GearFest Mixing Contest

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My God People! Do you honestly think that your mix would have won if they downloaded your mix? There were some simple rules. One of them was that you could only upload one mix. I uploaded many. Only one at a time was active but that's beside the point. It was a simple rule and it served it's purpose. It pared down the judging process to those who could follow instructions.
 
Just to be very clear, comments made earlier by me were not about my own mix or about my feeling put out about not getting dealt with fairly. Non of that is important. My own mix is far to bright in the hats and overheads to have ever been in contention. What I do feel however is important is that up and coming engineers who entered the competition do not end up feeling that they should try to emulate the... em... 'quality' of the final choices of the puremix team. My comments are about the choices made by this judging 'team' and ultimately by Fab himself. I don't understand those choices AT ALL. I have listened to close to 300 entered mixes and many were very very good indeed. Further to set up the criteria as being about certain specific aspects and indeed rules of the art of MIXING, the statement that it is a subjective choice is rather stupid. I fully acknowledge that music and the things folks like is absolutely a mater of preference and choice. In mixing music there are and always will be certain commonly accepted 'rules', and many of those rules are NOT very open to interpretation or to personal preference. If I make the top end of my mix cut so hard it is unpleasant for anybody with a shred of hearing left, then I have not mixed the song very well for a MAJORITY of people. Top end deaf people will probably love it. I know...after not listening since I uploaded my mix I burned my ears listening just now :spank:
A really good point is this, if someone like Purenix sets themselves up as a Godlike authority and makes far reaching statements about their ability to say what a 'good' mix is...then they need to be able to listen to a bit of critique of their choices and their methods and learn a little themselves. We can all learn, about setting up other mix forums, about communicating ideas and about clarity of that communication.
Don't for one second think that the only reason this competition existed was from the goodness of Puremix's collective hearts. It is a very fine example of marketing and marketing research and I fully support and applaud that. On the positive I have met some great people and some fine engineers here. It has been of great value to listen to other folks work on the same piece and I have gained a great deal from that experience. Thank you Puremix and Fab for that aspect of this exercise, like I said this is not about bad feelings, I have none...this is my small attempt to communicate with my peers.
 
hueseph said:
My God People! Do you honestly think that your mix would have won if they downloaded your mix? There were some simple rules. One of them was that you could only upload one mix. I uploaded many. Only one at a time was active but that's beside the point. It was a simple rule and it served it's purpose. It pared down the judging process to those who could follow instructions.
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You're right, simple rules that even Puremix didn't manage to follow :thumbs up:

... and the whole thing about, uploading more than once a mix is just BS! :mad:
 
puremix.net said:
Dear all,

Because this is not the first mixing contest we organize, we are quite used to experiencing such an excitement when results are announced.

The current economic turmoil asking for absolute and complete transparency in every form of election, here was our protocol:
- The whole judging process was done in collaboration with the SoundCloud backend. On June 1st, SC provided us with the exhaustive list of all the entries submitted on or before this date and officially closed the contest.
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Hello,
just to clarify, which was the time zone reference for deadline? NewYork GMT (current -4)?
Thanks
 
Julia_B said:
You know the funny thing is that if you have PRO account at Soundcloud you can just replace the file without deleting and reuploading. That's the other thing. So I don't know if it's that. I don't think that would count as a multiple entry. A multiple entry by the same person would be if they submitted more than one with the same Gearfest or Puremix tag on it or had more than one Soundcloud account. That is my interpretation.

Anyhow for shits and giggles, my quick 5 minute tweak after hearing the winner. Remember I grew up in the days of 8x10 bass rigs and Marshall stacks. :guitar: None of this 1x12 bass amp and 1x12 guitar amp stuff. lol. Just in case you're not sick of the song yet. I may talk trash, but I mix at a level I can hear the keys on my keyboard click. This is probably what I should have turned in, but I really don't think it would have mattered. Honestly I think this is better than my contest submission.



Quite honestly, music is being relegated to the background these days. nobody sits and listens to an album all the way through anymore. If you like to listen to music you need your own room with a door and a lock on it with no outside stimuli. So you mix for the "background listening" so it doesn't bother anyone. Bass is disturbing because it carries and vibrates through stuff, so you can't have any of that unless you mix for the obnoxious young crowd who want to upset their parents, or us cranky old people.
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What he hell are you talking about ? Are you on crack or something ? I know so many people who DO NOT do background listening(Only my acquaintances).... Now So many other people have their Ipods and listen to it all the time, so many people have cars and listen to music in there, so many people listen to music on youtube for the sake of listening+the video(billions of views on youtube). Is all that background music ? What on earth are you talking about ?

Good bass when well engineered is not disturbing, it can add lots of dimension, direction and power to a piece of music and great mixers have used this for years. There is plenty of bass in "Eagles-Hotel California(Hell Freezes Over Album)" and it's a song that cranky old people tend to love, so again, what on earth are you talking about ?
 
They made the rules and followed them to a T. It's the rest of us, including myself, who made unfounded assumptions. You're deluding yourself if you can't see that. Your mix did not make the cut. Live with it.
 
aarvin1000 said:
What he hell are you talking about ? Are you on crack or something ? I know so many people who DO NOT do background listening(Only my acquaintances).... Now So many other people have their Ipods and listen to it all the time, so many people have cars and listen to music in there, so many people listen to music on youtube for the sake of listening+the video(billions of views on youtube). Is all that background music ? What on earth are you talking about ?

