Mix Challenge - Gossip and Discussion

[Ichad.c]

There's too much work involved, on occasion, for only the chance of winning.
Things I don't like to do because they are time-consuming include:
Time alignments (for whatever reason)
Micro editing and cleaning up obviously bad takes
Re-amping, also because I don't want to play the Producer
Sorting through minutes of comp tracks, again to not play the Producer

It's ideal to work with tracks that are already fairly well produced, without their effects on. Then we just load them up and get to mixing.

Maybe I am lucky and have more time for the MC than others. But I like especially those parts of the job. They are time consuming thats right.

That is the fun part for me too, and more closer to what real-life mixing is all about IMHO, and only the privileged can afford a producer. I do semi agree with the re-amping part, might be better to have the original amped part, and then have re-amping as an option if the mix engineer wishes to use it.

[*]This competition has a lot of rules (loudness, tracking muting, etc.) that you need to read and understand. This could turn people off. Since moving to artist judging, I don't understand why this is necessary. In my view, the artist should provide guidance, and if a mixer takes some creative liberty, they also take on the risk.

Yeah, I agree on this one, as a first timer this month - it was quite a long list of demands to read through, can it be simplified? As for artistic freedom, I totally agree with jhkennedy5 -> if the engineer goes off on a tangent, the song provider will most likely reject the mix so it is self-regulatory in a sense, maybe it should be turned from an error into a warning? A good mix-engineer will always try and make the best mix possible, putting somebody in the proverbial box right from the start seems off-putting to me. As for the loudness, I agree with Compyfox to an extent, gain staging is important as well as leaving space/dynamics for the mastering engineer, but maybe we could simplify it a bit, maybe choose 2 or 3 (optional) freeware meters and provide some screenshots? Not everybody understands all the technical lingo, VU meters can vary drastically, and some people may respond better to visual stimulus. Basically, IMHO, we should keep it as simple as possible.

P.S. I'm cool with keeping the deadlines, even though I was late this time, sorry guys! I don't mind being kicked to the curb in the future if I was late.

Regards
Andrew

[Compyfox]

I have an idea on the promotion aspect. Use the sponsors as cross marketing. For them it is corporate sponsorship and trade promotion, i.e. a good thing. So maybe we can supply the sponsors with a click-through image/logo of the Mix Challenge (and accompanying xml/html script) , this should be made very painless and simple for the sponsors and remain optional.

I do understand and appreciate your thinking. However, this is something that IMO won't work or companies won't do. Their general idea is to sell their stuff and not just give it away. We can ask them, but I'm pretty sure that we'll get a general "no" to this.

Posting on social media about it however is a totally different thing.

Still leaves the question:
How can we, the hosts, improve the promotion game?
We're already heavy hitters on Twitter. Would a Mailing List even make sense?

There's too much work involved, on occasion, for only the chance of winning.

I post with a counter argument:
Doesn't "only the chance of winning" slim the more people join?
To me it sounds like as if you do not want this whole concept/challenge to expand?

Things I don't like to do because they are time-consuming include:
Time alignments (for whatever reason)
Micro editing and cleaning up obviously bad takes
Re-amping, also because I don't want to play the Producer
Sorting through minutes of comp tracks, again to not play the Producer

Sorry to disappoint you, but this is(!) part of a day job of an audio engineer these days.

The lines thinned out over the course of the years and it's just not "mix and be done" anymore. You have to address issues in a production, to this counts vocal comping (to a certain extent, mind you). And re-amping is topic in the audio realm as well, especially if the original guitar takes weren't as good - or you didn't like the sound, it didn't fit in with the rest of the production, etc.

So sometimes you have to step in and play a small producer role as well. It's even requested from you these days. People come to you because of your style of mixing/editing. And this challenge does emphasize on that really well.

And all those imperfections on the raw tracks like the need to clean them up, time correction, pitch correction and so on is good material to learn how to deal with such tracks. I am not planning to do mixing as a business, it is just for my own joy and to get better each month (hopefully )

This is what a realistic scenario is all about. You get all kinds of tracks. From nearly perfect that merely need a fine tuning/brush up job to (absolutely) broken where you're asked to get the best out of it.

It can't get any better IMO.

It's ideal to work with tracks that are already fairly well produced, without their effects on. Then we just load them up and get to mixing.

But then it wouldn't be that much of a challenge anymore.

Look, I do understand what you're saying and actually aim at. You want things to be simple, fun for everyone. Including new users. But then there is no type of learning curve involved, no chance to look beyond the plate. And in turn, this reduces the "challenge" part, and to a certain extent "the fun" for others. At least, this is my opinion.

