You're probably asking what this thread it about. Short and simple: we, the staff from the Mix Challenge, need your help.
What is the Mix Challenge (on KVR Audio)?In short, this is a one-song-per-month mixing challenge. We have one (virtual) client providing a track to mix, and the participants have 21 days to mix (plus 5 extra days for a possible second mix round with selected candidates).
More info can be found here: http://www.mix-challenge.com
Why do we need help?The Mix Challenge is always looking for new material to mix. Genre is not that important, though we'd love to see some more variety other than pure electronic music. And we'd definitely love to see more vocal work.
The thing is... we can only do so much in terms of drumming up the promotion and really have to rely on word of mouth. We have a Twitter account, we're very active on KVR Audio, and we constantly ask for new songs to mix in each challenge thread. But sadly, our pool is in a constant state of running dry.
What can you (as KVRian, or even Mix Challenge participant) do to help?Simple - do you have a production that is giving you headaches in terms of mixing? Or are you a good songwriter, but not good in the mixing section? Maybe you're looking for a possible mix engineer collaboration but you're not on a timer/rush to do a mass-online shootout? Then the Mix Challenge might be the right place for you.
If you have a song to mix, just get in touch with us via (currently preferably through Satyatunes or Compyfox) or Twitter.
We'd love to listen to your material, and then decide to go from there (please see below).
Do we (the Mix Challenge Staff) have a rough plan for future Mix Challenges?Actually, we do. The next planned "events" in terms of the challenge are:
Month October: "Rocktober" - we're looking for a rock/hard rock/metal track, preferably with vocals and/or guitar DI tracks, though a "Metal November" in favor of Rocktober is up for debate
Month December: "Holiday Spirit" we'd love to get a track that features a choir/charol singers in combination with a pop production.
But we're also looking for specific genres to cover, as variety to our usual "electronic based" or "instrumental only" challenges
Genres:
- More vocal work: Choir, Acapella/Guitar work, Beatboxing/Vocals - generally more tracks with vocals
- Unplugged material
- More Pop oriented stuff (preferably with vocals)
- HipHop / Trip Hop
- DnB (with or without vocals)
- Orchestra material with or without vocals
What is the main limitation of this challenge?The work must be your own (no remixes or bootlegs, no collaborations where you don't have permission to give the RAW tracks away, Public Domain material reinterpreted by you would be possible) and the tracks should not be registered with any collecting society. This would mean a lot of paper work for us, and financials we can't pull off as the tracks are not allowed to be "redistributed" and/or streamed in various countries.
"Is something in it for us?" (the participants)Yes. The mix participants have a chance to win free licenses. The clients get free mixes by the excellent mix talents of the Mix Challenge. And their tracks get a different exposure like with the KVR own "Music Cafe" alone.
Nothing goes to waste - if at most, then only waiting time until your song has been selected for the next challenge.
"Sounds good to me - how do we go from there?"As mentioned earlier, please get in touch with us. We then listen to your song and tell you if this is material that people can work with (we do have to set a certain standard after all). We then put you into a queue and randomly select your song out of the queue for one of the following Mix Challenges. So please be aware that your track might not be selected immediately. We really try to shuffle things around to provide variety. And sometimes we have a client that is contacting us, being like "sorry, but I only have one particular month where I can devote my spare time for this". It is rare, but it can happen.
We also ask for full participation of the "client". Meaning: you should be active in terms of answering questions, giving feedback, doing the evaluation and thread micro-managing. Ideal would be, if you're already a KVR member. If you're not, that's fine as well - we can do this via mail. But please take note of the official rules of the Mix Challenge. If we don't hear from you within a giving time period after the challenge you provided a track for, the staff is taking over. And we'd actually rather not do that, as this cuts away valuable time for us staff members.
In terms of providing tracks, we'd love to have access to all available RAW tracks (preferred!). STEMS are also possible. But keep in mind, the focus is on mixing from scratch - not mastering or remixing (as in rearranging and creating a complete new song in a different genre out of it). At least not yet.
"Wow - one mix per month? What if your pool fills up exponentially and waiting times exceed over 3/4th a year?!"This would be a new scenario we didn't encounter yet. But maybe there is a chance to do more Mix Challenges. Depending on how we can handle logistics.
"We do have questions, who to ask?"This is the right place for questions of various kind. But please be patient if we don't answer immediately.
"Sir, you mentioned "word of mouth promotion". Can we do something to help?"Yes you can! Please spread the word through various social media. As mentioned earlier, we're active on Twitter and also use the hastag #KVRMixChallenge there. We're sadly not on Facebook, so no chance for us to respond there (needs extra spare time for handling!). But every bit of promo does help.
Thanks for reading and helping out.