Good bass when well engineered is not disturbing, it can add lots of dimension, direction and power to a piece of music and great mixers have used this for years. There is plenty of bass in "Eagles-Hotel California(Hell Freezes Over Album)" and it's a song that cranky old people tend to love, so again, what on earth are you talking about ?
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Hey, watch it, sonny. You can't tell a troll paragraph, yet? I know, this is the internet and stuff like this doesn't go over because it comes over literally. There were some pretty enemic mixes in the winners' circle. That's what I was getting at. And the flat dynamics was another thing.

Hotel California came out when I was 3 years out of college. I have the album on the record I bought that year. Yeah, I know people listen to music. Most people in middle age years get to this background or it's earbuds. Music to me needs to breathe in air. iPods, unless they're docked through a decent system don't allow music to breath through earbuds. It leaves out a sensory element. Feel. Like I like to feel the air move. My vocal coach and I are rockers. She's a metal singer. She's several years younger than I am, but we like to feel the air move.

CLA talked about mixing at low volume because people listen small these days. Then when you crank the mix loud they sound huge. I thought that was the idea. I'm not an engineer. I'm a musician. I'm a composer. Bass is very important in music. In a symphony orchestra I want to hear the double basses growl.
 
hueseph said:
They made the rules and followed them to a T. It's the rest of us, including myself, who made unfounded assumptions. You're deluding yourself if you can't see that. Your mix did not make the cut. Live with it.
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Did I ever say English is a vague language. German is a very specific language. They said one entry per person. They didn't define what a multiple entry was. That needed to be defined. I'm sorry. It was a cheap way out for them. Every contest always has the rules defined. This one did not. The rules were very vague. We're just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

I really don't care that my mix didn't make the cut. I don't have to deal with declaring the extra $4000 to the IRS next year, and have it mess up my Social Security income for a couple months on top of it to be honest. I entered the contest for fun. I learned I can mix a live mix and do a decent job. Not perfect but a decent job. I also learned what to do next time if I want to stand a chance. Use my mastering software as well just to make sure it is loud enough to compete since they're not going to normalize anyway like they said they were.

I was hoping to at least hear the top mix absolutely blow me away, and not be absolute shite. It's balanced in the stereo field, but it's got so much compression it sounds absolutely dead. That's the best mix out of 3000? wow.

But I don't really give damn. I've got other things to do. I've got way too many projects to work on right now.
 
This thread has turned

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Interesting... I took the "one upload" rule to mean one entry, no revisions, and that is exactly what I did. I posted my mix once I was happy with it (about a month before the deadline) and left it there.

When I saw others constantly revising and re-uploading, I was a bit puzzled TBH. I thought that they might have misunderstood the rules, but then so many people were doing it that I started second guessing myself. I was determined to stick with my decision,and kept it there.

My mix ended up getting 62 downloads, including downloads from France and many other countries. As far as I can tell, I met all the rules... So I can only assume my mix was evaluated and failed on mixing/artistic/technical/aesthetic grounds fair and square. :o
 
Ok guys, rules weren't clear, rules weren't respected, your mix was better than the top 16, people don't listen to music in foreground, etc. WHO CARES? The contest is OVER!

Save your time and energy to some useful purpose, go help people and think about today and tomorrow.

This thread diserves peace but instead it's a battlefield.

We don't care your disappointment, your hate, your rage; don't polluate yourself with these feelings. Accept the truth, accept the reality and move on. Don't get stuck right here.

Peace.
 
Maybe Puremix team could establish the prize of audience's sympathy! The prize can be symbolic (3 monthes pureMix subscription, for instance). One participant of GF contest would select 3 the best work and post here (except own work).
I am in! :)
 
QuintaQuad said:
Definitely a bit shocked at the results. Not sure what Fab was thinking when he picked those mixes.


My personal fav was Dave Bechtel's incredible mix. I never thought it would win because it was so radical, but JEEZUS it should have been somewhere in the top 16 on creativity alone, not to mention the superb sonics.

Ah well...c'est la vie...
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Wow... thank you very much for the kind words. I have not listened to the winners yet but, I am hoping to later today.

I have to say that I'm surprised that several of the submissions I thought were top shelf did not make the final 16 so, I'm assuming that top 16 are pretty darn amazing.

I was quite certain that my submission would not land the top spot as I made several creative decisions that could take it out of the running, but I was hoping to find a spot somewhere in the top 16. My "strategy" for the competition side of things was to try and rely on more the creative approach as it seemed that it would be incredibly subjective to judge all the mixes that were more of a straight ahead approach. Obviously, that wasn't a good plan :) But I had fun with it.

Congrats to all the winners! I hope the gear comes in handy to make some great music to put some smiles on peoples faces and tears in their eyes:)


 
hueseph said:
They made the rules and followed them to a T. It's the rest of us, including myself, who made unfounded assumptions. You're deluding yourself if you can't see that. Your mix did not make the cut. Live with it.
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:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:

Btw, Puremix has deleted their tread announcing the winners on their facebook page. Just shows you how they respect us.
 
ALEKNOSTAR said:
:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:

Btw, Puremix has deleted their tread announcing the winners on their facebook page. Just shows you how they respect us.
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And this is your winning mix?


Seriously? Discover humility. The contest was fair. You did not win. Neither did I. Only 16 people could win. The rules were designed to weed out those too lazy to read. It's not legalese. It's English.
 
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