MIX CHALLENGE - MC21 May 2016 - Winners announced

How to do this, that and the other. Share, learn, teach. How did X do that? How can I sound like Y?
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Hi all, this is my first time joining in the challenge. Hopefully I am right in thinking I should post my submission here.
A few words about what I did. Initially I used Hornets VU meter plugin to auto level all of the stems then I started by going through the drum tracks one by one and summing them in a their own bus. Different compression, Transient design and reverb was used on snare, kick and toms with another room type verb added to the overall bus. Then I tackled the bass by initially getting a sort of Geddy Lee (Tom Sawyer) sound with compression, EQ and some saturation and combining the provided DI and amped stems. This later went through a 3 band distortion plugin to make it fit in the mix better. Next came the main synth playing the melody parts which had a touch of EQ and then I added copious amounts of modulated delay using a compressor with side-chain to maximise delay effect without swamping the playing. The second synth was added in the same way after I tackled the guitars. I first sorted the guitar stems into their 3 groups and then evaluated their use. I felt that re-amping them all would shift too far from the artists original intent but I also felt that they were a little static sonically. So I re-amped all 3 for a more mellow tone, placed into a stereo submix and went a bit OTT with modulation and panning. The idea being that this would sit behind the original guitar tracks and provide some filler. Then I used one guitar track for the wah intro on a triggered pan and muted it thereafter except for the tape stop effect. It is still there throughout in its re-amped version. The other 2 guitars were panned a little and kept close to the stems as provided. I edited out tracks around the tape stop effect to accentuate it and also duplicated the synth on that part pitch shifted up and octave to cut through the drums. Finally a little reverb and level automation on the SFX and I called it a day. Hope that makes sense and maybe useful to someone :wink:
https://soundcloud.com/user-902329301/m ... ynorthants

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Ladies and Gentlemen - a friendly reminder:
Including today - 9 days left to mix.
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Thanks for pointing out my dumb mistake which I have just figured out when dealing with another multitrack project elsewhere . Once my preference settings were amended all my problems were cured, as I see now was here so patiently explained they would be -thanks. Immediately it dawned on me that warp defaulting on was the problem I had here .

Odd at first the Live default settings could cause so much of a mess, but thinking about it quite logical if in the majority of cases, work entails building a piece from disparate sources across one's hard drives.

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A friendly reminder:
Including today - 7 days left to mix
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Hey, everyone.

This was pretty interesting! The DI tracks gave me a lot of flexibility, but at the same time I had to make sure I wasn't diverging from the original mix. I had to use A LOT of automation to achieve a good balance throughout the song and emphasize every instrument participation smoothly.

I had to presume some arrangement decisions volume-wise, specially during the intro as I assumed it was supposed to be quiet at first and come up slowly in volume as the SFX faded. Hope I got that and other things right.

So, here it is: https://soundcloud.com/smartmix/the-mil ... thiagoam88

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_g4Bq ... sp=sharing
MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_g4Bq ... sp=sharing

I decided to use the clean DI guitar tracks (one was reamped with S-Gear's Mesa Boogie sim, the other with S-Gear's Soldano sim), except the one with the post wah pedal (reamped with S-Gear's Mesa Boogie sim). For the bass, I used the clean amp track along with the fuzz amp track (mixed subtly just for the tone).

If you have any questions about what my mixing process, I'm here!
Good luck to all!

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Ladies and gentlemen - a friendly reminder:
Ringing in the final 3 days of the first mix round

Now is the time to do final checks and submit your mix.



And another reminder:
We need more songs to mix - no more content from song providers, no more challenges. The pool is slowly filling up again, but the buffer is sadly way too low. Please help out. Link is in the signature, in the first post and in the Guidelines Thread.
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Ladies and Gentlemen...
We're in the last 24 hours of the first Mix Round.

Please submit your mixes now.
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Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qm6fdqs5jqw36 ... 9.mp3?dl=0
Good luck to all.
VasDim

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Hello,

Here is my entry:

48kHz 24Bit Wav:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3k5C ... HlxTU81ek0

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For convenience and instantlistening:

320KBit Mp3 (the losses are very subtle):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3k5C ... lJKbU5WR3M

Soundcloud Wavupload (WARNING: due to soundclouds processing i strongly recommend that you use the 48kHz 24Bit Wav for reference. the souncloudversion just sounds a little bit different - not to the good)
https://soundcloud.com/nukearts/the-mil ... 1-nukearts

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Documentation will be a followup.

Good Luck!

greetings,
NukeArts

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thanks everyone, it's my birthday party tonight so i should be able to download all mixes tomorrow and start listening :)
Image

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Muzik 4 Machines wrote:thanks everyone, it's my birthday party tonight so i should be able to download all mixes tomorrow and start listening :)
oh its saturday. wrong posting: never mind...

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3 hours until midnight in Germany... the clock is ticking. :tu:
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Hi all :)
I'm back this month with a mix :
[FLAC]
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9lbxvsisqn39 ... .flac?dl=0

[MP3-VBR]
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfkd6l9l4547j ... s.mp3?dl=0

[Mix Notes]
Whoa what a crazy psychedelic song ! :) and hard to mix ^^ since there so much happening in the middles, and a lot of distorded sounds, but I tried my best.

I kept the originals FXs on guitars tracks.

Since the synth has to be the main protagonist I tried to put it in front, or at least very present. But which synth ? There were 2 synths tracks. So I put the rhythmic one in the center with a sweet ping pong delay on it, and the more pad-like on the sides and very prominent to give that intensity in the chorus parts ^^

I tried to put the wah guitar well mixed with the drums to make the groove more groovy. I focused especially on the drum to make them punchy and to pierce through the wall of sound while staying relatively glued with the rest (using ssl compression on mix buss for that), a light reverb to make them more alive. maybe I could have reduced a bit more the crashes and upped the toms, but not sure ^^

I put the other two guitars hard panned, and slightly eq them in opposite direction, sending them through a buss itself slightly eqed opposite of the wah guitar. they are behind the scene but they give something and sometimes they pop out to make them heard as the main musical element.

It was an hard challenge but I'm satisfied with what I achieved in a few days, but I think it could be much more cleared with even more drastic and careful EQ, also there is no automation at all (as often with my mixes), so maybe it could have been more tailored to different parts.

I kept the 3 bass tracks and mixed them together, putting the distortion a bit on the front for that grunge style.

It was an hard challenge but I'm satisfied with what I achieved in a few days, but I think it could be much more clear with even more drastic and careful EQ, also there is no automation at all (as often with my mixes), so maybe it could have been more tailored to different parts.

I wish a good luck to all participants ! ;)

Oh and an happy birthday to Muzik 4 Machines of course ^^

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