MIX CHALLENGE - MC094 October 2023 - Winners announced

[BenjiRage]

@BenjiRage Hi Ben, I’ve been spending a bit of time getting inside the guitar arrangements of your track. There are a lot of interesting harmonic relationships going on here. I find myself hearing more and more different things as I go along. I think the band has a really good sense of melodic structure and relationship.
I’ve been listening to your stuff on the website where I downloaded your press kit. You have some good material and it is a big sound. It’s nice to put a picture to the people in the band.

I have a question:

I noticed that your demo sounds quite a bit different from what I’m hearing as I’m typing this message. The energy is there. Are you looking to bring it more in line with your overall sound? There is an amazing amount of depth in the recording. I’m listening to “Big Trouble” and this sounds like the vibe that “Don’t Panic!” is. If this is the case then it’s all cool as this is where I was hearing it go.

I have some other questions of a more personal nature (if you don’t want to go there I will understand) and then Boys Of Summer is playing and I had to go back and check the webpage….

a) what has been the most memorable gig you guys have played and why was it so?
b) what are the top 5 items on your gig rider?
c) do you guys like teddy bears?

and…what is the significance of the name?

I think that’s it for now. I hope you’re having a good weekend.

Cheers.

Hi there!
Sorry for the slow reply, I've been away this weekend.
Regarding our sound, we're generally moving towards a more synth-based, "poppy" sound. However, Don't Panic was a song written back in the days when the band was much more "post-hardcore", hence it sounds more like "Big Trouble" than the other tracks on the Second Chances release. So to answer your first question, not really, Don't Panic is more of a standalone track.

To answer the other questions:
a) Best gig was probably the Cockermouth Rock festival "Cock Rock" in 2011. We played to a great crowd, set went really well, amazing location, weather, such a fun weekend!
b) I don't ever recall having a proper rider at any of the gigs we've done yet! But if we did, my top five items would be:, Pitta bread, Houmous, Peach juice, Haribo Tangfastics and hairspray
c) I can't speak for the rest of the guys but myself, yes of course, I love Teddy Bears!

The band name I believe was originally coined from the name of the town in the Halloween films - "Haddonfield", which took it's name from the word "Hayden", which meant "Cursed". "Pray For Hayden" therefore means "Pray for the cursed". This was all from way back before my time as drummer though

All the best

Ben

PS: To everyone who has submitted a mix so far, thank you! There have been some excellent mixes and it's been a pleasure listening to them all!

[PistolPete]

Mixed completely ITB using Cubase 10.5 pro, sennheiser HD280 cans, and some light monitoring on my 20+ year old fostex PM5 monitors at low volume so I don't piss off my neighbors.
Plugs used mainly: waves, plugin alliance.
Steinberg UR22 interface to a presonus central station for monitor control
"Bedroom project studio"

Loudness_Value;-16.02 LUFS
Sample Rate;44.100 kHz
Average RMS (AES-17) Left;-15.96 dB
Average RMS (AES-17) Right;-15.64 dB
Max. RMS Left;-13.56 dB
Max. RMS Right;-13.21 dB
True Peak Left;-3.77 dB
True Peak Right;-3.67 dB
Bit Depth Left;24 bit
Bit Depth Right;24 bit


My monthly mix entry:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LZVtp7 ... sp=sharing


I had a lot of fun mixing this months song and it had a lot of energy that I wanted to focus on keeping. I took myself completely out of my comfort zone on this mix as I kept hearing about “brauerizing” and I never really looked into it before. Time to get uncomfortable and learn something new.... After watching a few youtube videos and reading a few articles online about it I got the general concept down of "Brauerizing",(basically mixing through different compressors) and did a psudo-brauerizing on this mix.

I really liked how things turned out so this might be something to explore on future contests.

