I think it was too broken, but it's a dirty song so I thought about breaking it more. i just put effects and automated randomly until it sounded very bad.

Work time: roughly 15 hours (it's been such a long time since I last mixed a whole song)

what I couldn't achieve: I wish the kick had more punch, but couldn't find a way to make it more punchy. I also wished to have some other takes of the bass. but I'm happy as it's. I have doubts about the snare and hit hat volume.

troubles: I had a lot of trouble to make it sound okay in headphones. after lots of testing I was able to achieve with Waves S1 hehe.

thank u for letting me mix ur music. enjoy!

edit: I think my ears were totally broken haha it's harsh. still, it's a fun mix.

@CaptainHook > The guitar was a Japanese Tokai Love Rock (Les Paul type), 57'ish pickups. I was looking for a real Les Paul > took a classic series one.
The finish was ugly, the intonation was totally wrong. Back to the (real) shop I bought this marvellous and "pretty" cheap gtr (about 1200€, the deal was finally les than 1100).
Nothing serious at this price range with Gibson... This one has a lot of clarity and a nice neck. Very very good finish ! Just a bit heavy because it has no chamber. SO it has a never ending sustain !!!!

Guys, I am amazed by the nice description of your work !!!! Really cool. I just have to wait for a listen because I really want to stack it in Logic, and loudness match before. I have to listen to all the contestants in one shot. Will be tough !! Lots of new contestants, really nice !

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 14 days left to submit your edit.



Please help us spread the word. Especially for the Songwriting Competition:
viewforum.php?f=11

Dropbox WAVE



I mixed in Logic with almost entirely stock plugins aside from the free SGA1566, Venn Audio Free Clip, and Softube Saturation Knob. I aimed to add a lot of energy and size to the song and with such dry raw tracks, it was fun and challenging.

Starting with the kick, I added an extreme high shelf and sizable low mid cut to get the punchy sound I was after, blending the inside and outside mic pretty evenly. I compressed heavily with a wide open attack and instant release. Adding on the SGA1566 enhanced the mid-harmonic content a bit while the Free Clip controlled the transient.

With the snare, I added sizable boosts at 100 and the overall top end. With two compressors and a transient designer, I was still struggling to get the sound as punchy and big as I wanted. I cheated a bit by layering in a sample to cover the "room" aspect of the snare, because the overheads were not supplying any of that. The combo of the low, fat real snare with the sample made for a more complete sound, and made it sound like I wanted it to.

Overall with the rest of the drums, things were pretty standard. I used some presets on the overhead compressor and scooped a lot of mids out of the toms, which I struggled with. I couldn't get the room mic sounding great either, so I just squashed it and basically buried it. I added a snare reverb, a subtle kit reverb, and a parallel compression bus where the ratio was set to 30:1 to add some energy underneath.

I had a hard time dealing with the bass, so I compressed it a lot and added a fuzz bus into a Logic fuzz pedal, which covered up a lot of pops in the high end of the DI bass.

For the amped guitars, I pretty much cleaned up the low mids to taste on each one and lightly compressed them all the exact same way. For me, the hardest part was getting the balance right. I eventually automated the first verse guitars to move from the center to a wide spread for the chorus/rest of the song.

As for the DI guitars, I thought it would be fun to skip amp sims and do something really abrasive and dry. So I just added a distortion plugin to the tracks and panned them off to the sides to add some interesting texture to the overall guitar mix. Especially the extra guitars in the last chorus.

Onto the vocals, I added a pretty heavy compressor first to simulate a Distressor, but honestly I've never used one so I don't exactly know what amount of compression is appropriate going in. Added more clarity to the vocals with EQ, then another compressor. I made many delay buses which linked to the the lead and backup vocals to fill out space. I personally love slapback delay rather than reverb, I used that on the guitars too.

After many delay buses, I put the guitars through a parallel compression bus to give them more energy. Two things that I really struggled with were those guitar solos and the ending vocal bit. Both of these pieces sounded very out of place no matter how I mixed them.

