MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Winners announced

[Ronson79]

After reading about the intentions from the producer it´s not really clear to me how far we are allowed to go. It says " searching for new tones, sounds and vibe. Be creative" but why are we then not allowed to replace drums if we are shooting for creativity and new sounds? Are we only allowed to put different amp sims on the guitars and bass and put some saturation and pitch things on the vocal?

[Mister Fox]

After reading about the intentions from the producer it´s not really clear to me how far we are allowed to go. It says " searching for new tones, sounds and vibe. Be creative" but why are we then not allowed to replace drums if we are shooting for creativity and new sounds? Are we only allowed to put different amp sims on the guitars and bass and put some saturation and pitch things on the vocal?

The TL;DR is: yes.

As you are aware at this point, being a user for over one year, the rules are clear on drum enhancement (also see FAQ Q/A #08). I really do not want to regurgitate this every month. Not to mention, the drums are far from being "unusable" and already samples to begin with (Get Good Drums "One Kit Wonder: Metal", with additional blended sounds/samples from Presonus - please check the attached TXTs).

You can still drastically shape the sound and feel of a production with just pure EQ, compression, volume/panning and certain AUX effect usage alone. I have "visualized" this with the drums for MC084 (example!). Please never underestimate the power you already have at your fingertips.

This is why the Mix(ing) Challenges exist... to push yourself, reach for the sky, try something new, learn something in the process.

[Ronson79]

After reading about the intentions from the producer it´s not really clear to me how far we are allowed to go. It says " searching for new tones, sounds and vibe. Be creative" but why are we then not allowed to replace drums if we are shooting for creativity and new sounds? Are we only allowed to put different amp sims on the guitars and bass and put some saturation and pitch things on the vocal?

The TL;DR is: yes.

As you are aware at this point, being a user for over one year, the rules are clear on drum enhancement (also see FAQ Q/A #08). I really do not want to regurgitate this every month. Not to mention, the drums are far from being "unusable" and already samples to begin with (Get Good Drums "One Kit Wonder: Metal", with additional blended sounds/samples from Presonus - please check the attached TXTs).

You can still drastically shape the sound and feel of a production with just pure EQ, compression, volume/panning and certain AUX effect usage alone. I have "visualized" this with the drums for MC084 (example!). Please never underestimate the power you already have at your fingertips.

This is why the Mix(ing) Challenges exist... to push yourself, reach for the sky, try something new, learn something in the process.

I know the rules. This wasn´t a general question about triggering, it was in the context of the special rules with this contest as there was talking about creating new sounds/tones. But thanks for making it clear to me.

[nemnoshko]

Very, very cool track! Thanks to Ron for providing it and going through this!

First of all I must admit that I don’t feel „at home“ in this genre - at all. The last time I mixed a song in this realm (it was also a mixing contest with Warren Huart and Christian Kohle) I got lost pretty quickly. So here we go again

The last month or so I played around with the Michael Brauer Template which recently was released by the puremix people. And man, that thing is awesome. This template and the hours of videos explaining it only are worth the membership fee - for sure. But that makes it difficult for the documentation in this game. I really can’t go through that whole thing in detail, it would take me hours to write.

What it basically is (for those who don’t already know): You are running your mix through five parallel bus processes (A to E) and there is a ton of stuff going on on each bus. Even on the Mixbus is quite an amount of processing (SSL Comp, Germanium Comp, ShadowHills, Chandler CurveBender, Studer 800).

All the tracks run through either SSL 4k oder 9000J channel strips. There are a lot of parallel processes for drums, guitars and vocals (five different compressors in parallel only for vocals) plus reverbs and delays. I will do explain what I did besides of the Brauerize things though.

To get punch, depth and size on the drum tracks I used the parallel processes (compression, saturation) plus different rooms, plates and gated reverbs. I used the new Waves BB Tube plugin on Kick and Snare (yes, it’s great). I sent Kick, Snare, Tom and fill though a sans amp (which is not part of the template by default) plus some tape echo to fill the kit out in the midrange. When I was done mixing I bounced the intro and sent it through the McDSP Futzbox and Waves Kaleidoscope. I also used the a snare snippet from the end, reversed it and put that in the transition to the Chorus (for whooping it, you. know).

I used both bass tracks and spiced up the already amped signal with BB Tube. The DI track has a SansAmp for tone and 1176 RevE for evening out the dynamics.

Some guitar tracks seemed to be redundant so I tried to find those with differences and spread them out (I already was working on the mix after the mistake was reported, so I sticked with what I had so far). I took one of the main DI tracks and sent it through Softubes AMP room to get more impact. The SSL EQ was for overall shaping and the Sonible SmartEQ to tame some harsh resonances (I used the learn function and chose to like it).

When I looked at the vocals I found them quite uneven so I did a lot of clip gaining before doing anything else. I also tried to find groups that made sense to me for an easier mixing process. The de-essing was an ongoing issue and I ended up with the Softube Weiss Deess and the SPL Deesser to get results that I liked. I used 1176AE, LA2, El Rey, Devil-Loc, Autotune for two tracks and - again - BB Tubes. Pro-Q3 to tame harshness.

The rest was automation.

This is it. Good luck everyone!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xv3vp4yfg9mmh ... K.wav?dl=0

O,Nice

[Ronson79]

Here´s my take...

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

Drums - smashed the shit out of them with parallel channels
Bass - boosted some midrange and added sub bass with RootOne
GTRs - Reamped the DI tracks to taste with the free AA Aero, eq + compression on the sub group
Vocals - some delay + reverb, blended in a pitched AlterBoy track for experimental vibe and automated some rhythmic fx in parts

Cheers

[LowlandsWave]

Hello!!
Great song to work on, big thanx to @Rawkinron as the song provider for this song! Big thanx to @Mister Fox for running the show and .... keeping us on track! The patience you show is admirable!
What did I do with the song? For a change I don't just drop all the plugins I used but tried to describe what direction I wanted to go. Here we go ..

What did I want the song to sound like:
Kick: Big "thud" with a nice klick to it,
Snare: very present, every hit counts ... not to dry, so the snare creates some space in the drum kit
Toms: just big, not to overpowered
OH's: nicley tugged away, not to much ssshhh, ssshhh

Bass:
Clean low end with saturated top, Bass must be present

Guitars:
wide guitars with power, not to much high gain hiss

Vocals:
Screams: big and dark, clean screams almost like a bullhorn effect
Clean vocals: closer and more sparkle creating contrast with the screams

Here is the mix, MC089__Hooker_and_a_Handgun__INFERNO__LowlandsWave

Drums: Main channelstrip SSL 4K emu, parallel compression with devil lock
Bass: DI used for low end up to 200Hz Amp for 200 Hz and up added saturation with PA Blackbox, extra sub with bx-subsynth
Guitars: Guitar 1 "Re-amped" using Helix, tone with less high gain hiss. Guitars panned hard left and right. Parallel distortion added for extra weight. All guitars get a little fairchild emu
Vocals: 1073 preamp emu, pultec eq and La2a compression

mixbus: pultec for some air and SSL bus com pressor for some glue and added punch

[nemnoshko]

Thank you for this experience and great song.

I wanted the drums to be big and massive.

So are the guitars to wrap around the mix.

For the most part I used saturation, transient shapers, compression and EQ on the drum bus.

Parallel processing of drums and vocals. Added several events.

Thanks again and good luck everyone!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XqS8Fy ... sp=sharing

[alavault]

Hello!
Mix:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vRKsy ... share_link

Rhythm GTR: Added Amp Sim (Mesa Like) on the DI. LCR panned with different cabs for the emulations, Center guitar emulation with no cab for fizziness. General EQ and Andy Sneap C4 trick. Sent into parallel guitar comp+EQ+widener
Lead GTR: Added amp sim (Soldano Like) to DIs. Sent to Parallel GTR group + long verb and 1/8D delay.
Bass: Divided into DI, distortion and subs (with SubsOnly). Automated the distortion on the choruses only.
BG Vox: Telephone effect on the choruses, a few ear candies here and there. Heavily compressed, sent to medium verb and parallel vox comp
Lead Vox: distortion, distortion everywhere. And heavy compression. Telephone effect on the choruses. Pairs are slightly panned.
Drums/ Kick: nothing fancy. EQ/Comp
Drums/Snare: Multed into two tracks, one smashed the other "natural". All of them into a clipper.
Drums/Cymbals: Narrowed the panning, HP and limiting (to make snare not poke out)
Drums/Room: Added IR verb (automated) for... ambiance?
Drums/Fills etc: Smashed to pieces. Sounds bad but sounds fine at the same time.
Editing: a lot of silence stripping. Maybe slid a guitar here and there but quickly stopped.
Master Bus: two SSL bus in series, one 10/100 the other 30/auto. With a lot of GR. Into Flavour MTC

[Rawkinron]

Hi everyone, sorry for you late response I didn't notice the extra page tabs at the bottom and have missed some posts. Thanks to anyone who has complimented the song by the way we all appreciate the support. I'll start to go through everyone's mixes as thy post them from here on out! cheers

[Rawkinron]

Good job so far guys! Keep the mixes coming in!