Then again, I am an audio engineer. Every day is a new challenge for me. How to fix this track, how to mix that, will the client even be happy about it? No, well it happens - on to the next production.

This is what we try to achieve here (as well) - not who came first and is the ultimate winner to pick the best prices.



I also don't think that time is really such an issue with a 21 days time frame. Unless you're busy with your regular day job, family, other projects, etc. But if you're not busy on that end - then 21 days are more than suitable. Actually - I had to do jobs several times at this point within a short time span (think 3-6 hours) and more than 30+ tracks to mix. It's definitely not easy to get that sorted.

So this time limit is definitely more than generous for all participants and should actually crack the 10-participant wall. Yet we almost always barely scratch that, and I still don't get why.

Which spawns the question - how can we get more participants?!

Yeah, I agree on this one, as a first timer this month - it was quite a long list of demands to read through, can it be simplified? ... As for the loudness, I agree with Compyfox to an extent, gain staging is important as well as leaving space/dynamics for the mastering engineer, but maybe we could simplify it a bit, maybe choose 2 or 3 (optional) freeware meters and provide some screenshots? Not everybody understands all the technical lingo, VU meters can vary drastically, and some people may respond better to visual stimulus. Basically, IMHO, we should keep it as simple as possible.

Which is why I wrote several posts about this over the course of the recent years. They're in my KVR Marks, and they are also linked from the Gossip Thread.

Agreed, the Loudness Normalization is somewhat "obsolete" now, since we (as hosts) don't do this anymore - it's the client's job to A/B now (I also wrote a lengthy post how to do this and linked to it from my KVR Marks and the Guidelines Thread). But the gain staging and doing a proper project setup is still a valid topic.

Actually, I've been working on several concepts up until this point: how to make it more simple, easier to understand, more visual. All I can say currently, that you sadly still need to sit back and wait until I find some time to get to this topic.

P.S. I'm cool with keeping the deadlines, even though I was late this time, sorry guys! I don't mind being kicked to the curb in the future if I was late.

I guess we can all agree that from now on, we won't "skew" the deadlines anymore. So it will be 1st until 21st of the month (original concept prior to MC01 was 14 days btw!). And I'll probably switch to GMT+1 times as well.

If the participants are fine with it, it will be a new rule by MC16.

[camsr]

There's too much work involved, on occasion, for only the chance of winning.

I post with a counter argument:
Doesn't "only the chance of winning" slim the more people join?
To me it sounds like as if you do not want this whole concept/challenge to expand?

More participants is great IMO. I enjoy listening to the variety of takes on the same song (if I liked the song).
Yes I did define the fun part as the mixing. Even better to win a plugin! And I would like to eventually contribute a song to mix as well.
I'm going to refrain from posting my ideas of the negative aspects of the challenge overall, since they are most likely personal. Although I can sense the hesitation for song providers. Maybe if they had more incentive, there would be more of them.

[Compyfox]

Just for understanding purposes (and to understand your thinking, camsr):

- the challenge needs to be dumbed down and simplyfied in order to make fun for everyone
- all tracks need therefore to be perfect to start mixing
- no additional "challenges" like re-amping, vocal comping, removing clicks/pops anymore (not the job of an AE)

Only this way, we get more "clients" (song provider) and also more participants.

Is that correct?



Because if this is the case, I really don't understand where there is not(!) any benefit of submitting their track/mixes regardless?

I mean, I can repeat myself from a couple of posts further up...

To be honest, it is a win-win situation for everyone.

For the song provider: You get free exposure, free high quality mixes. You can show your songwriting talents, find possible collaboration partners (client to business). You basically do a free engineer shootout with the Mix Challenge.

For the mix participants: You get access to great tracks, have a learning experience and therefore free skill training, expand your horizon. Which in turn means free exposure - you can make a name for yourself, and therefore maybe get collaboration deals (read: paid jobs, or at least stepping stones towards that direction).

And for the sponsors: Your generosity is always taken well in audio communities, your tools are being talked about, admired, etc. It's basically free promotion. And it's working well so far (as hinted above, new sponsors are in the making!).

Would "dumbing down things" really improve this "game"?
Doesn't the OSC and the Music Cafe Competition have similar strict "non fun" rules?

Why are we that much different on that behalf?
And why should we be in this case?

[camsr]

I don't think the rules should be changed just for the sake of saving time, just offering my 2c

[Compyfox]

And the 2c are appreciated.

