Here is my submission for MC101.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bD1fc9 ... sp=sharing
This was a lot of fun and exactly what I was hoping for with this site. I really wanted to explore mixing other styles of music, this is my first time mixing a trap song and I'm not sure I got the balance quite right between the vocals and instrumentals but overall I think the mix is pretty good sounds pretty clean on my gear.
It was mixed on Reaper with my Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pros. I don't use any correction or eq on them I tested the mix on my Galaxy S20 and in my Journey to check the mix on a small speaker and in the real world with a sub just to be sure.
Thanks for the opportunity to play around with this track I learned a few things for sure and hope to learn more with feedback and by listening to everyone else, goodluck to all other entries!
For the mix I started with my usual top down mixing style template and just grouped up like tracks together and organized everything.
Master bus has Gulfoss, Virtual Tape Machines, Pro-Q 3 to remove sub information from side band eq and Flatline to give it a mastered quality.
My instrumentals all go to one bus and all vocal tracks are on another.
For the vocal bus I didnt actually treat the main bus but grouped similar tracks together into 4 seperate busses.
The Hook Bus which was the 3 main tracks. I kept track 2 center and panned 1 and 3 both 30% but one left one right. On the bus I used eq for 1dB highshelf at 12kHz, a 1.3 DB cut around 400Hz, a 1.3 dB cut at 250Hz and a 1.6 dB cut at 130 Hz. I found these frequencies just muddied things up a bit so they just needed some taming. Then I am using JST Howard Benson Vocals with some very light compression, some saturation, some more eqing a boost 2dB at 8k (this is a high shelf) a 3dB boost at 3k and a 1dB boost at 200 (this is a low shelf). Then I added a slight bit of the mulitplier for some extra vibe, a touch of width as well. Then some quarter note delay and a small room reverb.
For the verse I touched up each individual track on their own. For the main verse vocals I used a high pass filter at 140Hz, a small cut of 1dB at 190 but also used the multiband feature here to help tame some of the plosives which I found to be a bit out of control on this track.I did a 3.7dB cut around 400 Hz as well. I again used JST:HBV on this track just a bit differently, less grit less eqing only a 1.5Hz boost of 8k (High shelf) and 1 dB around 3.2kHz. A touch more multiplier and width compared to the hook because its a solo track. Then no delay and less reverb but in a slightly bigger room size. For the autotune section I copied the eq and HBV setup but also used JST Howard Benson Vocal Multiplier with a bit of width and voices plus the low octave with some dark room reverb, dramatic vocal density around 10 o'clock and broken tube saturation around the same. Based on the lyrics I wanted this part to sound dark, twisted and a bit unhinged.
The other two busses are using the exact same effects but with different settings to just help fill out the background a bit if anyone wants more info I can provide it.
For the instrumental bus I chose to cut the compressor that I use to follow the snare to add pumping to the mix and just used another one that is super compressed to add parallel compression to the whole mix.
The 808 is in my bass bus which has multiband compression to duck when the kick hits and then soothe just to clean up high end information. I split the bass into two tracks and used a lowpass and a highpass both around the same frequency. For the lowpass track I used subfilter from Plugin Alliance to boost up the bottom end and keep it nice and consistent the highpass track got a touch of vibe and compression from a distressor plugin and that was about it. I then used the highpass track against the drums to make it sound about right level wise then adjusted the lowpass track to boost about as much low end as I could without going over the -1 peak limit lol.
Drum bus has a distressor plugin providing parallel compression on every track. Kick has some eq and saturation on it. The snare bus has a bit of low end control around 4.5kHz and I notched out a whistle around 6320Hz then used a lowpass filter very slightly at 11.5kHz I put both the snare and clap into the snare bus and brought the volume of the snare drum down 2 dB. The highhats has some eqing to control the high end mostly a bit of compression to even them out and soothe just really watching the 1.5k and 8k for any peaks or piercing noises.
The Synth bus has some high and low pass on it and I believe I copied my eqing over from my guitar bus from another track. High end control and a bit of a cut around 600Hz mostly. and then just default soothe on top just in case. I used a bunch of saturation with Saturation Knob by Softtube and Valhalla Supermassive with Morse Code Echoes preset for a bit more vibe on it.
Extras bus had the Riser Pistol and FX on it only the riser got some treatment of -4.5 dB around 1850Hz, some saturation with Saturation Knob by Softtube and Valhalla Supermassive with Dirty Snare preset.
The Final everything else bus has soothe on it and then each track was dealt with individually. Piano had a lowpass around 7k and Izotope Ozone Imager 2 to make it really wide just for space in the mix. Key Flute had a Highpass at 230 and a Lowpass at 7.2k, Valhalla Supermassive using the Brass Blatt preset and Izotope Ozone Imager for added space in the mix as well. Hook Bells Highpass at 207 with Imager again, I used this plugin so much here to just push everything around a bit and give each sound a space to be present instead of just trying to keep everything centered hard or all panned to one side. Bells Low just some eq a notch at 900Hz and a Low pass at 5.5k. Gangsta Choir a high pass at 260 and a lowpass at 6300 with more imager. Clean bells have the same eq as Bells Low except for a high pass at 99Hz as well and Izotope Vinyl for some vibe using the Lo-fi effect.
I think thats pretty much anything please feel free to ask questions if there are any!
BEFORE WE GET STARTED:
MIX(ING) CHALLENGE THREAD INDEX
