Mix Challenge

JulienMeirone wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 02, 2019 01:36 CEST

Yep this is a good song with a good video. But to me tuning the lead vocal in this song is not appropriate. There is like a raw emotion in the vocals especially with such lyrics. Tuning it may remove this raw emotion imo.

Wrong big wrong. A mix without tuning sound dull and emotionless! To me, tuning is a way of allowing the vocalist to express the emotion without recalling and overdubbing. If you use it artistically, you can make a singer make you cry. In fact, drum replacement should have been allowed. My approach would have been different from what I have had delivered. what I could have achieved mixing this song would have been night and day. It is creativity killer disallowing engineers drum replacement.

Wizzo wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 22, 2019 08:13 CEST

Page 11 Mork
Mp3 link not working

Thanks Wizzo for pointing that out! Funny, I right-clicked on "show link for sharing" again, pasted the new link and and noticed that it was exactly the same (still didn't work). So better double check your Google links (which I usually do, but was too lazy yesterday)!

Mork wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 22, 2019 09:37 CEST

Wizzo wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 22, 2019 08:13 CEST

Page 11 Mork
Mp3 link not working

Thanks Wizzo for pointing that out! Funny, I right-clicked on "show link for sharing" again, pasted the new link and and noticed that it was exactly the same (still didn't work). So better double check your Google links (which I usually do, but was too lazy yesterday)!

No worries Mork ! everything should be fine now .

first of all: thanks very much for participating to all of you!!!

wow - this is quite an experience! i have never been a member of a jury in a mixing contest
and i did not imagine that it could be THAT hard! you found so many different and
interesting ways to approach this song:

many of you focused on the jazz-club setting, trying to re-create that mood and sonic
environment. others got very creative with efx and little decent elements to keep up
the interest of the listener throughout the song. and many just mixed this one like
any other song to get the best "radio-ready" sound. well done, everybody!

i was listening to all mixes from day 1 of the contest as they came in. as mentioned,
i first adjusted the loudness of each and every mix to -16 LUFS to ensure a fair
comparison. i listened to every mix at least 3 times: on headphones, speakers
and - yes - my laptop.

at this stage, i marked all mixes that have obvious issues which could not
be resolved with minor changes in a second round of the contest. although still good mixes,
the overall tonal balance was quite often a problem. i assume, that this is the result of
unlinear monitoring in many of these cases. especially mixing on speakers in an untreated
room can result in a mix that sounds great at your site, but does not translate to other systems.

in this situation i would strongly encourage you to
1.) check the mix on good/neutral headphones from time to time. you don't need to mix entirely
on those, but make sure you don't end up with too much/little energy - typically in the very
low end. you can even improve this, if you google the frequency response graph of your model
and insert a correcting EQ into the monitoring path of your DAW.
2.) use an analyser! there are plug-ins for free available and these are very useful to detect
issues regarding the distribution of energy throughout the frequency spectrum.
3.) A/B with your favorite songs of that genre. if you load songs from world-class productions
of that genre into the analyser and compare these to your mix, it is quite possible,
that you can SEE issues, even if you don't hear them on your monitors.

next, i decided to sort out a few mixes with other issues, like very narrow stereo-width,
unappropriate levels of single instruments incl. milena's voice, etc.

now, i ended up with 17 shortlisted mixes with none of these problems. however, they still
sound very different! at this second stage i will focus on smaller details, creativity, a
convincing and widening chorus, etc.

i'll do my best to come up with a final list for the second round ASAP.

thanks again for being a part of this exciting journey and best regards from cologne,

dirk.

fddsa

Hello, Dirk,
For the time's sake, I just checked all links and made a txt file, just to make everything easier, I know it's not an easy task, anyway good luck, and happy listening time

Wizzo wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 22, 2019 08:13 CEST

Hello Mr Fox , Everyone,
I just checked all links and found ,
We have 81 participants and a few error links :

Thanks for your time.

IIRC, creedchub re-uploaded his files in early days, because of the file-name debates. Then his follow-up post cut off the links, so this made it non-downloadable. Since he shows up twice in the TXT, that would make it 80 entries. I don't know if this contestant also re-edited/re-submitted his material. Dirk has the final word on this.

Harvey2Mike posted his home-folder link, rather than a public link. So that is sadly a "you're out" scenario. The rules are clear on this.


MP3 links are mainly for preview purposes (not mandatory), but thanks for pointing it out. So if people are like "why are the mixes 44/16", keep in mind that Apple Logic Pro X for example samplerate convert and dither the source material down to 44/16 in the MP3. Of course the WAV should be equal or higher in resolution than the source.

I also agree that the documentation side of things is lacking as of late (got a couple of PM's on that topic). The Rules and Guidelines are clear on this as well.



I just updated my mini-stats post. Thanks for helping, Wizzo.

Pussylover wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 22, 2019 09:17 CEST

Wrong big wrong. A mix without tuning sound dull and emotionless! To me, tuning is a way of allowing the vocalist to express the emotion without recalling and overdubbing. If you use it artistically, you can make a singer make you cry.

The vocals were edited great to begin with, and the original mix has a lot of expression. So what would you have changed? Pitch correction? Vibrato? Is that really necessary?

Pussylover wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 22, 2019 09:17 CEST

In fact, drum replacement should have been allowed. My approach would have been different from what I have had delivered. what I could have achieved mixing this song would have been night and day. It is creativity killer disallowing engineers drum replacement.

I am not debating this any further. Drum replacement is not needed to 95% of the cases with the mixes we get.

And in this particular Mix Challenge case, you'd have drum-replaced drum samples. (did you check the bundled TXT's?)


If you often reach for samples (especially 1:1 replacement) than work with creative EQ, compression and saturation, also parallel processing, maybe you should rethink your editing strategies. From your viewpoint, you might work faster (and in your case maybe even more streamlined). However you do not have used all possible resources yet, but rather went the easy way out.

Pussylover wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 22, 2019 09:17 CEST

JulienMeirone wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 02, 2019 01:36 CEST

Yep this is a good song with a good video. But to me tuning the lead vocal in this song is not appropriate. There is like a raw emotion in the vocals especially with such lyrics. Tuning it may remove this raw emotion imo.

Wrong big wrong. A mix without tuning sound dull and emotionless! To me, tuning is a way of allowing the vocalist to express the emotion without recalling and overdubbing. If you use it artistically, you can make a singer make you cry. In fact, drum replacement should have been allowed. My approach would have been different from what I have had delivered. what I could have achieved mixing this song would have been night and day. It is creativity killer disallowing engineers drum replacement.

You are missunderstanding the role of the producer and the role of the mixing engineer. Plus, you can't say things like "vocal tuning and drum replacements suit every music style". If you think like this it means that a bot can work faster and better than you when it comes to do the same thing every single time.