MIX CHALLENGE - MC052 March 2019 - Winners announced

[Jamesirving]

This was definitely a challenging mix for me but it was a lot of fun and made me do things in a new way which I suppose is the point of all this! Thank you Olly for making this all available to us. I approached it as I would any song and tried to find the hooks in each section and make that prominent. I tried to go in the direction of the two tracks listed as references. Overall I wanted it to build throughout while adding as much interest as I could along the way. I mangled things here and there just to heighten the dynamics in some of the sections but overall the arrangement lent itself to that anyway which was great. The bass register was a challenge especially at the front end. Once I had everything going it seemed easier for me to fit it all together. I think I just used the bass alternate to add some clarity once the bass part was less exposed. Lots of transient shaping and compression and saturation on the bass and percussion parts. All the higher register 'hooky' parts I tried to keep more open and expressive so they could kind of float above the intensity lower down the frequency spectrum. I muted a few bits here and there, doubled a few tracks here and there for special treatment but I think everything is pretty obvious from the screen shots. In terms of fx, there's a palette of delays, reverbs and other bits on there but all used in the background to try and add some depth.

mp3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hooy7rr224d8m ... g.mp3?dl=0

wav:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/spxsp1cxodnem ... g.wav?dl=0

screenshots:

https://ibb.co/JyCnG96
https://ibb.co/DWfCSTH
https://ibb.co/GpFzjb5
https://ibb.co/6n8WLs8
https://ibb.co/tcKFvQz
https://ibb.co/Brfthw8
https://ibb.co/ZmBZG3t
https://ibb.co/9NXPtYF
https://ibb.co/pXxYxGn

[ollyaudio]

This was definitely a challenging mix for me but it was a lot of fun and made me do things in a new way which I suppose is the point of all this! Thank you Olly for making this all available to us. I approached it as I would any song and tried to find the hooks in each section and make that prominent. I tried to go in the direction of the two tracks listed as references. Overall I wanted it to build throughout while adding as much interest as I could along the way. I mangled things here and there just to heighten the dynamics in some of the sections but overall the arrangement lent itself to that anyway which was great. The bass register was a challenge especially at the front end. Once I had everything going it seemed easier for me to fit it all together. I think I just used the bass alternate to add some clarity once the bass part was less exposed. Lots of transient shaping and compression and saturation on the bass and percussion parts. All the higher register 'hooky' parts I tried to keep more open and expressive so they could kind of float above the intensity lower down the frequency spectrum. I muted a few bits here and there, doubled a few tracks here and there for special treatment but I think everything is pretty obvious from the screen shots. In terms of fx, there's a palette of delays, reverbs and other bits on there but all used in the background to try and add some depth.

mp3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hooy7rr224d8m ... g.mp3?dl=0

wav:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/spxsp1cxodnem ... g.wav?dl=0

screenshots:

https://ibb.co/JyCnG96
https://ibb.co/DWfCSTH
https://ibb.co/GpFzjb5
https://ibb.co/6n8WLs8
https://ibb.co/tcKFvQz
https://ibb.co/Brfthw8
https://ibb.co/ZmBZG3t
https://ibb.co/9NXPtYF
https://ibb.co/pXxYxGn

You have an interesting approach. Drum interacts very well with bass.


I liked the bass processing and the interpretation of the sound.

[Jamesirving]

Thank you Olly!

[davidpaulpaige]

Hello,
This material was very interesting and challenging, from the perspective of it belonging to a game production. I did my best to represent this in the mix. There was little in the way of eq/dyn on each individual track, I opted to affect groups of tracks more intensely instead.
The bass was exceedingly challenging. Used some gated/sc signal generator effects to add a "modern" low end. The original mix had a really nice "thick" and clear low end. I approached it a bit differently but wanted the same "modern" game sound.
(see screen shots: bass efx.png, bass.png)

Lots of automation to efx sends to help things to rub better together and bloom more.
(see screen shots: screen 1-2.png, 4 reverbs.png)

For the flute used Center to spread and eq to loose the low end and push some air.
(see screen shots: flute.png)
Overall I enjoyed the challenges this material presented. Thank you for sharing.

Cheers!


screen shots:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2etlcd12smwu ... ft7ta?dl=0
mp3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5kk3yofcxj28b ... e.mp3?dl=0

wav:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gjh13kz3dpufu ... e.wav?dl=0

[Clueless]

Hello,

Many thanks to OllyAudio and of course, Mister Fox for the challenge
My mix for the challenge, hopefully better than my first MC
Started in audacity, just to clean some sections up and use a couple of effects.
Transferred to Reaper, bunch of Airwindows Energy, NC17, Righteous, Ditherbox, Ironoxide5, Consolebuss and Channel, bite, Purestsquish, Electrohat, Drumslam, Basskit, sidedull, sidepass, Derez,
Bittersweet, ReaEq, , dragonfly reverb, Minus delay, Mtremelo, BalanceSpteufelsbergreverb, Tdrnova, Mloudness analyzer, Multianalyzer
I had forgot to downscale from 48-44 when i had finished in audacity, on exporting I had hiss to contend with, which in a way helped to make the electric feel of the mix ( there were some artifacts which I left as it seems to add life ) so I used a reduce hiss plug creatively to add certain elements. No outside sound source used, all found within the stems.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gnrnku4rdxjz ... s.wav?dl=0


There are a few things I would possibly add, but overall its very DIGITAL
Ta,, Clueless

PS is an MP3 needed? Just use audacity 320 meself?

