Mix Challenge

Wow I'm in!
I'm probably lucky, because this challenge was special (e.g. hardware load) and had smaller count of participants than average.

Thanks again Green Dog, for granting me the opportunity.

Honoring your comments, I'll do my best to come closer to your ideas.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bb5kU3 ... sp=sharing WAV
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GbWTN2 ... sp=sharing mp3

I went after a certain style, you had mentioned a space ship, and it was very deliberate to put the vocals into some weird surroundings with that artificial reverb thing.
I loved a number of songs in the 80ies and 90ies that did that. It wasn't top 40 but in the clubs. You HAD to sound weird in these times, so I tried to create a recall.
From the billboard charts, Garbage - Stupid Girl has in some parts this "rich-people big bathroom" sound, but it's more sophisticated, I'll have to work that out, according to the different type of voice also.
Another one (with these industrial sounds) is Björk - Army Of Me; - also Big Time Sensuality, that were using excessive reverb on vocals. She did that many times.

So, the reverb impulses were tailored, with higher predelay and some slower attack, and also made a bit shorter. Less mid-range. Some more automation.

Some more deessing with edits. Please, let me win a better DeEsser for my home rack hahaha...

Synth delay in the intro is now automated down, while the higher notes "pam pom" are playing. It has a modulation and is required for fullness of the bass spectrum.

About the outro guitar, I had the bass do that "scratching" job, but the git got drowned so there was still a task.
I introduced another automation pattern, that lets the guitar come in as part of the groove.
The solo bass got another tape and valve plugin, and more contour with the EQ.

After that, I realized, the snare required also a little more intensity, and thus, ACC DR 2 Snare had to become a bit louder and got a little, short plate reverb.

The mp3 is softening down the air band and sibilance to reasonable amounts.


Congrats to everyone, there were many inspiring and beautiful ideas, and sensible insights. Good luck for round II !

Thank you Green Dog for picking my mix for the final, its been great working on this song!

I have followed the comments and hopefully produced a better, more balanced version.

Good luck to the finalists.

Wav: https://www.dropbox.com/s/12awzgzztti39 ... 2.wav?dl=0
MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8i28vz7qhih3b ... 2.mp3?dl=0

Hi

Thanks so much again for the opportunity. I agree with all of your recommendations. The only thing I really did enjoy for some reason was the reverb on the guitars but I agree it was too much and I reduced substantially.

Please see my submission below.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RdTFg ... XExjls3f_B

I tried to include all the changes in line with the feedback received. for the snare i changed the room track processing and increased the level. i reduced reverb on all guitar tracks. I adjusted intro/outro automation and levels.

I mixed the vocals again - I agree additional de-essing was required. Some of the background vocals did not have the proper dynamics or de-essing levels. I added additional dynamics control to each of the vocal tracks. Overall I brought down the level but not a drastic amount. I added another level of fader rides to help with certain areas. I did some additional editing and processing to clean up all of the vocal tracks and processed them with izotope mouth de-click, which helps with some of the harshness and hard consonants.

I made many moves to try to reduce muddiness in the mix. I adjusted some of the low level balance but not much. The primary adjustment was to the low mids for some instruments. I made some subtle changes on some instruments that may have been adding to the problem, 2 of the guitars, some of the pads, one of the pianos, etc. The reduction in reverb helped with the muddiness to some degree already.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks again.

Green-Dog wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 25, 2019 10:05 CEST

Wizzo
In general, the mix is a good balanced, although the pad sounds too wide (it is getting more quiet in mono). Little too much chorus on the guitar. There is a good balance between the bass and the drums. Still, it may seem that the bass is a little bit too loud. The vocal needs to be more controlled on the sibilants and the male double could be somewhat louder. The vocals sound a bit too dry and too loud.