I didn't do any master bus processing, but I did automate the volumes to give a little boost to the choruses.

I had a great time working on my first Mix Challenge which I hope to do again in the future, this is definitely a great resource to improve.

I just realized that the tracks "Chorus Ad Voc" 1 and 2 are identical, maybe there was an uploading error? or it´s only supposed to be one? I double checked to see if I maybe accidentaly copied one of them but even if I import them directly from the Rar file they´re still the same. I´ve almost finished mixing so if anyone could answer this for me it would be great. Thanks!

Here's my submission for MC 51:

MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b807mvbugtg5u ... e.mp3?dl=0
WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lv1fx14zwiodm ... e.wav?dl=0

Approach:

This one is not to be mixed by the faint of heart! It needs compressors slamming, saturation, distortion, anything it takes to keep it edgy and raw. To that end, I used the UAD Studer emulation to apply tape saturation (burying the needle well into the red) on every track except for the bass (just wasn't sitting right for some reason). I also only used a tiny touch of plate reverb for blending purposes. I wanted everything sounding pretty raw. Also, I was conscious not to mix the vocals too hot because I wanted the band to sound really big.

Drums:
It sounds like the drums were recorded via an electronic kit or virtual instrument based on the lack of bleed. They didn't require a ton of effort though I did layer in a sample underneath the kick and snare to change the character a bit. I'd say my kick is 60% "Kick Out", 20% "Kick In", and 20% sample. My snare is roughly 70% snare top, 15% snare bottom, 15% sample. I have a bit of EQ on the kick, snare, and overheads and a UAD API 2500 on the drum bus.

Bass:
This was a difficult track. I ended up using an amp model from Amplitube, EQ, Compression, and LittleRadiator to add distortion.

Rhythm Guitars:
I did not reamp any of the tracks. I used Rtb Guit2 Lp Twin as my primary rhythm track and anchor so that I could slice up Rtb Guit1 Lp Twin and apply different effects to different sections and have a bit more freedom with it. They all have a bit of EQ applied and are bussed together into a UAD Fairchild and Pultech.

Solo Guitar:
This one was also challenging due to how harsh it is frequency-wise. I pulled out some 3k with EQ and ran it through Oeksound Soothe to smooth it over a bit.

Vocals:
I crushed the vocals with the UAD Distressor (I used Devil-Loc instead on the harmony vocal). By the time they were done, they needed some DeEssing and I also applied soothe to take out of some of the sharpness without removing the distortion.

That's the gist! Everything was slammed so hard before it got to the master bus that I didn't really need to do any processing there. I have a Fairchild running at less than 1dB of GR and Waves L1 sitting there not really doing anything to catch any accidental peaks.

FixInTheMix wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 09, 2019 21:09 CET

I double checked to see if I maybe accidentaly copied one of them but even if I import them directly from the Rar file they´re still the same.

They were already in the source files ("Integrity Check" process). If they're really the same (did you try to phase invert them?), maybe go a bit creative with them: time align, micro pitch shifting, mod delay -- to create a double take.

This is what I'd do at least.

Hi all,

Just discovered this place, will enter whenever I have time too! Here’s my first entry. It’s sent in 48Khz purely because my desk doesn’t support 44.1khz; Allen and Heath decided it was no longer a needed sample rate when making the QU desks in their infinite wisdom……

Google Drive Wave
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VG9Ud ... ozp3XN0K75

Google Drive MP3
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Lla3a ... lDeKqB-BYx


Screenshots (can't seem to make them appear on the post, sorry...if anyone knows how to make that work from google drive let me know and I'll edit the post):

Whole Project Overview:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TgnVR ... mJIrw5gnky

Drums and Bass Project view:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=124MiP ... URIVMIa-e5

Guitars and Vocals Project view:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mzhGO ... J8iW-hPJMo

Busses Project view:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1A_hVz ... 5PNEw8wsVW

Drums, Bass and Guitars Mixconsole view:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UAUao ... qCiA6QGvHT

Vocals Mixconsole view:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=17ryf0 ... OjPR9EZKzz

Busses and Master out Mixconsole view:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=14MEt3 ... sixlAezVfw

Notes:

Used Cubase Pro 9.5, Allen and Heath QU-24 desk, mixed between Yamaha NS-10s, Fostex PM-1s and Yamaha HS50s, third party plugins are mostly Waves, Slate and Soundtoys plugins.

