Mix Challenge

floodo wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 18, 2023 14:10 CET

First of all thanks for sharing, to start I borrowed a technique from a friend, before starting to mix he normalizes all the tracks to -11 and processes all the tracks with the same chain looking to color all the tracks, in this chain there is a soothe 2, virtual tape machine, lindel 50 channel, a LA-2nd rooster without compressing absolutely nothing and a gullfoss with 20% recover and 20% tame and the subsequent export of the stems.

Before starting the mix I chose not to use references and try to do something totally opposite to the original mix, the original mix sounds very clean and neat, on the contrary I tried to dirty the frequency spectrum using a lot of harmonic distortion and try to get a very dense mix, as if it were an impassable wall of sound, also to make it a little more organic all the automations were done live with faders and to have that human error that gives life to the music.

To make the mix I used a recreation of the Andrew Scheps template, already by itself when going through the parallel processes of the template the drums sounded quite comfortable, I only retouched a little the kick with subtractive eq, the snare I didn't touch it at all, neither toms, just cut a little for the bass to the OH, HH and room, in the main bus of drums I used a VMX with a virtual mixbuss and a u73 compressing less than 1db and an esser.

Bass, I duplicated the bass, in one of the tracks I cut all the high part up to 200hz and compressed very strongly, in the other track I cut the low part up to 200hz, but I didn't get the definition I was looking for, by accident I inverted the phase and the bass became very thin, but with much more definition, so I left it with that offset and in a bass bus I recovered the lost bass with eq, I automated volume in some of the arrangements to give it more prominence.

Guitars, on the acoustic guitars a little eq and compression and jst bg guitars on the bus, on the electric guitar I used a guitar boost from a 60's Marshall with a sm57, some compression and ssl bus compressor on the bus, I don't remember well but on the solo guitar I used the same boost but with another microphone.

Keys, absolutely nothing, I sent everything to a bus where I put tape saturation to make them sound more natural, glue compression and the synth buss lite to add harmonic distortion.
Chorus, I converted all the chorus tracks to stereo to gain some density, compressed them all together in a bus and automated the panning that changes along the song, in fact there is a lot of automation in all the tracks, automation of volume, panning or effects,

Lead Vox, I separated in two tracks the main vocal, one with the complete track and another one for the chorus that would be added to the original track at the time, all this with the intention of gaining density in the chorus by converting the second track where only the chorus were and open it in the plane, the main track was equalized compressed and made up with noveltech vocal enhaser, the stereo track to support the chorus only used voicecentric, then in the bus of the voices, use an automated microshift to enter the chorus, to this is added the parallel bus that usually uses scheps in the vocals.

As you can see I didn't use too many processes, there are even tracks that I didn't touch at all, but the general sound of the mix was done in the master channel, where after the Scheps chain, I added a Manny EQ looking for a balance as flat as possible, LKJB refine that I don't know what it does but it sounds great and the best thing is that it's free, then I exported the mix to continue processing because my computer was dying for lack of resources, to this mix I continued working the balance with a coralbaxter, an emulation of manley massive, and I lifted a little in the 40khz with a maag eq, a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, a ssl compressor, and with the coffeepun I attenuated at 150 and recovered at 120 and used the preamp to give it color, then a terry west relife to improve the micro dynamics, used studio one's alpine desk with a slightly exaggerated drive to make sure the distortion wrapped around each of the tracks and nothing else, that was all, then the problem to export, scheps doesn't really care about gain staging, so the mix was already too high so I adjusted the amount of lufs acceptable for the contest with a studio one mixtool.

I'm sorry to be so extensive with the explanations of what was going on in my head when I was dealing with the mix, I hope it is well understood since Spanish is complicated even for online translators.