Hello Green-Dog, everyone,
What I did for R2 :
1-Take care of pad wide sound for mono compatibility it's narrow now.
2-Reduce reverb sends to the guitar sound.
3-Take care of the sibilance.
4-Deconstructing all tracks levels and changed the reverb I used for the vocal. it's more voluminous and spacey!
Loudness: -14.8 LUFS, TP Max -2.1 dBTP (By NUGEN), any comments or feedback are most welcome.

My submission.

MC059-VivireenMarte-GreatWorld-Wizzo-R2.wav
MC059-VivireenMarte-GreatWorld-Wizzo-R2.mp3

Cheers!

Hi Everyone!

First of all, Thanks to Green-dog for picking me up for Round 2.

Following your feedback, I took care of these details:

- Added a bit of automation in the outro guitars
- Removed effects that made the intro sound weird and cause artifacts in the low end.
- Made the male double more present.
- Removed excessive "ss" from vocals with a de-esser.
- Reduced harsh high frequencies in Percussions.
- Removed effects in transitions.

WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xMPnK ... R901lW7MS5
MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1v8u0r ... kgWw4nPpWy

Thanks and good luck to everyone!

ICMix

Hi,

I did take care of what was asked and did a little more balancing. One thing led to another, as always
The esses are now EDITED! Due to lazyness I tried to avoid that, but if three de-essers don't cut it there is not much else you can do. I wanted her that bright, no way around that, so there you go. The esses still bite you a little here and there, I didn't want to cut them out completely or give her a lisp.

Just looked it up: I am now using 182 Plugins in this Reaper session and my i5 2500k (yes, that's 2nd gen) is still keeping up! I am telling myself that I will use it "just one more year" for a few years now

WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ls5pw ... gqR53FopkQ
MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KrnH7 ... p_UCF11IcJ

Cheers
Mork

It's the 01st October 2019, 0:10am - the 2nd Mix Round has officially ended.

Everyone has sent in an edit
We have no submissions after the deadline.
Sadly not everyone has submitted their edit (Mixedbynicolas, Spafles)

Please check your upload links again, and have an eye on this thread for the final results.



I'm now opening up the room (again) for Q&A's and giving each other feedback (which is highly encouraged)

Please check out all other games on the community.


See you on the flipside.

Mork wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 30, 2019 23:58 CET

The esses are now EDITED! Due to lazyness I tried to avoid that, but if three de-essers don't cut it there is not much else you can do. I wanted her that bright, no way around that, so there you go. The esses still bite you a little here and there, I didn't want to cut them out completely or give her a lisp.

Yeah, I also edited my Ss. Since sibilants are basically noise they tend to always be more audible than pretty much anything else. And in this song the vocal is fairly soft so you really have to pay attention to de-essing. If you do that, keep in mind that some DAWs would require a real-time bounce. I'm on Logic and if I bounce offline, it doesn't keep up with the quick edits like manual de-essing – it recovers too slowly and some syllables get eaten. Or maybe it has to do with how powerful my computer is (it's not). Check on your machine if you have this issue. But generally I see manual de-essing as a better and more controlled alternative to de-essers - you always hear what you're doing and you don't second-guess yourself. Takes some time though

For BG vocals, Airwindows Chris has a killer de-esser. The male vocal track had created quite some issue, before finding that out.
With Tracktion, so far I had no problems with bouncing, all automation curves get rendered very exactly, including those millisecond cuts for the sibilants or breaths. I made most curves visible for the screen shots.
I also built a rack that triggers a compressor with the filtered sibilants. I took an EQ with a sharp resonating band filter, and routed that into the sidechain, to catch some whistling noises around 5.5k.

BTW @Green-Dog, or anyone, did you hear about the "pencil trick" to soften the sibilance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlNoKbAlTOI at 12:50

White Punk OD wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2019 13:40 CET

BTW @Green-Dog, or anyone, did you hear about the "pencil trick" to soften the sibilance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlNoKbAlTOI at 12:50

No, I haven’t heard about this method before. Definitely I will try. Anyway, to my mind, one must be careful with this! Even the use of a pop filter changes the sound of the voice.