Hey y'all!
First time particiapating. I'm glad I found this site, I happen to have some time on my hands due to the current situation in the world and what better way to spend that than practice mixing skills! And a perfect way to start it, as I used to be a recording and touring post-rock/shoegaze artist myself.
Here's my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e3j1hud9imyib ... o.wav?dl=0
So the mix was done in the box, Native Pro Tools 2020. I tried my best to keep the soothing mood in the verse and avoid compressing the life out of it, and then to have a really punchy chorus to knock your socks off.
VERSE DRUM LOOPS:
- The verse drums are the premixed loop, didn't do a whole lot there. A bit of eqing with Fabfilter Q3 and PA Bettermaker to get the mids right and tamed some cymbal harshness. I did however do a neat low end trick, where I duplicated the main track, cut the low end around 40-50hz with a very steep HPF from the main track, turned the duplicated track into a mono track with the Downmixer, low passed it from the same frequency, gated it and sample delayed it to the point where it felt the most satisfying. Learned from Eric Valentines youtube channel, check it out if you haven't already!
- Bridge and Dridge I almost left as is, just a little boost at 3k, a steep cut for an overtone at 7,5k and a dynamically suppressive hi shelf with FFQ3 taking out a couple db to tame the hi-hat a bit. Just for the Bridge, Dridge is untouched.
CHORUS LOOP:
- With the chorus loop, I went a bit further. A bunch of stuff happened here, because I wanted it to be really cool and punchy but it was hard to control without the delays and reverbs getting out of control. First of all I did the same low end trick as mentioned before, though I had some more eq going on before the gate and the low cut just to get the gate reacting properly, just random crazy moves until it opened and closed accordingly. The real processing was done after the gate anyways.
- The main track has a little bit of SPL De-Verb to prevent the delays and reverbs getting out of control. Followed that with some mid boosts with Q3 and then a Trans X-multi just boosting the transients around 700-4000 hz, and reducing the low mid transients, other bands bypassed. After that there's a FF Saturn with three bands, adding distortion to the mids and even more to the top end. Then a Sie-Q to boost even more mids, cause why not. Then a slight parallel drive with bx Elysia Karacter followed by Soothe and a C4 to try and control stuff that started to get out poke out a bit too much without sacrificing the punch I achieved. And last another FF Q3 with just a couple bands refining the low end, and an automated band that comes in every time the ride sample comes in, to tame it a bit.
- After all the shenanigans I still wasn't getting the definition I wanted, so I hope I didn't misinterpret the rules here. I pulled up the raw tracks to be used with the premixed loop, I interpreted the part about the rules to be more of a warning not to include the crazy phase issues into your mix. And yes, there was crazy phasing and flamming going on, so I had to manually align them and adjust the pitches of the tracks to make them sit right, and it worked! I only used the kick, snare and hi hat just to give them more definition. With the snare I just boosted the high mids to give the desired effect, hi-hat I just cut some harshness, but the kick needed some same plugins (Saturn for an example) and a steep low cut to get it in phase.
- All of this got bussed to a stereo aux with a couple overall eq moves done later in the mix to get the drums sit in the mix right. From the aux they're sent to two parallel compressors, Devil-loc and UAD Fatso, but I'm mostly using their drive capabilities, only a bit of compression. The Devil-loc is slightly gated, to control the delays and reverbs from the premixed loop.
BASS
- The bass isn't too processed, the sound was quite nice! I parallelled it through another SVT plug with a really mid heavy sound, just bring a bit more mids in. I tried to avoid compression as much as possible in the verses with all instruments, including the bass. There's just one UAD LA-2A compressing at a 0-3db gr range. All the other dynamic control was done by riding my Faderport, so manual fader moves keeping it under control. On the choruses I send the bass to a parallel Decapitator to get some lower mid grit and a dbx 160 kicks in to compress it a bit more.
