Here's my mix for Round 2:
wav:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/06op4i8b54121 ... 2.wav?dl=0
mp3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rvr6vbcnlf0bm ... 2.mp3?dl=0
Regarding your feedback, Morelia: I'm glad you liked the mix and had so little to complain about
It was a pleasure to mix your song. I thought the tracks had everything already there (I used only processed guitars + the main drum tracks), so there was no need to re-amp, and I didn't wish for drum samples or else...
Mix Round 2:
- I modified the sound of the guitars a little. As this has influence on the mix overall, I had to be careful, since I liked the overall balance and didn't want to alter it too much. Listening to the other mixes of the Top 10
(congrats to all, btw, it's gonna be tough to decide on a winner!), I noticed that you like it when the guitars sound loud and full. So I sent the whole guitar-bus to a parallel effects track, emphasizing the low mids (around 200-300hz), and then going to a saturator. I obviously had to bring down the volume of guitars now, and also bring the bass up (+ EQ a little).
- I did lower the verse Vox a bit, but since the guitars and bass have slightly more energy now, I brought it back again and now I think it is where it was before
- De-essing: yeah, I can see there is minor issues there, still. But: since your main vocal track is really expressive, many ess-sounds don't get caught by a deesser. And I didn't want to go in manually at this stage. I did de-ess hard on backing tracks though, and even carved out that frequency with EQ.
- Guitar solo is now in the middle, and I like it better like this, too!
Now to my main approach (Round 1):
When I first heard the song, I immediately thought of 90s /2000s alternative rock music: RATM, Chili Peppers, QOTSA, Pearl Jam...
Not that I was reminded of them particularly, but I wanted to copy that sound: Make it as big & powerful as possible, but at the same time as dry & natural as possible. This resulted in only 1 Room each for guitars & drums, one Hall for the snare, + one Hall & one Delay for Vocals. I didn't plan this or restrict myself to this. But it felt right in the end.
Oh and there is also one Room on the entire mix (at 7%). I don't know if I can even hear it myself, but I like to think it glues together and takes some harshness away still.
I think the snare is a really good example: it is quite dry, not too much presence, but there is enough room and oomph that you can feel.
- I started by selecting Drum tracks and forming a sound I liked: Vitamin on the Kick (low freq resonance), lo-cut and parallel hard comp on OH, only a bit of HH, and snare-group: I doubled the main snare-track and pitched it down one octave, to have more body without having to eq too much. This I add back in to the snare group
All the drums go to a room-fx send. on drum-bus I only have a bit of EQ and a Kush UBK (saturator/comp/tape) with the "roomier drums" preset.
The source material is great, and I really think it sounds quite real
- Next, Bass: To get the most out of it, I "manually quantized" the bass. (see pic). Autmatic quantizing a played bass leaves artefacts, but more importantly, it will destroy the feel. So I made shure that only the notes that were too far off were corrected. Then I delayed the whole bass track by a few miliseconds. I like to do this so that the kick will always have a little more room to, well, kick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You just have to listen to it. A lot.
The more that drums and bass have a great time feel, the less you have to rescue by compression etc.
Having said that, note that I still have quite a few Inserts on the bass track. (see pic)
- I (almost) only used the processed guitar tracks, they had a great sound and the panning is simple and good. The group has a low-cut, EQ for presence, limiter (very little), harmonic enhancer.
The guitar solo is automated by VCA, so it doesn't "disappear" when it goes into low register. I did use the DI signal of the guitar solo. Its heavily squashed, and it adds a little clear tone to support the melody.
The guitar intro is taken from the original demo. Yes, I'm aware this might count as cheating. But it was just so good. I could have taken 3 hours to get -nearly- there, and it would have bothered me still. Luckily the kick drum that comes in during the intro is quiet enough so it doesn't mess with my kick.
- Vocals:
At this point I had an instrumental track that I really enjoyed listening to. This is a good starting point to bring the vocals in. I'll listen to the Vocal takes, mostly against the music, and then it kinda plays itself. I went straight for the agressive main takes for verse and chorus. I knew I wanted one main, loud center vocal, and the rest only for support in the background.
I built one vocal chain from one of my presets, copied it to all vocal tracks and modified where needed. the low vocal in the verse I used only for low freq support, cutting off all above 230hz and compressed real hard.
I edited the clip volume to tame the very loud shouts. I used melodyne here and there to align the pitch of the main or backing tracks. But only to a certain degree.
There is a bit of Hall as FX-send. And a delay effect which is automated for the phrase-ends in the chorus.
Im general, I use EQ to get rid of unwanted frequencies on the separate tracks. I used RX de-noise on bass, to get rid of high static hiss noise which would come up during compression.
On the mix-bus, aside from the light room-fx, I also have the TDR VOS slickEQ (great free plugin!) set on their "freshmaker" preset.
Thanks again for the opportunity. Best of luck to the other contestants!
Carlos
overview:
bass edits:
bass inserts:
vca track:
