Mix Challenge

Hello guys,

This is my first post on this nice forum, hope will be a nice start

MC065_Cameron_Crowson_Take_Your_Time_filipandrei

What I wanted to achieve with this mix was a 70s vibe where not everything is perfectly align in time with rough sound of spread guitars and a straight bass

1. The drums.
I felt like the hi hat was way to loud coming from almost of the tracks, and although the recording quality was quite good, I still had some gating applied to the snare and kick, so that bleed will not overpower the entire drum mix.
Blended in the percussions, a little much over the hi hat, so that the percussions and drums sounds like a whole
Also, I chose to have an open and thin snare sound and a small amount of reverb, so that in the entire mix this will sound like a more intimate drum

2. Bass and guitars
No individual track processing for the bass, just blended the entire 3 tracks sounds until I saw fit, and give the song the foundation it needs

3. Guitars
I wanted the guitars to be more present but not to catch too much attention, so I sent the guitars to a bus and processed them together, giving them a little bit of spread, beside the panning. For the solo part, tried to re-create a 70s solo sound, but I found it way to aggressive, so I chose the original one but spreading it a little applying a send effect with a little pan delay (10ms R / 20 ms L) and a mild verb, trying to blend it in the entire mix

4. Piano Keys and Sax
Applied a bit of EQ on piano, HP on 74HZ and a little boost on 115Hz to give it more body. I have also applied a little more spread send effect, using the same effect channel for guitars
I've tried to blend in the Rhodes, using my ear to match the piano track, so that they seem like working together and lay down the chord foundation for the song. Used also a bit of spread a reverb and trying to give it more "air" so that can cut through the mix

5. Lead and BV
I felt like the second lead vocal will be more helpful if applying a ping-pong pan effect and give the impression of a nice delay effect.
Matched the gain using an opto-compressor and leaving the track un-edited, volume wise
Although did tried to apply a tune plugin, I found that a bit of melodyne will suffice. Sent all the lead vocals to a bus and process them altogether using verb and spread delay for a bit of space and a touch of "Heat" using Soundtoys Radiator trying to mimic a bit of mic amp simulation

Guys, we used to mix to -14 LUFS, are we still targeting that or has that changed? I see there was a rules change in march but I don't see anything in the guidelines dated that. Also as far as edits and vocals go yes, the artist/producer should deal with timing and tuning but unfortunately that doesn't always occur or they don't have the appropriate skill level so sometimes we have to deal with it and correct as needed.

I am sorry, but you are mixing up the rule set of the Songwriting Competition with the one of the Mix(ing) Challenge. The upper limit of -16LUFS never really changed, if you stuck to proper gain staging and working with a reference level.



Regarding the feedback on the pitch and timing "issues".

I am slowly getting tired of the comments towards both me as host and the "client". The current "timing issues" and "pitch correction" are absolutely minimal. In fact, we've had both topics in previous competitions and it was never an issue. In fact, it was a welcome change of pace ever so often.

The recent types of comments all over the forum give me more and more the feeling, that some of you participants only want to see "highly professional" and "clean cut content" - so that you can just slam on your go-to mix presets and call it a day. At the same time, there shouldn't be any restrictions or clear "ground rules". If you can afford to reject a production "in the real world" because it's not of your personal high standards, that is one thing. But if you think that the content is plain downright "unusable" and such a "game" should never be started, then you not only criticize the song provider in an unjust manner, you are also highly disrespectful towards my extensive behind the scenes work (Integrity Check).

This is forum is place for challenges and learning to handle such non-ideal material in the best way possible. Now suddenly a lot of things are a big deal (like apparently way too many "off-key notes", timing, voice pitch, etc) - and I am not having it anymore.


I highly suggest everyone to read up on the FAQ section of the Rules and Guidelines. Most notably point 10 and 11.

Hi there!

It was an intense work with this mix. My personal reference for this song is "I saw the light" by Todd Rundgren and it is very dear to me. So became this song "Take your time", I really apreciated mixing this. I worked on the vocals slightly with melodyne and did some time editing on instruments. I thought this would help the song to shine. I had problems with "klickiness" of the the ride sound in the overheads, in the hihat track i found a good solution for these parts. For the most tracks I used Kush Omega 458a preamp.
I mix itb with a multibus compression setup (Michael Brauer idea). So keys goes to bus A (33609 emulation) , guitars to Bus B (Fairchild emulation), drums and bass to C (distressor emulation) and BV`s to D (STA level comp emulation). There is an additional bus for kick (1176emu).
The main Vocals go to 4 different comps (1176, Fairchild, Fairchild, STA Level emulations).
I gated snare and kick. Because the kick gate involves and swallows some cymbal sounds I automated it to open up in two parts.
On the masterbus is touch of PA bx townhouse, a sidechained IK precision comp and Kush Novatron.

Here is the mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n0h4qd6sdki8v ... v.wav?dl=0

Cheers and good luck to everyone, Christian

Hi All,

Please find my mix below:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g4uktxsw1otpj ... R.wav?dl=0

-I went for a warm, but polished sound.
-I manually tuned the vocals and tried to balance between a natural but tuned sound.
- I removed bit of the harsh high frequencies in the vocals and added a bit of warmth in the lows.
- Overall i added space (reverb and delays) to all the elements

Hope you like it.

Cheers!

I enjoyed mixing this very much. It was a nice break from working on my own stuff.
Thanks to Cameron Crowson for supplying the fun song, and allowing us to mix it.
Mister Fox, thanks for all the work to facilitate this challenge every month. This is my first time here, and hope to play again soon.

