Hi Everyone,
Here's my entry for Mix Challenge 083.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8cg-P ... sp=sharing
Thanks to the song provider and to the contest organisers. This song really got into my head, more noticeably than any other that I've mixed for previous Challenges, so I certainly found it catchy! And hopefully the sun will return soon!
Before starting the mix I had a think about the overall direction - for this mix I was aiming for a modern "intimate" sound. I used Iron and Wine's Bitter Truth as the primary reference. Something that I found interesting in Bitter Truth was the use of a slap delay which I used in the mix of Sun Returns, but only for the verses. One thing I wanted to highlight were the "Pino Palladino-esque" upper bass notes as they sounded great against the vocal melody.
Before starting the mix I did some preprocessing. I aligned the vocal double with the lead vocal using Melodyne (although I didn't use any pitch correction). The instrumental tracks were tamed using manual levelling to control any rogue peaks. Some very light processing with Softube Tape was also used for texture.
The mix was organised into instrumental groups as follows:
Bass
Acoustic Guitar
Electric "Harms"
Electric Lead
Vocal
For the Bass the processing was:
Main - TB EQ 4 (HPF), bx_opto (smoothing), Ampeg B15N, Black Rooster VEQ-1P
Chorus - Linear Phase HPF, Syntorus 2
Mid Thicken - RBass
Bus - C6, TwinTube (Harmonics only), TB EQ 4
For the Acoustic Guitar the processing was:
Rode - RX 9 Guitar De-Noise (reduce finger noises), TB EQ 4
58 - RX 9 Guitar De-Noise (reduce finger noises), TB EQ 4
Both guitars were then bussed together and processed using elysia Alpha Mix (peak control), Audiority Type A (brightness), Softube Transient Shaper (decrease attack transients), Softube Tape
Parallel - SDRR2 (saturation), Major Tom (compression)
Bus - TwinTube (Harmonics only)
Send - Deleight (rhythmic delay), TB EQ 4
For the Electric Harms the processing was:
Main - TB EQ 4, elysia Alpha Mix (peaks), MJUC (levelling)
Chorus - Gem Mod, Little Plate
Bus - NobleQ
For the Electric Lead the processing was:
TB EQ 4, Summit TLA-100A, FreeAmp, SPL TwinTube
Parallel - Presonus Rotor
Parallel - Deleight (Chorus)
Bus - Little Plate, NobleQ, Dubstation
The original vocal was a bit sibilant so I decided to manually de-ess it by copying the "esses" to a phase inverted track and then adjusting the level so that the esses were reduced. The original vocal and its inverted "esses" were combined and sent to RX9 De-Plosive and TB EQ 4. The vocal double had the same processing but TB Compressor 4 and Izotope's Vocal Doubler were added. The whole vocal group was then processed as follows:
MJUC (Levelling), TB Compressor 4 (Upwards Comp.), VEQ-1P (5K Presence), Fuse VPRE-376 (Character), Summit TLA-100A (final smoothing), D16 Frontier (stray peaks), RX9 De-click (remove any stray clicks)
Four spatial effects were used:
Slap Delay - Fuse Bucket-500, Softube Tape (only present in the verses)
Short Reverb/Delay Hybrid - Valhalla Supermassive, Fuse Bucket-500
Room - SSL Flexverb
Plate - Acustica Plate Ebony 240
All instruments were sent to the Room reverb, while the Slap, Hybrid and Plate were used only by the vocal. All spatial effects were sent to their own bus which had Fieidler Stage for additional width.
The Mixbus processing consisted of TEOTE, Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, SPL Vitalizer, TB EQ 4 and Bassroom.
The backing music was ducked by a couple of dB using the vocal as a sidechain input.
Specs:
44.1kHz/24-bit
-16.7 LUFS (int.)
-4.2 dBTP
Good luck to all contestants.
Cheers!
