Mix Challenge

Hey Guys!

Here is my mix and some notes about my process.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GjpGs ... R8IdLb19ag

It seems like the song is based around the guitar and clearly effort has been put in to achieve this particular sound. So I built my mix on the guitar and hardly altered the sound for the most part.
Because the entire song is loud, I made the interludes (post chorus) softer and darker so the loud parts feel more intense.
The bass is quite mangled to compete with the aggressive guitars: Waves GTR3 Amp Directube (almost clean) > Decapitator: A (subtle) > Decapitator: P +punish, 60% wet. for growl distortion > UAD 1176: 4 and 8 button in for attack ? TDR Slick EQ: bit of 135Hz Lo shelf and 2k boost.
I wanted to make the drums sound like a whole and make it feel a bit more organic (‘real’) by automating the level of the OHs, room and snare mics for the different parts. I didn’t add any compression on the drums , but 2dB of expanding on the snare to reduce te room sound.
The R guitar in the interludes is processed with a modulation delay to get a chorus effect.
You will probably notice I’ve been a bit bold with editing. However, I believe the song flows better this way because the interlude has more meaning to me when you’ve heard the first verse and chorus. Editing is non-destructive so if you really don’t dig it you can always go for the original shape, no biggie.

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours of being able to submit your mix

Here is my submission for this round

MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y060acx2f013k ... n.mp3?dl=0
WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fsdq9zb9bru4a ... n.wav?dl=0

I mixed into a 670 style compressor on the 2 buss otherwise no other plugins used on the 2 buss. VTM and BX-N console used on the majority of the tracks.

Drums
Devil-loc mixed about 15-20% wet
Parallel compression on the drum buss with the SPL Iron
Snare buss cut 800Hz & 5kHz, boost 200Hz. VCA style compression
SSD hi-hats panned right to even out the sound
Drum buss sent to Klevgrand reamp cassette mode with FG 480 style reverb


Bass
670 style compressor followed by Decapitator T channel, drive around 4 and 70% wet

Guitar
Re-amped using Slate THU with room reverb.
Guitar solo sent to tape delay

Vocals
Verse vocals compressed through Tube176 plugin, eq cut at 5kHz and boost at 200Hz
Chorus vocals Tube 176 compression with Klevgrand Reamp to add some grit.

Good luck everyone!

Hello everyone,

Thanks Morelia for the tracks, these are great ones.
I decided to find some kind of agressive mood.

I did use the processed guitars, so they got Acustica Audio Lime EQ,
BX Shredspread, Softube saturation. Also a little bit Lexicon room
is added.

Bass goes through UAD CultureVulture and The Glue comp.

Vocals are compressed twice, first Softube CL1B (main verse, main chorus
and back groups), then all vocals grouped into one and added a bit Acustica Audio
EL Rey. Main vocals having also Lexicon reverb (reverse type) during all
the song, in choruses added simple delay (Echo Boy). Also Acustica Audio
Purple EQ is added to the vocals.

All available drum tracks are used in the song. Main kick is the SSD one,
but there is a tiny amount the other SD kick also. Drums go through
the Acustica Audio Sand2 comp, Lime pre and also Softube saturation.
A few drum tracks having a small amount Waves L1 limiter.

Master bus having Sand2 comp, Lime EQ, SKNote Roundtone.

Most of the tracks also having Slate Digital's Virtual Console. There is
also parametric EQ on most tracks for cutting some frequeny areas a little bit.

No parallel compression used. Lime EQ used first time.
Listened also couple Audioslave tracks suggested by Morelia for reference.

wav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cb1o8r46gjlhx ... g.wav?dl=0

mp3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ldqps4u47cia ... g.mp3?dl=0

Hi people !

Here is my submission.

MP3 : https://www.dropbox.com/s/423w5ksdpdo0s ... a.mp3?dl=0
Wav : https://www.dropbox.com/s/qxfgy977u7lz0 ... a.wav?dl=0

I used Studio One 4 with a bunch of third party VSTs (Waves, FabFilter, McDSP,...).
Guitars have been reamps with Guitar Rig, Audio Assault Bulldozer & Grind Machine and I did a few editing on the vocal harmonies.
I tried to keep effects very behind to give punch to the track as much as possible.

Ok, here is my mix:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

I decided to go for a less aggressive sound but I still wanted to have punchy and tight drums, and with Waves TG Mastering Chain on the stereo output for more presence/bottom end.

I treated similar elements (Main Vox, BG Vox, Guitars etc.) as buss groups but also tweaked them ( Comp + EQ ) separately.

There is some New York Style Compression on drums and bass to get more thickness, and also the guitars have some parallel compression.

Kotelnikov compressor on the stereo output for glue, NI solid EQ (G mode) for polishing.

Feel free to ask for more information.

Here is the finished mix in
WAV (44.1/16) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1b9goE ... DZYPEo8GB2
MP3 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CGiiD ... 2cXsQ0ioaB
I've taken some screenshots here too
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AkadL ... PN4Fdn4TGq

I found this a bit struggle and I didn't quite get as an exciting production as I wanted especially as I didnt have the time to try some more creative things. The hardest was the vocals and the drums, the vocals probably could of been better if I'd been more creative about which ones to use and had edited them to be a bit better timing wise, alas it is what it is. The drums I just didnt like the samples, the room was overcompressed and weird and the OHs I had to do a lot of work to. Im generally a fan of SD as well and am used to using most of the kits. That said thanks for the song, its a good song and fun to do this genre which I love!

