MIX CHALLENGE - MC073 February 2021 - Winners announced

[Clueless]

hi,

i am new to this mixing concept.
i need some clarification.
i have seen a sentence in the txt file

All the instruments that are "printed" may stay "as is"

how to find the instruments tracks that are "printed" ?

I’m thinking that it’s the drums marked as Premix

[Arthur Labus]

I would stick to this notes from "Words from the Song Provider.txt":

"Solo guitar on verses is semi acoustic electric and recorded DI.
Intentionally left without plugin simulation as we liked acoustic tone to it.

Solo on Bridges recorded with plugin simulation and printed with that tone."

I understood droom loops as a choice between premixed and multitracks.

However, those "printed" files should be clearly named.

[RichardClarke]

Hi Everyone,

Here is my submission - Wav version

Here are also the files showing my mixer and routing Drum and Bass Busses, Guitar Busses, Pads and Main Out Busses.

I found it a really tough mix to do at first, especially the louder parts where the djembe and heavier guitars kick in. Don't feel I ever quite managed to hit the mark in those sections. In the end though I got quite into it and its actually been one of the more interesting and fun tracks I've mixed for a while. Thanks to the provider for giving us some space around sound design too, I hope I have not gone too far with it and its not too messy! I left the noises on at the beginning to as I actually quite like them in the background.

If anyone likes any parts of the mix and wants more detailed explanations of what I have done let me know. I will be more than happy to provide that. It was mixed entirely on headphones as I'm moving house so might not be so well balanced in speakers.


*******PLEAE IGNORE THIS ENTRY, I LISTENED TODAY (10TH FEB) AND REALISED I SUBMITTED AN OLD VERSION THAT DID NOT HAVE THE CHORUS I WANTED, ITS NOT THE VERSION I WANTED TO SUBMIT, I UNDERSTAND THE RULES AND SO DISQUALIFY MYSELF!!*********

Cheers!

Richy

[Ollio]

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!

[michaelh]

Hi all

Thanks Treeeye for providing the song. There was some really nice guitar work in there which I really enjoyed mixing.

I didn't really have a plan for the song going into this mix, however I really decided to embrace the heaviness of the chorus by pushing things with lots of distortion. In the verses I really enjoyed opening up the sound and leaving things relatively unprocessed. I think the end result has a really nice dichotomy between the two sections of the song. I hope you like it!

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

Gear
Ableton Live
Assorment of plugins

Chorus Drums
I opted for using the individual instruments instead of the stem version so I could get the sound I wanted.
Kick
This took a while to get right. I ended up having three parallel tracks of the kick. The original track was too dull for my liking so I had to find a way to emphasise the top end without making it sound too fake.
1 - Compressor
2 - Gate -> Compressor -> Overdrive -> clipper (I wanted to reduce the amount of delay in the track)
3 - Gate -> compressor -> clipper
Snare
I had three parallel snares too. Like the kick I found the snare sounded too dull. I also thought the snare sound was too short and needed something to extend the length.
1 - Compressor
2 - Gate -> compressor -> eq - > saturation
3 - gate -> overdrive
HH1
This sounded far too electronic for me. I wanted to make it sound more natural and humanised. I had two parallel hats. I pitched one down an octave and then added some LFO frequency shifter effects to both to randomise the sound a bit. I also added a doubler effect to add some width. I side chained the hats to the kick and snare to add a bit of groove to the overall beat too.
HH2
I didn't do anything to this. It was low in the reference so I had it low in mine.
Ride & Bell
I didn't add any processing to these. I liked how they sounded.
Crash
Just added a high-pass and a slight high shelf
Bus
I just added some parallel compression in sknote A25 to emphasise the transients a bit. I also added some slight saturation.

Jembe
I opted for the AT mic on this one. I used an ssl emulation to boost the high end and compress to get the sound to my liking.

Verse Drums
I used the individual instruments for the verse drums too. Low and behold, when I turned these up in the mix and added some reverb I really liked how they sounded so there is no processing on any of these. I just balanced the levels to my liking.

Bass
I had a couple parallel chains on the bass. One compressed with an opto compressor and another limited with Ozone and some added saturation.

Bridge Riser
Reverb and high-pass

Piano
This was a bit tricky. I decided to use the left channel only since the sound was too wide and conflicted with the guitars. I added a pretty drastic high shelf and highpass to reduce some of the muddiness. I added some opto style compression and also added some saturation and used a gate to reduce some of the sustained notes that you couldn't really hear in the full mix.