I just try to understand what you aim at - if the course/route of the challenge is wrong, etc

[camsr]

I don't see how it can be difficult to get more song providers. There's plenty of remix websites willing to put up material for "mass mixing consumption", maybe not every stem of a track, but the important ones.

In some tracks, the mixing is also the production, and to have the desired sonics in mixing (from the client) leaves little room for a mix "challenge". I know a few of my songs are like that.

[Compyfox]

I don't see how it can be difficult to get more song providers. There's plenty of remix websites willing to put up material for "mass mixing consumption", maybe not every stem of a track, but the important ones.

There are a couple of problems this however, as we can't just go to a random remix page, snag a song and then claim it for our own challenge.

a) the track needs to be free from any tax collection service like the RIAA and GEMA (or any other equivalent in the rest of the world - sorry that I can't remember these names).
b) we want and need the "client" interaction. Either via Mail and we forward it, or directly on KVR Audio

Which means that we need EXPLICIT permission from the song provider to use the track. And if there is no interaction happening, due to reasons unknown, chances are it turns into a problematic situation like MC09.

So as good as this idea sounds, it's not working out for us.


Furthermore - we have a so called "campaign" running in the Music Cafe (it was in Everything Else Music before) that I bump every 2-4 days. It states our situation, and what we're looking for. We barely got a track for "Rocktober" (apparently, we also have No-Shave November and Metal-November, but we're not doing another rock track next month). At this point, we pretty much take any genre. Though I'd love to see more DnB/HipHop/Acapella/Unplugged/Pop/Classic stuff to get a bit away from EDM and Rock. The thing is... barely anyone is responding!

This thread has over 900 reads, most of the time I'm merely bumping it. You know how many people contacted me? Four!

We can't do more than asking for help, drum up some noise, make people aware of the challenge. Everything should run smooth at this point. Yet it does not. And this is putting a lot of work on our (the hosts) shoulders that we'd rather invest for general managing of the challenge.

In some tracks, the mixing is also the production, and to have the desired sonics in mixing (from the client) leaves little room for a mix "challenge". I know a few of my songs are like that.

We also state in the Rules/Guidelines that you can keep the tracks "as is", they don't have to be stripped. And in doubt, you can always ask what to do. And this is basically what I did in the last two months behind the scenes - answering questions, doing consulting, checking productions for integrity, preparing the packages for future challenges.

And even if your track is pretty much pre-mixed - IMO tracks can still be further improved, or taken for a different spin with a different pair of ears. But I also get the idea that people invest hours on their production and then say "it's my track - no further changes". So maybe the Music Cafe is the wrong place to ask for tracks to mix after all and we need a dedicated challenge section (see Site Stuff). Then again, the Music Cafe is known for the general consensus "please give me feedback on what to improve".

So we, the Mix Challenge, offer that and more. We're doing a "virtual mass engineer shootout" where everyone can benefit from (stated the reasons several times at this point). But still, our song pool is in constant fear of drying out. And if it's dry, the challenge is over.


Again - we can't do much more than talking about it, being aggressive in terms of promotion, doing requests, etc. One to two hours of my daily routine is used for the Mix Challenge. Why? Because I believe in this, and I want the challenge to continue. I want people to have fun, while learning a bit in the process, having the chance to shine and maybe win the one or another tool in the process.


So the questions I stated earlier still remain.

[Ichad.c]

If you look at the song play-counts on the entries that are uploaded to SoundCloud, compared to the the OneSynth Challenge, public participation is poor ( I subtract the entries from the play-count).

After some more thinking and looking at other competitions, I think the biggest hurdle is *public* participation. Maybe we can entice the general public a bit more? Social media has been highly disruptive to general media, purely because they gave the reader the space to air their view, basically a two-way communication model vs a one-way model. For a slightly lame but pertinent example: think about Idols: If the prizes we're all the same, but the public did not get a vote, would it have made a buzz all these years, would there have been thousands of entrants? The MC just seems very one-way to me atm. It's more " Look at what we do" instead of "look at what we can do for you?" And another thing to consider is that IMHO(!), is that 70%-80% (?) of regular KVR users are musicians.

Don't mistake me, I do think the rule that the song-provider chooses the winner is correct, because that is how real-life mixing works. But maybe be can create a mini-competition running per quarter? With a bundle or something as prize, say, after submission-deadline - general KVR users can pick their top 3, and give a *mini* description why, this should spark conversation, and interaction is what we need. All these 'voters' all get put into a random-draw each Quarter and stand a chance to win something and if they vote in every MC, mathematically they stand a better chance of winning. Doing it every quarter should ease the administrative burden of it a bit. The more conversation, the more hype the more song-providers, mix-engineers and sponsors.

