MIX CHALLENGE - MC083 December 2021 - Winners announced

[SuC76]

Thank you for R2 @Johnny_Fingers.


I extended a fade out a little bit.
Warmed up acoustic guitars and tightened the bass guitar.

Here is the R2:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10SfbT7 ... sp=sharing




Bye!

[LCM!]

Glad to get into R2 with so many great mixes here, thanks so much @Johnny_Fingers.

Following your feedback, I have tried to add some movement to my mix by making these slight changes:

- lowering the level of the acoustic guitar in the presence of vocals
- adjusting the level of the lead guitar and harmonics at some points
- more width for the instruments in the chorus and the guitar solo
- further attempts to smooth the vocals (high and low pass on the vocal delay and reverse EQ on the chorus).

Good luck to you all.

This is my mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CRJ5d8 ... sp=sharing

[ChrisK99]

Thank you @Johnny_Fingers for choosing my mix for R2 and for your feedback. Really excited and honoured to be chosen for the second round.
Took me a while to trace down my screw up but found that annoying click in the verse was due to some unintentional automation which recorded me bypassing one of my plugins on a buss
To slim down the bass I split it into two separate tracks filtered down to lo and hi frequencies and EQed and compressed them separately before rebalancing the highs and lows on a buss to be treated with Smooth Operator (which had originally been on the original channel) and another gentle pass of compression with a Shadow Hills compressor to 'glue them back together'.
Just after I uploaded the first round entry I actually flew over to the States for a 2 week holiday and when I returned to the UK and this mix I felt it needed scaling up a bit. I liked the vocals dryer and intimate so I added some spring reverb to the melody guitar while picturing cruising those California Interstates.
I also quickened the attack time on the vocal compression to mellow the attack at the beginning of some lines.
A quick rebalance after those changes and here we are...

My R2 Mix

[LowlandsWave]

Wow, thanx for picking my mix with the final 15. Most of all thnx for the feedback, I did the following:

• Changed the fade out

• Reworked the lead guitar, I used a combination of line 6 Helix Fender emulation with some small delay. That goes into a NeOld V76U73 and a tape emulation.

• Cleaned up the acoustic guitar, basically EQ moves to get rid of some muddy freq's

• some extra attention to de-essing

• some extra attention to timing

• dropped the acoustic guitar a little to get the vocals a bit more up front

• changed the eq on the last harmonics guitar part to get more separation between the harmony guitar and the lead

Hope you like it.

Here's my mix: MC083_John_Henderson_Sun Returns_LowlandsWave_R2

[gonzacarmele]

Hello, thanks so much for the feedback, tacking the time for listening carefully and give each feedback! And of course, for picking my mix for round 2

I've done some changes, following @Johnny_Fingers notes and some things that I've felt.

- Used a clipper to bring up front vocals, some harmonics and eq enhancement also for some spark and brighter color. The vocals had very little processing!
- Did some small eq cleaning in my Instruments bus. I've also used the Elysia Alpha master for the bus, and I've adjusted some compression and light clip in the mid and side, little but helpful to the music I think.
- Little spark in the acoustic guitar.
- Changed the fadeout

All my modifications where around 0.5db, except for vocals that were really soft, there where heavy boosting there. Hope you like this!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CaiZ87 ... sp=sharing

[PrzemekM.]

Hi,

Many thanks for choosing my mix for the second round @Johnny_Fingers . It is a great joy for me.

I did some vocal tweaks, with a delay, made some spatial changes, and improved the sound of the solo guitars.

And this is my second mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16gKZSo ... sp=sharing

Hope you like it.

PrzemekM

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your edit for Mix Round 2

[TomImmon]

Thank you for selecting me for round 2 @Johnny_Fingers .
I significantly shortened the fadeout and reduced some of the acoustic guitar noise. However, it is relatively difficult without significantly changing the sound, so I only did it in particularly critical places.
Otherwise I tried to make the sound a little warmer (less harsh) and to integrate the voices a little more. A lot of small tweaks.
I hope you like it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kcq43st9ux6dt ... 2.wav?dl=0

[Mister Fox]

It's the 22nd January 2022, 02:50 (UTC+1) - the 2nd Mix Round has officially ended.


STATISTICS

• Sadly, not everyone has sent in an edit (those being @Mork was unable to due to time constraints, @LocalMusic, @Locrais and @Saccharine_trust)
• We have 0 Wild Card uses to advance into the next round (not available this month)
• We have 0 participant that decided on not to advance through the use of a Wild Card (not available this month)
• We have 0 submissions after the deadline

Please check your upload links again (I could download all files), and have an eye on this thread for more feedback and a possible Mix Round 3, or an announcement of the final results.



I'm now opening up the room (again) for Q&A's and giving each other feedback (which is highly encouraged)

Please check out all other games on the community.


See you on the flipside.

[Johnny_Fingers]

Sorry for the delay... this has been a difficult decision!

Once again I want to thank everyone for working so hard on my song. I really appreciate the time and effort you all put into this. You all made my music sound great!

I listened to all the mixes several times on different speaker systems to get a good sense of how the mixes were working. I have to say that I think all of these mixes are very good, and I would be happy with any of them, it really just came down to which ones best fit the mood I feel for this song.

My comments below are in addition to those from the first round… I didn’t repeat those earlier comments here but you should read these new comments in the context of those original comments, especially to get a feel for what I liked and why you were in the Top 15.

Once more, thank you for spending your time listening to and thinking about my song! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Now I just have to find someone to master a mix for me

With that background, here are my Top 3:

1 EtienneRosset Nice balance of reverb on Vox. Vocals sounds great. Definitely de-essed. Present and big. Guitars also sounds great, acoustics are nicely cleaned up. Nice build into the choruses. Bass is very well integrated. Only criticism is that the lead guitar tone could be a little less harsh, but this is minor.

2 MixedByADN Vocals sound great here, nice and up front. I like the second guitar ping-pong from side to side in the chorus. Nice guitar tones throughout, acoustics sounds very good and well integrated.

3 PrzemekM Overall sound and balance is still very nice. Acoustics sound very good. Really like how the bass tone blends with the acoustics. My suggestion is that the vocals could have used a bit more pop-cleaning and deessing.

And the others who submitted this round and weren’t disqualified:

JamesMusic This is still really nice, and was close to the top. My voice sounds great here… thanks! Really like the reverb on the lead guitar in the break. Still has the away echo at the end but not it sounds good and it only happens once and gives the sense of away. Criticism is that Vox could use a little more deessing at beginning, and bass is a bit flubby and loud in places. Also acoustics are clicky.

TomImmon (binaural mix). Still sounds great. And this was also near the top. My voice sounds very good. Nice tight overlap of the vocals on the chorus. Bass is tight. Everything has a location in space. Acoustics are pretty clean though some buzzing and a little clicky (too much high freq picking sounds). Overall maybe could tone the higher freqs?

LCM! Guitars sounds very good. Like I said before, the mix is a little flat, and probably needs some volume dynamics or other dynamics to make it more interesting. Vocals are a little more boxy than others.

SuC76 Acoustics sound clean. A lot of ess on my voice throughout. Bass is still a bit flubby.

LowlandsWave A lot of reverb on vocals, maybe a bit too much? Doesn’t stand out in any particular way.

ChrisK99 A good solid mix, fixed the click and tamed the flubby bass tone. To me my voice tone is not quite as good as in some of the other mixes.