I mixed it as follows

Overall: I heavily used the Slate Bundle on this mix using the tape and VCC on all the groups and using a preamp of somekind on most channels to give it more oomph and saturation. I used VBC grey on the mix buss as well just lightly compressing everything. Nearly every channel I used a SSL style EQ in slate VMR with a few other things I'll outline below

Drums:
Drum bus with a bit of secret sauce (Soundtoys DevilLoc), a little bit of Studio reverb IR (REVerence set to Tokyo Studio) and some Slate Custom Lift

Kicks: Both kicks were pretty good so I just blended them and EQ and compressed a little bit
Snare: Snare were okay, heavily EQued both and sent them to a drum reverb
OH: I hated these and went hard on getting them to work using a transient designer, Pumper (a multi effect plugin) and a dynamic EQ. See screenshot for all these.
Ambience: Also hated this but did my best using devil lock and sending it to the reverb and automating parts of the song

Bass: Bass was simple, I made two tracks and put Slate TH-U on one with a bassman amp and a bass cab and blended to taste then EQ'ed and compressed the group.

Guitars: This was all Slate TH-U which came out the day I started mixing, sounds great to me, just used a base preset and tweaked the hell out of it,grouped them together and EQ'ed a bit to give it more cut.

Solo Guitar TH-U again with some cool blending and a bit of FX

Vocals: The vocals were hard, some of the tracks were very nasal and I struggled to get them to sit properly in the mix, I don't mind what Ive done but I would of liked to go a more creative option and add some of the shouts (which I didnt get to use) in cool parts but ran out of time. I used a parellel dynamic EQ trick similar to the Dolby A trick to add high end to the vox. Listening back now I'm done, I think they need to louder in the last Chorus, I kept messing around with the volume of each of them and I just needed to be done.

Note: updated to add documentation.

Thanks to Morelia for the rocking song!


Mix Chain Notes:

Kicks: used both
SD Kick: ProQ2/TG12345/Sie-Q/ST Harmonics/RBass/ST Transient Shaper
SSD Kick: ProQ2/Scheps Omni/ST FET Comp/ST Harmonics/ ST Trident/ST Transient Shaper

Snares: used both
Sd Snare: Scheps 73/ST FET Comp/Sie-Q/ST Harmonics/ ST Transient Shaper
SSD Snare: Scheps Omni/Eventide Stereo Room/ Sans Amp Dist

SD OH: Scheps 73/Arouser/Pro-DS/Clariphonic to restore what was lost on De-esser

BASS: split into two tracks to Bass Aux
B1: ProQ2/EdentWT/ST FET Comp;PuigtecEQs/ST Harmonics
B2: ProQ2/FET Comp/LA-3A/Devil Loc

Also did a light sidechain with ProC2 from the kick.

Guitars:
Used all effected tracks plus mixed in DIs using combos of ST Metal Amp Room/PRS/ST Vintage Amp Room to create variety of guitar textures. Just let me know if you would like more specific details on the models used.

Also, I decided to add use a Fuzz on the guitar solo. If my track is selected for next round, if you prefer, I can certainly change the solo sound.

Vocals:

Wow; had a hard time deciding how to treat the vocals, but I ultimately decided to go for a wall of vocals ala AIC, and thought it ended up sounding pretty cool so I stuck with it. Again, if I make it to the next round, I can take a different approach if preferred. Ran Vox kissed by several comps PIE/UBK-1/LA2A/Clariphonic/Devil Loc.

Echoboy tube echos on aux bus

API 2500 on Master Bus for glue.

Cheers

Jetwolf


WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O5d33K ... sp=sharing

MPD: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L2q2Ij ... sp=sharing

Very nice track to mix

My main reference for this song was Audioslave. Hopefully it can be heard.
Preview mix was already excellent. After listening Audioslave I made mine a bit more low heavy and darker than Preview-mix.

Drums: I aimed at roomy sound. I used fake room, delays and parallel distortion to achieve my goal. Very little processing on single tracks.

Bass: I gave bass quite big role with brutal sound. Plenty of saturation.

Guitars: bx_rockrack V3, bluecat Free Amp, lots of saturation, delay.

Vox: I used all tracks. No processing on single tracks. In vox buss, heavy saturation. No reverbs, in chorus some delay.

Master buss: only slightly smiling eq


MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jsjUJ ... JVksQNj3RV

WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gNThW ... -2kYD6xNfR

Here is my submission
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qou1q07k8uz8a ... B.wav?dl=0

Mixbus
since no premastering is desired I don't have any processing in the Mixbus to allow more freedom for mastering.

Drums
I used all samples for the drums. The phases were adjusted. as well as processed with eq, comp. a roomreverb and snare plate were used.

Bass
has been amped and the DI signal was added in parallel.

Guitars
were compressed and eq

Vox
Voices were grouped into main, doublings and background. EQ, compressor, de-esser, chorus, delay and reverb were used.