Suerte y exito para todos, fue un gusto enorme participar de esta mezcla, excelentes musicos todos!!

my Mix -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OrAxf_ ... sp=sharing

scottfitz wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 18, 2023 21:58 CET

Hi floodo,
I really love what you've done, never heard anything quite like it or heard of this technique!
Please could you tell me what are the settings on the soothe plugins?
Cheers

floodo wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 18, 2023 14:10 CET

First of all thanks for sharing, to start I borrowed a technique from a friend, before starting to mix he normalizes all the tracks to -11 and processes all the tracks with the same chain looking to color all the tracks, in this chain there is a soothe 2, virtual tape machine, lindel 50 channel, a LA-2nd rooster without compressing absolutely nothing and a gullfoss with 20% recover and 20% tame and the subsequent export of the stems.

Before starting the mix I chose not to use references and try to do something totally opposite to the original mix, the original mix sounds very clean and neat, on the contrary I tried to dirty the frequency spectrum using a lot of harmonic distortion and try to get a very dense mix, as if it were an impassable wall of sound, also to make it a little more organic all the automations were done live with faders and to have that human error that gives life to the music.

To make the mix I used a recreation of the Andrew Scheps template, already by itself when going through the parallel processes of the template the drums sounded quite comfortable, I only retouched a little the kick with subtractive eq, the snare I didn't touch it at all, neither toms, just cut a little for the bass to the OH, HH and room, in the main bus of drums I used a VMX with a virtual mixbuss and a u73 compressing less than 1db and an esser.

Bass, I duplicated the bass, in one of the tracks I cut all the high part up to 200hz and compressed very strongly, in the other track I cut the low part up to 200hz, but I didn't get the definition I was looking for, by accident I inverted the phase and the bass became very thin, but with much more definition, so I left it with that offset and in a bass bus I recovered the lost bass with eq, I automated volume in some of the arrangements to give it more prominence.

Guitars, on the acoustic guitars a little eq and compression and jst bg guitars on the bus, on the electric guitar I used a guitar boost from a 60's Marshall with a sm57, some compression and ssl bus compressor on the bus, I don't remember well but on the solo guitar I used the same boost but with another microphone.

Keys, absolutely nothing, I sent everything to a bus where I put tape saturation to make them sound more natural, glue compression and the synth buss lite to add harmonic distortion.
Chorus, I converted all the chorus tracks to stereo to gain some density, compressed them all together in a bus and automated the panning that changes along the song, in fact there is a lot of automation in all the tracks, automation of volume, panning or effects,

Lead Vox, I separated in two tracks the main vocal, one with the complete track and another one for the chorus that would be added to the original track at the time, all this with the intention of gaining density in the chorus by converting the second track where only the chorus were and open it in the plane, the main track was equalized compressed and made up with noveltech vocal enhaser, the stereo track to support the chorus only used voicecentric, then in the bus of the voices, use an automated microshift to enter the chorus, to this is added the parallel bus that usually uses scheps in the vocals.

As you can see I didn't use too many processes, there are even tracks that I didn't touch at all, but the general sound of the mix was done in the master channel, where after the Scheps chain, I added a Manny EQ looking for a balance as flat as possible, LKJB refine that I don't know what it does but it sounds great and the best thing is that it's free, then I exported the mix to continue processing because my computer was dying for lack of resources, to this mix I continued working the balance with a coralbaxter, an emulation of manley massive, and I lifted a little in the 40khz with a maag eq, a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, and a ssl compressor, a ssl compressor, and with the coffeepun I attenuated at 150 and recovered at 120 and used the preamp to give it color, then a terry west relife to improve the micro dynamics, used studio one's alpine desk with a slightly exaggerated drive to make sure the distortion wrapped around each of the tracks and nothing else, that was all, then the problem to export, scheps doesn't really care about gain staging, so the mix was already too high so I adjusted the amount of lufs acceptable for the contest with a studio one mixtool.

I'm sorry to be so extensive with the explanations of what was going on in my head when I was dealing with the mix, I hope it is well understood since Spanish is complicated even for online translators.

Suerte y exito para todos, fue un gusto enorme participar de esta mezcla, excelentes musicos todos!!

my Mix -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OrAxf_ ... sp=sharing