PureMix / Sonnox Mixing Contest!

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Gi.son said:
I do not participate in the competition. This is my first mix. Pro Tools 11 Native + Mbox3. What do you think about this sound? Good luck to everyone, good and peace ...

I do not know how to make the player here -*use [ SOUNDCLOUD ] Tags
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Hey Gi.son,
first of all, welcome in the audio world - this being your first mix, you should have been overwhelmed a bit. I think this is a great oppurtunity to get comfortable with a lot of elements in audio engineering!

By giving your mix a quick go i notice a few things at once:
  • you killed the snare dynamics - you might have wanted that, but the first snare hit a 16th before the 2 actually is like a prehit which in your mix comes out like an equal hit. seems you have a limiter on there or at least a comp with a high ratio and a fast attack. try backing that of a bit - or let the snare breath... those are snare samples anyway - they do not need that much of dynamic controll, i think. But this is arguable - This is where taste comes in ;-)
  • Your mix lacks midrange - that is actually where the music happens and where you can actually spend most time EQing.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but am i right with the impression, that you went after compression and EQ at the same time, and also spent a great amount of time doing that in solo?
Try chunking the mixing process down into certain areas first. First go after balancing without any plugins anywhere - just try to get the big picture first. Send Instrumentgroups into Busses. Drums, Bass, Guitars, Vox ,...
After that get rid of any annoying frequencys - start with what seems most important to you. Some go after the drums first, others after the vocal... Again, you can argue a lot about what the correct approach is, but taste is what this is all about again ;-)

Once you got a basic mix going, pay attention to what gets drownd every now and then in the big picture and if you like it or not - if there are things that poke out at you, try taming them with a fast comp and a medium release - try not to knock of more than a few db - most important: listen!
Be careful with fast attacks on transient material! Less is more!

However - I could go on for ages about how you could approach such a big mix like this, but then it would only be one way. and that also might be a way that does not have to work out for you. And maybe i would suggest something else if you asked me tomorrow... Maybe not, since i also have a certain way of going after things, but most important is - keep the big picture in mind always, do as little as possible in solo and last but certainly not least - listen!

I hope I didn't offend you or anyone else - since i just realized that i actually came up with a longer post, than i actually should have. Or at least for this thread.

However - keep it up, keep mixing & don't give up - It's music that we all love, isn't it?

Cheers
Jan
 
Jamalot said:
I hope I didn't offend you or anyone else - since i just realized that i actually came up with a longer post, than i actually should have. Or at least for this thread.
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Hi Jan, AFAIK, i wouldn't feel offended, i like the way you provide advises.
I would be pleased if you could give me your feeling about mine:

htt p s://soundcloud.com/ronbcs/20140523-zelab-mixing-contest-amber-skye-produced-by-emw-music-group

If possible :)

Regards,

Ron.
 
great contest,
give my best for my beloved sonnox
good luck to you all!
 
Hi again
It's done:
h ttps://soundcloud.com/vreigedito/amber-skye-howlin-mixed-by-vreigedito
 
This is my first time on a mix contest. In fact i´m not a mixer. i´m a drummer but i like mixing.
this is a very well recorded track. i focus on energy. try to get the most emotion of the song. some eq is going on, compression, delays and reverbs. not really important to me the plugins used, but where and why they are used...
mixed in pro tools only with waves uad and stock plugins. Hope You Like it.
 

Attachments

Yes I uploaded the song to the forum. now it is working. ;)
 
Hello!
It was fun mixing this one!
Few comments for discussion

(1) It was very fun to check the raw tracks on a professional NY production. You can see that many things get resolved before mixing: you can tell some tracks have eq, compression and ambience recorded to track.

(2) It was really difficult for me to decide if a track needed compression or not, with all those fxs, drum beats, bass synths. I used heavier compression for drums/bass elements, for punch. Light compression on vocals (LA2As most of the time), and no compression on guitars and most fxs.

(3) It was awesome to hear those raw vocals. You can tell some of them are a little out of tune and timing, but the imperfection helps to build a choir.