I started off with general session maintenance, cutting dead air, coloring tracks, gain staging to a good starting point…

Instead of how the Brauerizing uses what seems to be 4 compressors where all signals are sent to one of 4, and the channel outputs send to a dummy channel. I set mine up similar but with each instrument group having its own compressor.

Here are the “group” compressor FX sends I created. Each instrument group was sent to these FX sends and channel outputs sent do a dummy channel with no output.
Synths : puig child 670, AMEK EQ 200
Vocals : CLA 2A, AMEK EQ 200
Bass CLA 3A. AMEK EQ 200, DC offset plug to reduce sub rumble
Guitars Puid Child 670, AMEK EQ 200, Waves S-1 Imager
Drums CLA 76, AMEK 200 EQ, Waves S-1 imager

Compressors were all set according to instruments attack and release and compression set to 2db on each channel using a 1k sine wave.

On each Compression FX send I also added a multiband EQ to tune the sound to the instrument group.

I also added some additional FX Global sends which were used in different amounts on each of the instrument and vox tracks:

FX global Reverb: abbey road plates
FX Global Delay: echoboy
FX global Short delay: echoboy


Once I got the mix sounding really clean I bounced it down and listened to it for about a week. I really liked how it sounded with everything running through the compressors, but it also seemed to lack some dynamic and so I took notes during the week listening to it in different sources and finished it up today. I noticed I had the vocals too high and the snares and kick were almost missing and the low end of the bass needed to be bumped up.

I created some additional FX sends which mainly focused on the snare and kick mid range to add presence to them.

FX drum saturation: waves abbey road saturation
FX distortion: soundtoys decapitator.


After everything was sounding really good together I worked on automating the send on vocals, guitars and some of the drum tracks to help create the changes and give the song some live dynamic energy. I used FX send level automation a lot to create some of the vocal doubling fx as well as to add space during certain buildups with the drums.

Finally I went back to some of the key channels and added channel strips (either AMEK 9098 or SSL4000) and tuned the instruments for clarity tone and to help their presence in the mix and cut excess “noise”.

On the Mix bus I have the waves abbey road mastering plug in which I really like the tape and MS EQ capibilities.

On the stereo bus I have waves J37 tape for a little glue and waves L2 to prevent any peak spikes..

I hope that you enjoy my mix and my first attempt at "Brauerizing" my mixes.

[malene]

Welcome to the community, @malene!

Just a slight request, especially for everyone that use this track as "portfolio" and / or for tutorial purposes on Youtube.

There is a TXT in the Multitrack Mix Pack called "Off-site redistribution agreement.txt". In it is a text block under Point 02 that provides a detailed credit information to the source material. Please use that (as in: please edit that into the Youtube "Doobly doo" - yes, this is what the "description box" is commonly called).

Thank you.

Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I'll give credits in the Doobly doo But in this video, I'm not playing any part of the song. It's just about the workflow and session setup.

[Mister Fox]

Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I'll give credits in the Doobly doo But in this video, I'm not playing any part of the song. It's just about the workflow and session setup.

Doesn't matter if there is audio or not... Credits where Credits are due, please!

Just mentioning my user name, the song provider user name and "Mix Challenge forum" (if there is actually not much more than that), is a bit sparse.




A friendly reminder:

Including today, 6 days left. We have 15 entries so far.

[1ktone]

@BenjiRage Hi Ben, I’ve been spending a bit of time getting inside the guitar arrangements of your track. There are a lot of interesting harmonic relationships going on here. I find myself hearing more and more different things as I go along. I think the band has a really good sense of melodic structure and relationship.
I’ve been listening to your stuff on the website where I downloaded your press kit. You have some good material and it is a big sound. It’s nice to put a picture to the people in the band.

I have a question:

I noticed that your demo sounds quite a bit different from what I’m hearing as I’m typing this message. The energy is there. Are you looking to bring it more in line with your overall sound? There is an amazing amount of depth in the recording. I’m listening to “Big Trouble” and this sounds like the vibe that “Don’t Panic!” is. If this is the case then it’s all cool as this is where I was hearing it go.

