Hi Gary and Nick! What a fun song!
First timer here, and sad that I've just only discovered this friendly competition.
Here's my mix:
MP3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ommn8vmir9bdh ... h.mp3?dl=0
WAV
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jb9fjkrew3pp8 ... h.wav?dl=0
This is the first relatively big thing I've mixed - usually the tracks I make myself are on the order of ~20 tracks, so I appreciate the effort you put into pre-mixing this. I went relatively nuts with amp head simulation, and you'll find in about 5 different places, including the master, on this mix. I hope you both enjoy it.
In the rough order that I tackled the tracks, here's the processing involved:
Intro Strings:
These sounded like they could use some of that "70's analog thin classical music mix" sound, so they went through the Cool Plex amp from Guitar Rig (hereafter abbreviated as "Cool Plex"), about 90% wet, followed by a medium length reverb from Little Reflektor (also Guitar Rig).
Drums:
The drums all got grouped together into one bus, which had a little loudness EQ and some compression to improve snappiness in the lows and mids, from Alloy 2. Then, a little Cool Plex, with post-EQ bass boost and some more much milder compression. Individual instruments were also processed.
Kick:
I've heard it said that the relationship between kick drum and bass is the most important in any pop-like track - and that's certainly true here. Gary, you picked a kick with a nice pop that I chose to add a little more boom to with some surgical eq cuts, a little high rolloff, and some mild compression from Alloy 2. I found that the levels you chose for the two Kick tracks were perfect the way they were relative to each other.
Snare:
The snare needed a little more warmth and punch - so it got the full bevy of treatments from Alloy 2. Highpass at 250 hz, transient shaping to improve the attack and the sustain, mid and high moderate distortion, and some very soft limiting. I also used a tad of stereo separation on the bottom and top tracks, as well as a targeted intro fade, which I thought created a slightly more interesting sound.
Hihat:
The hi-hats needed a bit more sustain - so they got their mids and lows rolled off, with a surgical cut to make it more interesting, plus heavy compression.
Toms:
The toms had a good dynamic range, but they got more stereo with the Ozone 7 Imager, cranked almost to the max.
Overheads:
I split off a piece of the overhead track to emphasize the first crash, but didn't do this for each hit, just because I wasn't sure it sounded good. I played with the panning to get it to oppose the hats, which were mostly panned right.
Drum Room:
These were highpassed pretty extensively.
Tamb:
I couldn't find a way to make this sound the way I wanted, so I shoved it into the background volume-wise.
Bass:
The other half of the low frequency content. I tweaked a preset that emphasized the sub-bass and bass frequencies from Alloy, with strong loudness EQ, mid-frequency excitement, and strong multiband compression.
Organ and Strings:
I had these oppose each other, pan wise. I applied some Cool Plex to both stereo sets, and followed that with a highpass filter at about 400 hz. That gave me the crunch on the organ and the movement on the strings that I was looking for to gel together other elements.
Guitars:
This track had a lot of awesome guitar tracks! It was challenging to come up with ways to make them all distinct and yet play together well. I'm not sure I succeeded. In the end, I ended up with a few different busses, and a few different kinds of effects.
Guitars Low (chugging 4ths)
I set these up to oppose the Sus riff tracks pan-wise, a little bit. They pretty much coalesce with the strings, but I think the overall effect is nice. They're highpassed and high shelved to leave mostly mids.
Guitars Sustained Riffs and Fills
I equalized this bus aggressively on the highs, combined with a de-esser to prevent harshness, and a highpass to leave room for the bass. In addition, a stereo imager was used.
On the Sustained Riffs, I used tape echo to add a little depth.
On the Fills, I added more intense EQ, and more distorted tape echo. I panned these more center to distinguish them from the sustained riffs.
Chorus Guitars
On this bus, I used Stereo Tune from Guitar Rig, a kind of stereo enhancing modulation effect, plus a cross-delay with a short tempo-synced length, and a lot of aggressive high-end equalizer and big compression. The long sustains in "Gtr Chorus L" and "R" got additional high-band compression. I automated the volume to add emphasis to the ends of choruses.
Brass
I was really pleased with the energy that these added to the track when they had a lot of high-frequency excitement and compression added and their volume automated so they add to the "wall of sound" in the chorus, peeking out just above the guitars and then dipping under again.
Lead Vox and Verse Harmony Vox
The lead vocal track was highpassed, low-mid cut, and high-emphasized, with lots of excitement above 3.5 kHz, large compression ratios in series, and strong de-essing to counteract all of that, along with a little reverb, distorted analog delay, and a tiny bit of all around analog saturation.
The harmony vocals were also highpassed, panned to different sides, and compressed to a lesser extent.
The whole bus then recieved additional saturation, reverb, and short delay.
Chorus Vox and Chorus Harmony Vox
These weren't messed with too much individually, except the Last Chorus vox, which gained a great deal of cross-synced delay for extra epicness at the end. The whole bus recieved Cool Plex, and a post-filter to compensate for the extra highs that unit grants.
Old-style Section
The harpsichord and the mello flutes were pan-opposed, the harpsichords Cool Plex'd and extra delay added, with wetness automated up during the extent of the section, the flutes Twang Reverb'd (another amp from Guitar Rig) with the spring reverb built-in automated up over the section.
The "old voice" recieved bandpass filters and distortion to help it sound a little old, and the vinyl noise was left untouched. The explosion was chorused to make the extensive distortion in the sample less obvious and then panned a little for extra interest, to oppose the "Here I go" stem, which was treated with a radio dialogue preset to bring us back into the era of bright and loud.
End Vox
These were panned, with a bit of delay added which gradually increases in time as the fade progresses.
Master Track
I went a little nuts. I tried not to touch dynamics much, but I threw in some broadband equalization, a tape emulation, and I ran the whole thing through Cool Plex, and a post-filter to reduce some of the errant high frequencies.