Also, I have to commend the previous MC winners who talk about the effects that they won, this is great for the sponsors.

A SoundCloud page for all the winners, that connects to the song-provider pages(if available), sponsors and mix-engineers, could help too.

Promoting on other sites like Gearslutz will probably be frowned upon by admins, but I think it would be okay on something like individual DAW forums, because we use their products in our productions! Though his has to be done tastefully, i.e. no bumping every 2 days, just once a month should be fine...

Just my 2cents.

P.S. on a lighter off-note, because of the Rocktober MC, I got this follower on SoundCloud, this song make my day!!!

https://soundcloud.com/batmark-1/surgic ... tarlight-1

Cheers
Andrew

[Compyfox]

Some interesting thoughts there (sorry for the late response).


Though let me get to a couple of points.

Maybe we can entice the general public a bit more? Social media has been highly disruptive to general media, purely because they gave the reader the space to air their view, basically a two-way communication model vs a one-way model.

We are already heavily active on Twitter. Though I am(!) surprised this time around, that the MC16 announcement has not been retweeted by more than two persons (BPB and myself, KVR usually also retweets this).

The question is:
Would expansion to Facebook and/or a Mailing list even make sense?

It's a lot of work to already keep one social media outlet up and running - which should not(!) be the case. This whole thing should run all by itself (it does so for the OSC). And with recent tweets, I even wrote "if you're a participant, let us know and we add you to a dedicated list.".

Once more, so far only two people did that! Once person per Tweet (I tweeted twice about this).

And then we later get the info "wait, I didn't get your tweets".

For a slightly lame but pertinent example: think about Idols: If the prizes we're all the same, but the public did not get a vote, would it have made a buzz all these years, would there have been thousands of entrants?

Well, if we talk about X-Factor, then the audience has a "slight bit" of influence (there are documentaries about the actual reality however). But then again, we're talking about a media platform we can't compete with: the TV. A lot of people would do ANYTHING to get on a show.

The MC just seems very one-way to me atm. It's more " Look at what we do" instead of "look at what we can do for you?"

Really? And I thought we made it clear that everyone benefits from the challenge. Granted, maybe not through the 140 letter Twitter limitation. But otherwise.

And if we bring that up - what can the OSC or the MCC actually do for their users compared to the MC?
I mean... we bring different musicians to the attention of the general audience. We offer a fun mixing game, you can do a mass engineer shootout, maybe win something in the process.

The OSC does the same:
Bring a certian synth to the attention of the general audience (sometimes even synths I've never heard about), you can (and must) compete with other sound designers, you can show your songwriting skills, you can win something in the process.

The MCC:
It brings songwriters to the attention of the general audience, you can compete with other songwriters and show your songwriting skills, you can win something in the process.


The main thing that I could see as a problem would be:
Audio Engineering these days is so blended into the production, that a lot of people probably consider this step as obsolete. Yet so far the people we involved with the challenge as clients were all like "hm... you're right - I am not happy with the mix. Let's see how others would handle this".

And another thing to consider is that IMHO(!), is that 70%-80% (?) of regular KVR users are musicians.

Can't agree on that end. The FX section is just as heavily roamed. So I don't really understand why this is all happening and we get the comments "saw this for the first time... interesting concept" and then we never see this particular person in question anymore.

Since the launch of the Mix Challenge, I saw this happening like 5 times. People that were interested, only to ultimately not join. I mean, look at the Music Cafe Competition - no advertising whatsoever, and they have 8-15 participants per month! And we struggle to even get 10 and have the most heavy promotion of all of these currently active challenges on KVR.



This is why I also said "go to site stuff, there is a thread there that requests a dedicated challenges board!". Yet nobody voiced their opinion. And the site staff ignores the request still! Then again, I don't even know who to contact off-board wise to get something sorted out directly. PMs aren't answered (just read), same with threads. I don't know how to react, how to handle this situation any further. We are(!) dependent on the KVR Platform unless we outsource this to another page, with an own board, etc. Which in turn is extra work for us.

The OSC, the MC and the MCC draw attention to KVR Audio. So does the Developer Challenge (DC). Yet only the Developer Challenge has a dedicated sub board.


We, or I, can't do more than just ask. Or make this more public. Drum up some noise on social media. The outcome is out of our hands. But so far, it's a bit disappointing for the workload that is being put into it.

I mean... I just bumped the "campaign" thread (we need new songs) - we still don't get more material offered. Especially not in the genre we look for. So if KVR is 70-80% musicians, then I consider this course of events a failure. I have to!