I have some other questions of a more personal nature (if you don’t want to go there I will understand) and then Boys Of Summer is playing and I had to go back and check the webpage….

a) what has been the most memorable gig you guys have played and why was it so?
b) what are the top 5 items on your gig rider?
c) do you guys like teddy bears?

and…what is the significance of the name?

I think that’s it for now. I hope you’re having a good weekend.

Cheers.

Hi there!
Sorry for the slow reply, I've been away this weekend.
Regarding our sound, we're generally moving towards a more synth-based, "poppy" sound. However, Don't Panic was a song written back in the days when the band was much more "post-hardcore", hence it sounds more like "Big Trouble" than the other tracks on the Second Chances release. So to answer your first question, not really, Don't Panic is more of a standalone track.

To answer the other questions:
a) Best gig was probably the Cockermouth Rock festival "Cock Rock" in 2011. We played to a great crowd, set went really well, amazing location, weather, such a fun weekend!
b) I don't ever recall having a proper rider at any of the gigs we've done yet! But if we did, my top five items would be:, Pitta bread, Houmous, Peach juice, Haribo Tangfastics and hairspray
c) I can't speak for the rest of the guys but myself, yes of course, I love Teddy Bears!

The band name I believe was originally coined from the name of the town in the Halloween films - "Haddonfield", which took it's name from the word "Hayden", which meant "Cursed". "Pray For Hayden" therefore means "Pray for the cursed". This was all from way back before my time as drummer though

All the best

Ben

PS: To everyone who has submitted a mix so far, thank you! There have been some excellent mixes and it's been a pleasure listening to them all!

I like the “pray for the cursed” vibe. Very punk. I’m also glad you like teddy bears…

Cheers.

[Protton]

Hi folks! This is my first participation in this contest and I have to say it was fun because I love punk rock of any kind.

Here is the file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O8jtBO ... sp=sharing

A brief description of what I did is found below taking into consideration that the song still would have to be mastered.
Then, I tried to control all the variables and make a mix well balanced ready to get volume afterwards.

I usually go with the Top Down method to make the sound I have in my head.

Drum Channel - control the transients and give life to the snare and kick.
Pro MB to control the lows and midlows
UAD Studer - To add some harmonics
Basslane - Used to give a little bit of body and make the beat wider
Nova Clip to cut the transients and control dynamics followed by Pro L2 to limit the energy in the channel

Bass Channel -
Parallax (Neural DSP) - Add some harmonics and distortion to the mid and highs and compress the low frequencies
UAD LA2A - to add stabilization and color to the bass
Pro L2 to limit the transients

Guitar Channel - give definition and roundness to the chords.
Pro Q3 with low cut at 90hz
UAD Pulltec EQP 1A boosting the highs at 8khz
Pro MB limiting midlows and controlling hi-mids.
Avalon VT 747SP adding some high shelf and compressing those frequencies to give it a flavor and shine
Pro L2 to accentuate some distortions and limit the energy for the gain stage

Synth Channel - I tried to keep it in the background to avoid pollution over the guitars.
Pro Q3 emphasizing the midlows and cutting the highs
Pro L2 to add volume without impacting in the gain stage performance.

VOX Channel - the goal was to control some harsh frequencies and give body and warmth to it.
Pro Q3 Cutting the lows at 100hz
CLA Vocal to Add a small reverb and compression as whole.
Gullfoss reducing the highs and recovering some midlows to retire the midlows.
Soothe 2 to cut some high frequencies and sibilance

Mix Bus -
Gullfoss Reducing more high frequencies and taming more than recovering the whole spectrum
The God Particle boosting mid and high frequencies without using the limiter
Pro L2 with Oversample at 16x.

That's my humble contribution.
I hope you guys like my sound perspective.
Cheers from Brazil!!!