VERSE GUITARS
- The rythm verse guitars have just a slight mid boost. No compression, just fader rides. They're all sent to a Valhalla reverb with a chamber patch, followed by a DrMS to give it more vibe, followed by some filtering. Also some panning automation coming in to the bridge.
- The lead guitar in the verses has an LA-2 on it, but it's not doing much and most of the dynamic control is again done by heavy fader riding to keep the sound breathing. Also some mid boosting, low cutting and a Kazrog True Iron to bring in some girth. Sent to a Abbey Road Plate and a DrMS to spacialize the verb, and some filtering.
- The bridge lead guitar I ended up compressing a bit more. Also felt the low mids needed some beef here, so there's a boost at 260hz and 800hz followed by a Kazrog True Iron. The delay is a Unfiltered Audio Sandman Pro set to a 1/4 note with a slight offset on the right side to make it wider.
CHORUS GUITARS
- The rhythm guitars are mainly the SM tracks, with the AT's blended in slightly. Cleaned up some low end to around 80-90hz and cut some high mid resonances from the individual tracks. Bussed them together and gave them a whole lot of mid boosts with bx SSL 9000 and a couple Sie-Q's, wich ranged from 700hz - 4khz I think, which was needed to compete with the drums. Followed by a Kazrog True Iron to give some transformer saturation followed by a DrMS to give the just a tiny bit more width. Followed by a couple more surgical narrow q max -1db cuts with Q3.
- The lead guitars had required Soothes on their individual tracks. Cut some more lows than the rhythm guitars, and boosted maybe even more mids but from a narrower range. The flanging effect is done on the delay tails. It's a Sandman Pro, and when the guitars sustain I activate the sleep and reverse, and then trigger U-he Satin to do a flanging effect, while panning the delay track from right to left. Overall some fader automation, also some panning stuff on the outro.
- The clean lead guitar has similar processing to the other clean guitars, just a bit more compression, but I took the liberty of adding a dotted 1/8th delay, because the way it was played just screamed some Edge delay! I hope wasn't too far off
KEYS
- Piano got a little bit of Alter Boy to give it a upper octave that's so quiet it's almost just felt, to give it a little sparkle. Boosting some treble, cutting low mids and gave it a little bit of widening and a slight chorus. The synth has some high mids cut and 700hz boosted followed by a heavy handed Kazrog, just trying to make feel a bit warmer.
MIX BUS
- I have a go-to plugin chain I've used for a long time that I automatically import, and I had it here too. It's two compressors (bx_townhouse & Shadow Hills Class A) followed by two EQs (Bettermaker & Elysia Museq) going into a C4, DrMS, Pro-Q3 and a Kazrog True Iron. Not all of these are used always, but they're there if needed. The townhouse handled most of the compression, that is just around 1-3db on the choruses, while the Shadow Hills only compressed -1db on the loudest hits, and the verses weren't affected at all. Most of the top end of the mix comes from these EQs though, which I set right at the beginning of the mix after I got the first rough balance, as I thought it's nice to have a cohesive top end from the start because there's no vocal to worry about and there wasn't a whole lot of top end information, the song is very guitar heavy afterall. The C4 I used to just give the mix an overall low end control, compressing lows and low mids max -3db with the other bands bypassed. DrMS gave just the slightest of width as that's pretty much handled on the buses already. The Q3 had my preset that has just a slight clean up of the sides low end, plus a less than a db of a wide q boost of around 500 and 2k on the sides for a very subtle weight effect, and I added to the preset a top end dynamic shelf on the mid channel suppressing it a bit, to soften all the cymbal stuff that area was mainly occupied with. No limiting whatsoever.
The ending of the song is automating some of the guitar tracks to bring out the AT tracks (that I think are room mics?) and sending a bunch of stuff into a collective spring reverb.
I think that's about it, I hope it wasn't too long of a post. It was fun typing tho, since no one listens to me at home when I start babbling about this stuff! Thanks so much for keeping these competitions going, I wish I'd found these before but I'll surely be a regular here from now on!