Don't mistake me, I do think the rule that the song-provider chooses the winner is correct, because that is how real-life mixing works. But maybe be can create a mini-competition running per quarter? With a bundle or something as prize, ....

Can you elaborate on that?
What kind of mini-competition do you have in mind?
Songwriting, Mixing, Mastering, etc?

And how would this spark more interaction than it already is?

A SoundCloud page for all the winners, that connects to the song-provider pages(if available), sponsors and mix-engineers, could help too.

We had that once, during the early MC days. It added a lot of extra work on our end.

Also, SoundCloud is currently in a shift to turn into something like MP3.com back in the days - first it was a user community, then it turned into a "commercial music only" platform.

Promoting on other sites like Gearslutz will probably be frowned upon by admins, but I think it would be okay on something like individual DAW forums, because we use their products in our productions! Though his has to be done tastefully, i.e. no bumping every 2 days, just once a month should be fine...

I tried that at various places. The most comments I got was "why should I go to another community, if we have similar over here?! Shoo!".

So I stopped doing that. It's also complicated to keep track of all of these communities. And I rather focus on more important things than invest 80% of my time just for advertising.




Good news on the new follower.
If this is happening for all of our mix participants, then we have already covered half of the rent.

[do_androids_dream]

Things I don't like to do because they are time-consuming include:
Time alignments (for whatever reason)
Micro editing and cleaning up obviously bad takes
Re-amping, also because I don't want to play the Producer
Sorting through minutes of comp tracks, again to not play the Producer

All part of the game. It's extremely rare you get to work on something that just requires pure mixing. I must admit, I do like going through comps to piece together the best takes - sometimes I think only a fresh pair of ears can do this. I must admit I personally draw the line at re-amping though. I tell bands to give me the sound of the guitar they want to hear. Not being a guitarist, I have no idea of what they actually want to hear in their finished mix so I'm not going to start guessing with plugins. Plus, all the sims out there just sound crap compared to the real thing.

It's ideal to work with tracks that are already fairly well produced, without their effects on.

There are exceptions to that - effects that form an integral part of an instruments sound. You probably knew that anyway but just wanted to point that out.

[animehaus]

We are already heavily active on Twitter. Though I am(!) surprised this time around, that the MC16 announcement has not been retweeted by more than two persons (BPB and myself, KVR usually also retweets this).

I've retweeted it as well - https://twitter.com/animehaus/status/660773222489718784 - but it seems that quoted retweets aren't registered by Twitter.

[Compyfox]

Sadly they are not. I don't even get a message that something was retweeted or commented upon through this route.

The retweet with comment feature is not ideal like that.

[Compyfox]

No more feedback on this?

What about starting a Mailing List?
Would you, as participant, use that?

[Compyfox]

Just a short heads up on things of what will happen the next weeks with the Mix Challenge:


1) A Rule Overhaul:
I'll sit down the next days and overhaul the rules, according to given feedback. Just to tidy things up a bit, make other things more clear, fill in some holes in the "winners section", etc.



2) the Mix Challenge Schedule:
This is the most important thing IMO.

The December Challenge will probably start around 15th December, and goes until 6th January at least.

Reason: it is planned to get a holiday themed mix. And like last year, a lot of people will be within in the usual Christmas holiday madness. So we do this challenge "through the course of the Winter Holidays". This way you have a lot of time to participate not only with all available KVR Challenges, but also have a bit more time for mixing. Not to mention, you can use/try new tools that you recently acquired during the process (Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Winter Holiday sales).

Will will then go into a short break, which will last until 1st of February. During this time, we still try to collect more tracks to mix for 2016. Please remember - the Challenge can not survive if we don't have new source material to mix

The next Challenge will start on 1st of February 2016.



3) Plans for 2016:

I will announce it already, so that we have enough time to gather source material. I'd love to see "themed" challenges again. Read: "Rocktober" (October) and the "Holiday Challenge" (December). Maybe even also something for Spring (around May), should we get a Spring Themed track for that purpose. Please get in touch, but please also have an eye on the "Campaign Thread".



4) New ways of keeping informed (starting 2016):

I'm personally still undecided on this. But I plan to maybe start a Newsletter. Posting on Twitter/Facebook/xyz-social media eats up a lot of time, so I'd rather stay on one platform (Twitter). However, I think the most effective way is for you to just sign up for a newsletter and stay informed. The newsletter will probably be sent out twice a month. At the beginning of the month (start of the challenge) and a week prior to the end of the challenge (first mix round) as reminder.

Feedback on this would be welcome.



Thanks for reading.