GearFest Mixing Contest

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QuintaQuad said:
Haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but I will.

I really love your philosophical approach to mixing. There is purpose behind every decision you make in your mixes, which is definitely the way it should be. Whether or not one agrees with the decisions doesn't matter so much as the fact that there is creative intent involved. Mixing a song, as with any art, is so subjective. No one will agree with every decision,but the totality of the end result is what matters creatively and in my opinion you're spot on with your results. I look forward to following your mixing projects at the Home Recording Forum.

Take care...
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Thanks for the kind words - Yeah, I think Dave Pensado is fond of saying: "If everybody likes your mix, you're probably doing something wrong"... or words/sentiment to that effect! The blog was a bit of a labor of love, so I'm glad you got something out of it all.

Cheers, fH fH
 
QuintaQuad said:
Hey Andy. Nice mix. Really like the vocals. Gotta agree with ff. Drums are a bit overpowering, particularly the snare as you noted. Look forward to the remix.

Best of luck and take care...

P.S. Really dig System Breakdown on your Soundcloud site!
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Thank you very much! I will do one last correction on the drums and post it.

Thanks also for the complement on System Breakdown, I will tell the band :-)
This was quite a challenge for me to mix, over 100 tracks with all those parts but it was also fun!

I'll check out your mix soon.

Cheers,
Andy
 
fHumble fHingaz said:
Thanks Andy! Yeah, I was going for a really driving kick drum sound on this. I did actually drop the apparent level of the bleed from the hihat in the snare mic quite a bit via eq. I kinda felt that it was reasonably under control because it compared favorably to some ACDC tracks I referenced which have that really "sizzly" loose hihat sound... I probably should have gone a little further maybe? I guess it's too late to change now - it's my official entry, so I have to stick with it...

Thank you very much for listening, & for your thoughtful comments!
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Hi fHumble fHingaz,

regarding ADCD I think you have to see the whole package. ACDC has a very different guitars sound like in your mix. Your guitar is more like the intro guitar of the song "Owner of the lonely heart" by Yes ... greeeee. That and the hihat fizz comes across rather a bit bright. Eq helps a bit here but actually you want the snare hits louder than the hihat bleed in the track. Therefor I would use a very fast gate, set so that it gets triggered only from the snare hits. Logics gate can narrow the frequency band on the sidechain which is very helpful. A gaineduction of one or two dB is enough! You can do the same on the OH.

Oh, and I think it isn't to late to change that, you have time until the 31. May from what I get.
I will post my last revision soon and would be glad if you could take a listen again.

Cheers,
Andy
 
fHumble fHingaz said:
Very, very nice mix - nothing I could fault - my personal preference would be for a little more low end punch out of the kick, but the balance you have between the kick & bass is really lovely. Top job!
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thanks for the comment man :), your mixed just awesome, i like the vintage vibe that you build for the mix :)

regarding the low end kick, i already adding some sample kick + some 80hz sine wave to layer the original kick sound, and i already try with more low end, and i think the drum sound don't sound so natural with lot of kick low end

QuintaQuad said:
Hey blinkerss. Nice mix. Really dig the vox. Seems like you could use a bit more sense of space on the instruments. Kick seems a bit up front in the intro and breakdown sections. Maybe pan the guitar out a bit instead of everything centered.

Best of luck and take care...
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thanks for the comment man :), and for your mixed, i love how you panning the guitar intro :)

regarding my mix, my approach for this song is, i try to mixed as natural as possible, so i hold my self to not put a lot of effect/panning/automation/etc, and for the instrument placement that seems all centered, actually i pan the bass and guitar a bit :D, the guitar about 10% to the right, and bass 10% to the left :D
 
QuintaQuad said:
Here's a sneak peek of my mix. Not quite through with the vox but my ears need a break. Suggestions welcome...

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Hey that sounds really good! The only question is what do you want to be your main actor in the chorus. Guitar or vocal? Right now for me it's the guitar by a slight margin.

Nonetheless, good job!
 



So here is my final mixdown. The snare in my former mix was a bit too bright and some hits were too loud. Taming down the topend on the snare did also make Liza's voice a bit duller due the existing bleed. So I had to change some things more. At the end I used a pultec style eq (hardware) on the stereo buss to bring back a touch of air.

I hope you like it.

Cheers,
Andy
 
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@AndyGallas Would I suggest putting a touch of reverb on the bass in order to back it off a bit and sound less dry? That's what come to my mind when listening to your (very good) mix.

Note for people: it's true that SoundCloud degrades a lot our sounds; the only way to get the original sound quality -- and thus make a fair jugement -- is to download the tracks you wanna listen to (this way you get the original file that the guy has uploaded).

Edit: Another note: do no forget to make your sound downloadable in SoundCloud! It's part of the contest's rules!
 
soupiraille said:
@AndyGallas Would I suggest putting a touch of reverb on the bass in order to back it off a bit and sound less dry? That's what come to my mind when listening to your (very good) mix.

Note for people: it's true that SoundCloud degrades a lot our sounds; the only way to get the original sound quality -- and thus make a fair jugement -- is to download the tracks you wanna listen to (this way you get the original file that the guy has uploaded).

Edit: Another note: do no forget to make your sound downloadable in SoundCloud! It's part of the contest's rules!
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Thanks for listening soupiraille! There is quite some reverb on the bass, a short tight room. I had some more reverb before on the bass but decided to back it off a little to have this element more in the front. But basically we have had the same thought :-)
You have a good feel for not so obvious details!

Cheers,
Andy
 
Yeah I know, it's all about taste, and from on day to another our tastes can radically change. There's always a big fight in our heads, "Oh I wanna change that, I want it like this", "but wait, do I really need to change this?", "yes man!", "Ok I'll try then", "come on, wasn't it better yesterday?" :))) Engineering joys :)

Remember that for Billie Jean, they did almost a hundred mixes of the track; finally they ended up choosing the second mix they did :)
 
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