[1970studio]

Hello,

Enjoyed the song, performance and composition.

Inthebox part:
as in-track compressors I’ve used H-comp by waves and LA-2A by UAD.
as in-track eq I’ve used Equilibrium by DMG Audio and Kirchoff EQ.
Here and there I’ve used plugins for passive sweet eq finish like Pultec by UAD and the plugin version of Lindell PEX-500.

Some pieces of hardware for this job.
Stereo drum bus: Rupert Neve 543 compressors + Lindell PEX-500 passive eqs
Backing vocals stereo bus: Optical compressors Vocal leveler by Tegeler Audio + Lindell PEX-500 passive eqs.
Printed a copy of the lead vox track through an API 512 preamp and API 527 compressor (VCA). I’ve used such track as parallel compression with the original lead vox track (about 50% 50%).

Forward Audio Phase Align for aligning phases of multiple tracks (snare top as leader). For phase distribution metering: Correlometer by Voxengo and Maat GON.

My mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/sxpyunfc ... 9bp4r&dl=0

Cheers

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Thanks to BenjiRage/PrayForHayden for providing this song. Wow, what an energy and what a performance. This song rocks! For me, this is the best kind of music to mix. Had great fun with it.

Here is my mix:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ahp8xH6KRIfbgny8RaR ... M?e=hj4nXv

The demo already sounds great and I really liked the sound of the drum in the demo, the way you’ve recorded it was a very good idea. I wanted the drum to sound a little bit fuller and more natural without loosing any of the impact and energy. I settled for a pretty basic strategy with parallel compression where the OHs Cyms tracks are not routed to the parallel compression. That way I could smash the shells all the way without having the cymbals sounding harsh. So I was very happy with your approach to record the cymbals apart from the shells.

The OHs Shells and snare tracks are also compressed before going to the parallel compression. (Not the kick, I noticed that the kick sounded better without the extra compression). That alowed me to hit the parallel compression harder. The parallel compression in this case where two compressors in serial each with there own character that blend nice together.
The drum buss only has got some EQ with low boost and a high shelf boost. There is no reverb on the drums. I used the roomtracks to give it a more live feel.

For the guitars I had a sound in mind that would be big and aggressive. I used a plug in called NoAmp (SansAmp clone obviously) to thicken the guitartone. On top of that an eq boost at around 230 Hz and 1.6KHz. The guitars are panned hard left / right.

The bass track is a blend of both provided tracks. I created a third track with some distortion and a bass harmonix plugin to give it more drive and to let it cut more through the mix. There is some compression and eq with a dip at 800Hz and a boost at 3KHz.

The lead vocal has got an optical compression and EQ with a LPF at 17Khz and a HSF at 8.3 Khz to reduce some of the sharp sound. It has a boost at 2Khz and a HPF at 150Hz with a LSF at 350Hz. For some extra control over the dynamics the fx chain also has a fairchild – like plugin and a little bit distortion (very subtle). The LV goes to a hard panned (left) slapback delay and a hard panned (right) very short delay (15ms) with pitch shift to create some blend. There is a roomverb and a longer delay. That delay has got side chain compression to lower the volume of the delay when there is singing.

The backing vocals got eq, a little bit overdrive / saturation, chorus effect. There is no compression because the overdrive already compressed the sound.

The synth tracks only have EQ to remove some mud and to add some aggression (800Hz boost). I automated the volume to let it be more audible during certain parts.

If my mix is an improvement compared to your mix I leave that up to you. But I am happy with the result.

Cheers,

Jeroen

[Punchipum]

Hey, @BenjiRage , I'm mixing the song and I'm wondering how did you record the drums to have those tracks so clean? Only cymbals, only shells, only the snare? Is it a programmed drum or is it an acoustic drum?

[Mister Fox]

I'm sure @BenjiRage can go into way more detail.

However, please do consult tue bundled TXTs, especially the "Words by the Song Provider" one for additional information