(4) Most of my work was to cut the mids. Before doing it with EQ on individual tracks, I set a chain in the 2-BUS with Pultec EQs with slight boost on 10Khz and 100Hz (I use Waves eqp-1a and meq-5-eq) , and the VBC Rack from Slate Digital. The Pultec transformer emulation along with the Fairchild compressor model give a little bit of air and bass boost.

(5) I spent a lot of time making the synths/drum beats (all virtual) sound less pretty. Added some light distortion and tape saturation. Some of them (I think mostly the bass instruments) were given as stereo, but I turned into mono to give more focus.

(6) Lots of tracks on this one, so I grouped them! Treated many vocals as one stereo aux: "Howlin ... moonlight" group, "Uh-uh-uh..." group, pre-chorus group. I also left the "Howlin.." and "uh-uh-uh" groups outside the 2-BUS chain. Helped them to pop-out better, for some reason.

(7) Spent lots of time with ambience. Vocals needed tons of reverbs.

I hope the winner makes a video on mixing this one!

Cheers!
 
Last edited:
ronerone said:
Hi Jan, AFAIK, i wouldn't feel offended, i like the way you provide advises.
I would be pleased if you could give me your feeling about mine:

htt p s://soundcloud.com/ronbcs/20140523-zelab-mixing-contest-amber-skye-produced-by-emw-music-group

If possible :)

Regards,

Ron.
Click to expand...
Hi,
hey I'm happy you liked my two cents... I don't want to go down here as someone going through mixes and pointing out things.
But you asked for it, so here we go: :listeningmusic:

First of all, you got a nice balance. One thing in noticed at once though is that your Kick has weight but not that much definition. I think it could do fine with a bit less on the bottom and maybe a slight tick somewhere in the attack area. somewhere between 3-5k. Go fishing...
I think that the kick could also make the chorus pop a bit more, when it begins.

Next I noticed the snare sounds like it has a second attack to it. Could it be, that you have a very fast attack and a also rather fast release on the snare sample that makes it have it's transient move a bit in time? Or some transient designer on the beat track?
In the chorus it sounds like a whip, which i'd consider overcompressed. If you would have backed off the comp in the verse I would have gotten that as an effect and would have considered it a cool idea.
Like I pointed out in that other post, I don't think you would really have to compress samples that much, since they don't really vary in dynamics, so what is it you would want to control there? I get it, if you want to emphasize the transient, but... argh I'm losing myself ;-)

I like what you did with the delay between the 1. Chorus and the 2. Verse. That was a cool use of that space there. Why didn't I think of that? darn... ;-)
In that Interlude before the vamp i find it a bit too much... the standard dotted eighth would have done the trick a bit better, since the 3/4 makes the suprise more when you start vibing to one delay pulse...
But thats a taste thing again, and if you asked 5 people about this, you'd probably have 11 opinions. This is just mine.

In the Bridge I think the vocals with the main lyrics get lost against the backing vocals a bit. This is where I think the balance is off a bit. Also with that Whosh effect standing out very far.

What else - oh yeah, cool idea of putting a guitar amp on the synth bass stabs.

Ok, while rereading this post I'm listening to your mix for the 8th time now and i'm noticing one more thing after the interlude... I like the impact of the instruments coming in, but the vocals push the music in the back big time after they kick in. do you have a music bus that is sidechained to the leadvocals? Or did you ride the vocals a bit above the music bus? If you did, your master comp got triggerd by that. Also I think your master comp is working a bit to much - or whatever you have going on there...

In the end it's all about taste and what you feel when listening to the Song. Good work in general, though.

Again - I hope I didn't offend you or anyone else, since i think i actually went into detail a bit more on this one, as on the other one...
Also I'm new to this forum and also just registerd to have my go at this mixing opportunity. I don't know what the board users think about me going in on mixes, without anyone knowing anything about me... However - if no one's offended -> :thumbs up:

Keep it up! Cheers
Jan
 
felipenoris said:
(6) Lots of tracks on this one, so I grouped them! Treated many vocals as one stereo aux: "Howlin ... moonlight" group, "Uh-uh-uh..." group, pre-chorus group. I also left the "Howlin.." and "uh-uh-uh" groups outside the 2-BUS chain. Helped them to pop-out better, for some reason.
Click to expand...
Did you have the impression, that the choir vox were recorded differently than the lead vox?