Synth
Same methodology as the Piano

GTR Bridge 1
Eq and FET Compression. I also added a 2nd parallel track with overdrive to emphasise the high end slightly

GTR Bridge 2
Eq, FET compression and gate

GTAR Solo Verse SM
Eq, FET Compression, limiter. I kept processing to a minimum on this. I really liked the performance on this guitar.

Rhy 1 & 2
I chose the AT mic for both of these. I slightly panned them L&R. Processing was just an eq over both of them.

Rhy 3 & 4
I had an even blend of both the mics for these and added a slight eq. The sound was already very compressed so I didn't want to add anymore. I also added a parallel double of these with an overdrive to really emphasise the top end. I found they were a bit dull in the context of the whole mix.

Solo 1
Both mics
Highpass -> FET Compression
I also added a phaser and chorus to get a bit creative with the sound. Wanted to add a bit more interest

Solo 2
both mics
Eq -> FET Compression

Solo 3
both mics
No processing

Effects
I had send traces for:
Drum Room
Snare Room
Guitar Verb
Guitar Delay
Piano Verb

All the reverbs were Lexicon impulse responses I found online somewhere, not sure where. The delays were both echoboy.

Master Bus
High shelf
BX Townhouse, smashing a bit harder than I usually would to add more groove
Saturation/clipping, I wanted the mix to distort a bit during the loud sections of the song to add some heaviness.
mLoudnessAnalyser to bring the mix to required level

[elroms]

Hey everyone! This was a really nice song with a lot of emotions, thanks for providing it

Here is my mix : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1djeXcf ... sp=sharing

About the mixing, I organized the guitars playing the same thing by groups to mix them together, I don't think I made particularly creative choices (digital/analog eq and compression, multiband limitation..) although I added some chorus to the GTR Solo Verse, and sent the solo guitars to the same hall reverb and delay

I guess the main challenge was to not get lost with all the guitar tracks...

Then I routed all the guitar and piano/synth tracks to a melody group, on which I applied a bit of bus compression to keep it together and multiband limitation again

Regarding the chorus and verse loops I decided to mix them myself to get more flexibility

And this is pretty much it... Hope you enjoy it!

[Mister Fox]

hi,

i am new to this mixing concept.
i need some clarification.
i have seen a sentence in the txt file

All the instruments that are "printed" may stay "as is"

how to find the instruments tracks that are "printed" ?

For clarification:
"printed" in this case means, the tracks have been recorded or rendered with a "certain sound right from the start".

The prime example in this production are the guitars, as they have been recorded through an amp, and then that has been directly recorded "to tape" (hence: "printed to tape", and old audio term). There are no DI tracks available for these guitars. That is basically all there is to it. If there are DI tracks "clean/dry" ones available, that is usually pointed out in the file names.

The drums are available as "mixed" (PREMIX) or "split and unprocessed" (Loop sub folders). You are only allowed to use either/or, as using both would result in phasing issues.


There is more to read in the bundled TXT files.

[scorpio69]

Hi everyone, I'm new here and I'm French, so sorry for my english, but I'm very happy to share this experience with you !

This is my mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gn2w3fm2pfip ... 9.wav?dl=0

Very difficult to explain how i've mixed this track; I wanted to keep a max of dynamic ==> I almost did not compress. I'm used to mixing hip hop and electro, so I worked precisely at the bottom of the spectrum with BASS and DRUMS.
I removed the natural reverb from the sound recordings of JEMBE and guitars at the beginning (with izotope RX8) and applied liquidsonics reverb.

I tried to keep Rythm guitars in front of the mix on the hooks.
On Piano and synths ==> upward compression for more presence

I'm using a little of upward compression and clipping / limiting, but I avoid compressing when it's possible to preserve dynamic

At your disposal for further discussions !

[Clueless]

Hi everyone, I'm new here and I'm French, so sorry for my english, but I'm very happy to share this experience with you !

This is my mix: https://www.dropbox.com/home/CONCOURS%2 ... rpio69.wav

Very difficult to explain how i've mixed this track; I wanted to keep a max of dynamic ==> I almost did not compress. I'm used to mixing hip hop and electro, so I worked precisely at the bottom of the spectrum with BASS and DRUMS.
I removed the natural reverb from the sound recordings of JEMBE and guitars at the beginning (with izotope RX8) and applied liquidsonics reverb.

I tried to keep Rythm guitars in front of the mix on the hooks.
On Piano and synths ==> upward compression for more presence

I'm using a little of upward compression and clipping / limiting, but I avoid compressing when it's possible to preserve dynamic

At your disposal for further discussions !

Cannot listen locked

ne peut pas écouter verrouillé

[scorpio69]

Cannot listen locked

Sorry, now it's ok