Drums:
-I discarded quite a few of the tracks. …. Didn’t use the HH, Kick out, Sn btm, mono room or bleed channel.
-I did kit replacement on all shells (Slate Trigger 2)
-Kick drum: Used Waves Dbx 160
-Snare: Used Waves API 2500. Also sent it to an fx track of heavily compressed Soundtoys Decapitator
-Toms: Top and mid just kit replaced, Floor tom also went into a DBX160
-Overheads: SSL G channel strip and Desser for hi-hats
-Whole kit mix sent into an fx track using Abbey Chambers for a room sound.

Used Slate VCC (neve setting) on all tracks + FG-N preamp.

Bass:

-Duplicated the track and sent one into Cubases Bass amp rack for an amp sound (and parallel compression purposes)
Waves Bass rider on both

Used Slate VCC (neve setting) on all tracks + FG-N preamp.

Guitars
-Used Waves J37, CLA-3A (CLA-76 on rhythm at end)
-Sent all rhythms to a fx reverb
-Solo has H-delay set to what I jokingly call half beast (333ms)

Used Slate VCC (neve setting for rhythm, API for lead) on all tracks + FG-73 preamp.


Vocal:
-Scheps Omni in gate and FET mode, Cubase stock Desser and Waves vocal rider
-Sent all vocals to FX using Soundtoys little plate, automated a H-delay on/off for verses/choruses
-Also Sent backing vocals to a seperare FX using Soundtoys microshift, a different H-delay setting and a stereo widener (with a 600hz shelf + 12k shelf)
-Lead vocal has a hint of Soundtoys alterboy (used preset rock vocal, lowered mix ratio to almost dry)

I contemplated tuning the vocals subtly but didn’t know if that was allowed?


Used Slate VCC (neve setting) on all tracks + FG-73 preamp.

Busses:
All tracks and FX sent to respective busses for Drums, Parallel Kit, Bass, Guitars, Vocals. All have VCC mixbus (SSL G) and VTC (Hollywood or London for Bass)
Drums: First Sent to Slate VBC in SSL mode (real subtle comp of about avg 1db GR, for gluing purposes)
Kit shells also get sent to a parallel compressor (Slate monster).
Guitar: I added SKnote Disto-S (all buttons in mode and blended in). Also added a Hollywood as a pre overdriven and blended in at about 15%
Bass: Added Decapitator and a top EQ boost added so the mids cut more in the mix (original bass doesn’t have a lot of definition).
Vocals: J37 plugin, into an instance of monster at 30% for some parallel compressor and Decapitator for more grit.


Master Out:
One instance of Slate VBC used all project (mixed in the box). Used VBC-Red (Focusrite) avg 1-3db GR.

Total Mix time – 2 hours (honest, I mix fast when no edits are involved and the sound the song needed sounded straightforward in my head)

Is it complete? I’d say it’s a good way there. There is one snare hit that peaked at -2.4db I’d address, the delay on the very first vocal line seems overpowered compared to the rest (automation tweak), and maybe the bass needs to be just a tad louder, but not worth going back for desperately if I’m honest (I’m prepared to take those on the chin on first submission and do them in a revision should I get that far along with anything else that arises).

FixInTheMix wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 09, 2019 21:09 CET

I just realized that the tracks "Chorus Ad Voc" 1 and 2 are identical, maybe there was an uploading error? or it´s only supposed to be one? I double checked to see if I maybe accidentaly copied one of them but even if I import them directly from the Rar file they´re still the same. I´ve almost finished mixing so if anyone could answer this for me it would be great. Thanks!

Yes it is, just because I did some creative stuff with the duplicated one !!! Don't really remember exactly what I did but I use to do that. You are allowed not to use it !
MOA22