felipenoris said:
(7) Spent lots of time with ambience. Vocals needed tons of reverbs.
Click to expand...
Can you let us listen to your mix?

felipenoris said:
I hope the winner makes a video on mixing this one!
Click to expand...
+1
 
Jamalot said:
Hi,
hey I'm happy you liked my two cents... I don't want to go down here as someone going through mixes and pointing out things.
But you asked for it, so here we go: :listeningmusic:

...
Again - I hope I didn't offend you or anyone else, since i think i actually went into detail a bit more on this one, as on the other one...
Also I'm new to this forum and also just registerd to have my go at this mixing opportunity. I don't know what the board users think about me going in on mixes, without anyone knowing anything about me... However - if no one's offended -> :thumbs up:

Keep it up! Cheers
Jan
Click to expand...


Thanks very much Jan, i'm very pleased you took time listening to my work.
I'm totally autodidact at mixing, and i'm so surprised you could hear the preamp crunch on the synth ;) it means you have a pro listening which is honour for me.
So, now i have to translate all your considerations because i'm french and it's a bit technical for a one reading understanding.
Anyway, you pointed out the fact my compression was probably to high on the bus: you are right, has i focus the challenge to "master by myself", even if we didn't really know if we had to or not.
So, i have a fairchild / LA2A / shadow hill effects train (UAD of course :) ) which i probably not pushed to much but i tried the bx limiter which was probably really hot ;)

Regarding the choirs, globally, i also compressed to handle any dynamic change in one voice out of the all - not to treat each one at a time - and also to handle each choirs block on a submix without any surprise.... maybe it's not the right way to do, i'll try to understand the details of your analysis.

Anyway, i thank you very much Jan, i think winning knownledges over plugins is a great deal (hope it's a catchable formula...)

Regards,

Ron.
 
oh, and regarding the snare double attack, it is possible that you hear a delay... which i used on this one.
This was a personal approach :)
 
carlosramosdrum said:
This is my first time on a mix contest. In fact i´m not a mixer. i´m a drummer but i like mixing.
this is a very well recorded track. i focus on energy. try to get the most emotion of the song. some eq is going on, compression, delays and reverbs. not really important to me the plugins used, but where and why they are used...
mixed in pro tools only with waves uad and stock plugins. Hope You Like it.
Click to expand...

Hello! Very nice mix! Nice drums punch! But the bass Synth in Chorus is a little bit shifted to left! And i think it brings some disbalance to the mix
 
Whitemore said:
Hello! Very nice mix! Nice drums punch! But the bass Synth in Chorus is a little bit shifted to left! And i think it brings some disbalance to the mix
Click to expand...

Hello.
thank you. Relating to bass synth, it is absolutly center on the mix. but i´m not shure if it sound uncentered. the problem is, at the time i made this mix (last week)i had one problem on one of my hears (not hearing ok because of a plain trip, one of them became obstructed. (friday finally i went to doctor and solved the issue) but for now and next 2 or 3 weeks i hear more on one side than to the other until my body will have to calibrate the ears again.... so it is very dificult to me to know it it is really centered or not. but i think it is strange on bass because it is absolutly centered, so it should sound balanced..... maybe have to check it later... thank you for your comment.
 
So here is a link to my mix:

h t t ps://soundcloud.com/iradavey/howlin-unofficial-remix-dave-roth
 
carlosramosdrum said:
Hello.
thank you. Relating to bass synth, it is absolutly center on the mix. but i´m not shure if it sound uncentered. the problem is, at the time i made this mix (last week)i had one problem on one of my hears (not hearing ok because of a plain trip, one of them became obstructed. (friday finally i went to doctor and solved the issue) but for now and next 2 or 3 weeks i hear more on one side than to the other until my body will have to calibrate the ears again.... so it is very dificult to me to know it it is really centered or not. but i think it is strange on bass because it is absolutly centered, so it should sound balanced..... maybe have to check it later... thank you for your comment.
Click to expand...

Oh Oh! Take care of your ears!) I wish they will be good soon! )) About bass - I mean that High Frequency range of bass synth is a little bit left) maybe it is because from right side there is something in that range which is masking bass' right part))) But maybe i'm wrong))
 
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