[gyerosaski]

Hi!

After a couple moths of break I'm back to mixing challege.

Here are the tracks:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vszi0q2okvtml ... i.mp3?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrrgft5vp3pla ... i.wav?dl=0

About mix:
-first of all I decided to pitch shift all tracks
perc:
-waves rbass to bring really low frequencies to the mix
-low of saturation with decapitator and spectre
-march snare with 100% reverb (valhalla room)
bass&lead:
-sidechain compression with kick (tdr nova)
-quadravox on lead with octave up and hard panned channels
-watkat (very nice free delay) on everything to create nice ambience
pads:
-daw cassete and j37 to get boardsy distorted sound
-eventide blackhole for main reverb

Peace

[Frequency Painter]

Hi Olly, all,

First off, thank you for this track & challenge.

Sound wise I liked the 80's vibe of some of the synth sounds (metal bass = PPG and the side chained string sound leans towards a prophet 5) so I thought it would be a good idea to accentuate this vibe with EQ, some creative saturation and an old-school reverb (SP2016). There has been a lot of processing and it's quite impossible to document everything but basically I used quite some amount of transient design (neutron), distortion (black box & softube harmonics) and EQ (mainly PRO-Q3). I widened some elements with S1 and the M/S option on PRO-Q3). I really tried to make everything flow a bit more and edited some things to smoothen the transitions. The rest of the "creative" mixing is just mangling the high hat and use it as an added rhythm, some drum loops are reversed, cut up and rearranged to create some extra movement, I also used a lot of delays. IMO, a mix challenge is always difficult to some degree without the direct interaction of the artist, so this mix is just me (having read your suggestions and listened to the references) and I can only hope you like it :-)

Good luck to everyone.

Wav: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl8j0y9sai62g ... r.wav?dl=0
MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5hk9f82k4hfba ... r.mp3?dl=0

[stansom]

Hi there! This is my version of the track.

WAV:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ObnSA ... 7M-PwgkjxX
MP3:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yegcr ... IUqUoH0RMk

There is not too much processing here, standard EQ on some tracks, a little bit of compression on the drums and bass, envelope shaper on kick and snare to make them more punchy, distortion on bass and synths, and spatial processing on synths and on the snare drum.
Have fun and enjoy!
Good luck to all participants.

[cdj1000]

Hi
First, I think this track sound great, so no need much processing.
My workflow
Finding a qood balance and pan
note on tracks type of processing I want
apply processing that I noted
Choose another if finnally it sounds bad
apply EQ if necessary
balancing EQ betwen bass/kick, drastically cut kick low end
finally refine balance with EQ and effects
apply a light compression on summing bus

Daw: Studio One 4
Waves: SSLGchanelstrip on bass dry, flute and kick
Softube: saturation knob (on bass dry track in // with bass track)
Presonus: beat delay with sidechain on Pressonus Compressor for Flute dry track
I used Guitare emu dry wtih no processing
Waves: Doubler on Hi Hat track
Presonus: beat delay on laed guitare dry track
Presonus: flanger on Synth drive control drive dry track
Waves: SSLGcompressor on sum track

[Dodgingrain]

Mine are linked below.

I tried to tighten up the low end and bring out more of the instrumentation. This was a lot of work experimenting with effects and mutes and track doubling.

I used quite a bit of transient work on the bass and kick. There is loads of compression to try and let the kick sneak in between the bass as much as possible. The bass is double tracked with one track handling the lows and the other the low mids. This let me do some interesting transitions by muting one or the other. There are quite a few other mutes to help the track flow better and some pan work here and there. Most of the drums other than the kick and snares have some delays on them. There is also a reverse reverb on parts of the snare. Some of the noise sweeps have panning and band with filters applied.

The flute was a challenge. The original track was really harsh and had only a few frequencies. I ended up running it through a little alter boy pitching it down an octave and blending that in which helped a lot to make it not as harsh. The synth guitars have a bunch of automation on them and some doubling as well.

I struggled to try and make the metallic bass line fit into the song. I'm not sure I succeeded on that one, the part doesn't work well for me. Anyway, this one was pretty difficult and force me to look at some mixing techniques I don't normally use.

wav: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJri_o64nL7xZFeVmH9XA

mp3: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJri_o5gjIgG6X_a1FCeA