Mix Challenge

General Directions for Mixing:
"It is all about the energy not about the cleanest
polished mix. ... I not only want to hear,
but also feel the driving energy of the song."
My approach is all about the driving energy of a live performance. I am imagining myself listening in the crowd, banging my head and jumping all around while this song is played on a live gig. And after it ends, I get the chance to work with the recorded track and try to relive it. I hope that I managed to fulfill this direction.

Possible References:

1. Soundgarden "Rusty Cage" (song provider)
2. Alice in Chains "Them Bones" (staff)

This is my main reference as mentioned by the song provider and staff. I am always cross-referencing my work before and after I finished my session. I am taking notes on what each song's approach to a particular instrument and sound.
Therefore, I am making this decision:

1. Kick needs to cut through just enough, and not "annoyingly" having too much sub frequencies.
2. Guitars are the widest instrument on the mix, "comfortably" sitting on the sides.
3. Vocals having it's "harsh and raw" energy.

Mixing details:

• Drums:
  • Volume Balance
  1. Kick: I duplicated the signal for different treatment. Each is for Low and High frequency information (simulating Kick In and Kick Out track) to help it cut through the mix.
  • Kick Low: (Channel Strip) Preamp + High Cut Filter + Expander + EQ + Compressor + ReactivEQ + Saturator + Brickwall Limiter
  • Kick High: Compressor + Low Cut EQ + Saturation + Fresh Air
  2. Snare: I sent the signal to a bus for different treatment (simulating Snare Top and Snare Bottom track).
  • Snare Top: EQ shaping boosting the snare "body" freq, and cutting some "ring" freq.
  • Snare Bot: (Channel Strip) Preamp + Low cut and mid scoop Filter + Expander + Compressor + EQ + ReactivEQ + DeEsser + Saturation
  3. Room: Fair amount of Cut around Kick frequency to avoid any filtering, and small amount of cut around crashes frequency.
  4. Drum_Split: A bus for different treatment. Channel strip plugin.
  • Preamp + Mid scoop Filter + Compressor + EQ + Compressor + Saturator + Limiter (acting as clipper).
  5. Main Bus: Drum Strip + Clipper + Bus Compressor
  • Drum strip setting: Lo and Hi freq enhancer + small amount of transient shaper + parallel compression.
  • Around 1dB of clipping.
  • Bus Comp setting: slow attack / slow release, 2:1 ratio, with key filter engaged at around 800 Hz.
• Bass:
  1. Bass_Split: A bus for different treatment. Channel strip plugin.
  • Preamp + Low cut and mid scoop Filter + Compressor + EQ + Saturator + VCA Limiter.
  • This is to further emphasize the higher fundamentals of the bass and help it cut through the mix better.
  2. Main Bus: EQ (M/S) and Saturation.
  • Stereo Low Shelf to save up energy, and .5 dB boost of the Mid channel around the base freq.
  • Gentle saturation.
• Guitars:
  • Panning and Automation
  • Volume Balance
  1. Main Bus:
  • M/S EQ. Low cut + mid Scoop on the mid channel, and small amount of mid scoop and high boost on the side channel.
  • Preamp + Low cut and mid scoop Filter + Compressor + EQ + Saturator + VCA Limiter.
  • Bus Compressor with 1.5:1 ratio and 100 ms release.
  2. Solo:
  • Panning and Automation
  • 1/2 delay ping pong style
  • Reverb
• Synths:
  • M/S EQ. Low cut + high boost on the side channel, and mid scoop on the mid channel.
  • Fast attack/release compressor.
• Vocals:
  • Panning and Automation
  • Vocal Strip. EQ + Compressor + DeEsser
  • Inflator
  1. Vocal_Split: A bus for different treatment. Channel strip plugin.
  • Slap Delay.
  • Low cut and mid scoop Filter + Preamp + EQ + Compressor + DeEsser + Saturator.
• Effects:
  1. Instrument Short Reverb
  • Every instruments except drums.
  • Close source in a small room.
  • small amount of pre-delay and a very short tail.
  2. Instrument Long Reverb
  • Every instruments except drums.
  • Distant source in a hall/arena (typical music festival venue).
  • Fair amount of pre-delay and a very long tail.
  3. Instrument Delay
  • Every instruments except drums.
  • 1/8 triplet and 1/4 triplet Ping pong style delay.
  • High amount of Low and Hi Cut
  4. Vocal Delay
  • Distorted and highly saturated.
  • 1/2 Ping pong style delay.
  • Extreme amount of Low and Hi Cut so it will get "buried" in the mix
  5. Snare Plate
  • Snare and small amount of Kick.
  • Around 1 second of Tail.
  • Fair amount Hi Cut, with a mid scoop
  6. Drum Reverb
  • Drum Bus send to give drum some sort of "space" in the mix.
  • Around 1 second of Tail.
  • Fair amount of Low and Hi Cut, with a mid scoop (especially on the snare fundamentals freq)
  7. Automation