I recently picked up Brainworx's BX Console SSL 4000 E emulation, so it got some heavy use here, as an excuse to get familiar with it.

"Rear" Bus: I often like to try blending a compressed version of the master bus, containing everything except drums/percussion. I tried that here, and thought it worked well, so I went with it.

Mix: MC065_CameronCrowson_TakeYourTime_john.wav

DAW: Reaper 6
Reference Tracks:
• Rosanna (Toto)
• Take it Easy (Eagles)
• I Need You (America)

Plugins
• Master Bus: PSP MasterQ2, bx_refinement, Klanghelm DC8c3, Black Rooster Magnetite
• Rear Bus (parallel master, sans drums): Klanghelm MJUC
• Drum Bus: Melda MEqualizer, LVC Audio Limited-T

  ○ Parallel Bus: Klanghelm MJUC, PSP NobelQ (Pultec EQ)
  ○ Kick: Melda MEqualizer, Klanhelm SDRR, Boz Digital Transgressor, bx_console N
  ○ Snare: Scheps Omni-Channel, Klanhelm SDRR, Boz Digital Transgressor, [Send] Arturia Rev Plate-140
  ○ HiHat: bx_console N, [Send] Arturia Rev Plate-140
  ○ OH: ReaComp , Melda MEqualizer, PSP NobelQ (Pultec EQ)
  ○ Room: ReaComp , Melda MEqualizer
  ○ Perc: Klanghelm VUMT (HPF and LPF), SPL Vitalizer MK, [Send] Arturia Rev Plate-140

• Guitar, Rhythm: reaComp, bx_console E, Audio Thing Reels

  ○ Solo: bx_console N, bx_refinement, [Send] Boz Digital Imperial Delay

• Bass: ReaXcomp, Scheps Omni-Channel, MEqualizer, Tracgkspacer (SC from kick)
• Sax: Sonimus Satson Channel Strip, [Send] ReaDelay, [Send] Melda MConvolution (reverb)
• Piano : Scheps Omni-Channel, Trackspacer (SC from lead vox), [Send] bx_rooMS
• Keys: bx_console E, Melda MTremolo, Cableguys PanCake2, [Send] PSP Nexcellence (spring reverb)
• Vocals (All Tracks): Melodyne, bx_console N, Waves Sibilance, [Send] Arturia Rev Plate-140, [Send] Melda MConvolution (hall reverb), [Send] Boz Digital Imperial Delay (stereo slap)

Hello,
Here is my mix:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=11dxRS ... bbkCQbrNN8

I was challange to mix this song.
Kick - add lows add cut at 250hz
Snare: add a little bit highs
Sax and guitar - cut nasty frequences

Cheers

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 7 days left to submit your edit.


I remind everyone again to please get a refresher on the established Rules and Guidelines. Thank you.

Hi,

I started with vocal tuning and drum corrections. In drums. in the drums I corrected only a few quite uneven moments. First I mix drums, than bass => guitars => vocal => solo instruments (guitar and sax). I hope I get the old school sound

Good luck to everyone!

Regards,
Andrejs

Screenshots
Mix

P.S. I need friend like you, Cameron, so that he writes me such wonderful songs in difficult times.

Dear Cameron and the Mix Challenge community,

Please find my submission for MC065 here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x4uocxm1fxczx ... d.wav?dl=0

Mixed in Logic Pro X. No samples, additions, subtractions (except for the DI tracks), yada, yada, yada...

Started out by trimming all but the first two measures of silence and killing the count off (I'll put it back in if you want it), did my gain staging, created track stacks, and did some basic high- and low-passing.

Drums- EQ & compression on individual tracks. Sent the snare its own reverb on an aux track. Then did an overall EQ on the drum stack, ran it through a compressor in parallel, and hit it all with a little gated reverb and tape saturation. Nothing fancy.

Percussion- Panned the two shakers hard left and hard right, and hit the stack with a touch of reverb and tape saturation.

Bass- Did some EQing to let the RE27 focus on the highs, and to let the ribbon mic handle the lows. Blended the two to taste, and put a dynamic EQ on the bass stack to duck out of the way of the kick.

Rhythm guitars- Panned each one pretty far left and right, andEQ'd them to tame that reverb pluckiness. Then hit the stack with a tiny bit of compression and tape saturation.

Keys- The pano is panned a bit to the left, and the Rhodes a bit to the right. The Rhodes got an exciter to bring out some if its dirtiness, and the stack was hit with a bit of hall reverb.

Guitar solo- Just some tape saturation and compression.

Sax solo- Tape saturation, compression, and some 80s sounding sax solo reverb.

Vocals- All 6 tracks were cleaned up pretty extensively. The 120Hz hum from the mic was removed, breathes were attenuated, barking dogs were removed, etc. Per the song provider's request, I tried to keep the tuning sounding as natural as possible (please let me know if I overdid it). The lead vox on the verse and chorus were compressed in series (3 instances each); just riding automation. The song provider mention that he like the vocal doubling, so in addition the the provided doubled tracks, I added a few instances of Reel ADT (Waves) to thicken things up even further. And then, of course, the vocals were finished with some reverb.

Overall- I did a lot of volume automation on the stacks (e.g. bring the overall drums down a bit during the verses, boost the little guitar licks, and did individual fades on each track to smooth out the ending). The master buss has tape saturation and NLS Buss (Waves) for some "color," and some tiny compression to hold it all together.

That's about it. Thanks for listening, and for your consideration.

Best regards,
Jeff (jeffssoloband)