Track
Loved the track, and the vibe of old-school hard rock. The genre made me enter the competition!

Mix Bus
Punched in a SSL Bus Compressor before doing anything else. Attack slow and the release was relatively fast since I thought this track needed that punch.

Drums
- Drum Bus: Slight Compressor with Slow attack and fast release
- Kick: Basic EQ, slight compression
- Snare: Not gonna lie, a weird EQ - took out the aggression using multiple EQs, and then I tried a compressor, but ended up removing it because it added more punch than what was necessary.
- Rack Toms: Basic EQ and some compression.
- Floor Tom: Basic EQ and some compression.
- OH (Grouped into a Stereo pair): Basic EQ - boosted the highs, no compression.
- Room: Basic EQ, a bit of a squash compression but not too much.

I've also added in two more buses - Parallel compression, and distortion
The parallel compression compresses heavily the drums and then I add a bit of it into the overall mix.
The distortion channel takes in kick, snare, and toms, then distorts them. This is more of a color choice; although it's not something you hear well in the overall mix.

Bass
For the bass, I've amped it, EQ it, added Bass Rider to keep the volumes stable and serial compressed it using a 76 and 3A.

Guitars
Guitars were a bit of a trouble for me because I've run into an issue of how to group them. Usually, I'm used to a lot of double guitars L R pan, but it was somehow quite difficult to do that in this track, BUT, I've managed to find a combination that let me pan the guitars full L and full R.
I didn't process individual tracks but rather grouped them any way I could and then processed them. Almost all the guitars except the solo, have the same plugins with very similar treatments.
All of them have two EQs and a 76 compressor.

Something that I found interesting was, that I blended in the clean signal because I liked how the strum sounded, so I made sure to extremely High Pass the clean signal so that only the "chuck" sound got through, and compressed it.

Keys
Synth was just EQ and Compression. The synth felt like it was a fill, so I did not process it too much.

Vocals
The first thing I noticed was that Vocal 2 and 3 acted as main vocals while Vocal 1 was more like backing vocals, so I rearranged them, and processed them thinking so.
Apart from that, I've also added in two new buses of ADT (which delays dynamically to create a fake stereo), and a flanger, then blended those in with the main vocals.

Main Vocals
Auto Tune, Vocal Rider to balance the volume, Butch Vig Vocals saturation to bring that radio-ish voice, EQ, a small de-esser, rvox compression, and 2A. The serial compression brought out the reverbs alot, and to counter that, instead of reducing the processing I've actually made sure to kind of match that reverb for the other instruments (ex: Guitars, Snare, etc)

Backing Vocals
Similar treatment, however, I stereo-spread that to make it sound more open.

Automations
A few of the noticeable places I've automated were before the chorus, I've reduced the volume of all busses individually then increased them so that the chorus sounds more like a chorus instead of the verses and chorus being the same volume. Apart from those, it was some vocals, lead guitar, revert automation specially in the bridge (I loved that part).

Closing Thoughts
Reading the rules and going through the tracks, I noticed the tracks were processed, which was quite difficult to mix. If I were to mix this track officially, I would do two things:
- Request clean tracks (if they were present)
- 100% add drum samples

The samples were not added to this mix cause of the rules.