GearFest Mixing Contest

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First time post on here. I just got my hands on the tracks, and I'll spend the better part of the morning working on them. I'm a student of Audio Production at Mesa Community College, about to get my AA, and I'm excited to see how my mixing skills stack up against some of you longtime pro's out there :D
 
F13Bubba said:
First time post on here. I just got my hands on the tracks, and I'll spend the better part of the morning working on them. I'm a student of Audio Production at Mesa Community College, about to get my AA, and I'm excited to see how my mixing skills stack up against some of you longtime pro's out there :D
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Welcome. I'm looking forward to hearing your mix.

Here is mine. Feedback is welcome:

 
strangenotez said:
up front, that's for sure!
Might have over cooked the kick snare and vox just a smidge. sometimes attempts to be as much of ___(insert anything here)___ as possible, we overshoot. nice tones
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Thank you!
Maybe I'll dial back the compressors a bit.
 
After my first hour and a half of mixing, I've bounced my first draft, if you will. I can't post links yet, but if you go to soundcloud, and put /taylor_hudson/oh-baby-mix-1 after the .com, you'll find it.

after listening to more mixes, I know there are a few places that definitely need some tweaking, and I've never really been taught a ton about EQ, so my kick is a little frustrating at the moment. I used Pro Tools Lo-Fi plug to add a wee bit of distortion to the guitar, and I also used a delay to make it artificially stereo to add some breadth to the mix. I boosted a bit at 220hz and 700hz, but again, I'm just playing around to find a sound I like.

My Bass mix is about 70>30 DI>Amp. I cut 12k on the vocals by 1db, as I found them slightly too bright, but I'll probably come back to that later. I tried not to do too much with the mix, and nothing is very heavily compressed. Let me know what you think! And any feedback is greatly appreciated.

P.S. I'm mixing in PT 8 using KRK RP8G1's as my monitors.



[ModNote: Hooked you up with a link]
 
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I just want to say hello to everyone.
Wow, I never saw such a big mix contest.
I also started mixing, still struggling with the guitar. Well I'll see :-)

Cheers,
Andy
 
T-Guitar said:
For those who have done this type of competition before, what's usually the deciding issues on the winners? what do the judges look for, what makes one mix standout from the others? Curious, curious, curious.....
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My peronnal opinion is that the winning mix will have the best vocals, and of course it will be the most exciting and the one that supports best the emotion of the song -- in the end, since there are already very good mixes submitted, the best mix among the best mixes will be chosen according to Fab's ears, and Lord knows what Fab's ears are made of : )

Awesome, awesome track by the way, I love this creation, I love when Liza is screaming for her Baby, I love the guitar/bass/drums play. I love it. I'm still struggling with the vocals but hopefully I'll come up with the result I want!
 
F13Bubba said:
After my first hour and a half of mixing, I've bounced my first draft, if you will. I can't post links yet, but if you go to soundcloud, and put /taylor_hudson/oh-baby-mix-1 after the .com, you'll find it.

after listening to more mixes, I know there are a few places that definitely need some tweaking, and I've never really been taught a ton about EQ, so my kick is a little frustrating at the moment. I used Pro Tools Lo-Fi plug to add a wee bit of distortion to the guitar, and I also used a delay to make it artificially stereo to add some breadth to the mix. I boosted a bit at 220hz and 700hz, but again, I'm just playing around to find a sound I like.

My Bass mix is about 70>30 DI>Amp. I cut 12k on the vocals by 1db, as I found them slightly too bright, but I'll probably come back to that later. I tried not to do too much with the mix, and nothing is very heavily compressed. Let me know what you think! And any feedback is greatly appreciated.

P.S. I'm mixing in PT 8 using KRK RP8G1's as my monitors.
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Hey Taylor, I had a listen to your mix with my Sennheiser HD 650 headphones, so I might be missing some info happening way down low, but generally I really enjoyed your mix.

It has a very "vintage" tonality, with slightly subdued highs and mids, and the reverb on the vocals absolutely nails that "older" style.

Overall the balances seem very good. My only suggestion would be to perhaps either bring up the rhythm section a bit during the verses, or pull back the guitar and vocals just a tad.

My personal preference would be for a louder and more driving rhythm section, but that would probably run counter to the general vintage aesthetic you have cultivated here. Nice job!
 
fHumble fHingaz said:
Thanks Rusty - I appreciate it. Have you posted your mix yet?
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Man... hoping to get to it... just got accepted into a new band and have to learn their versions of about 30 songs by June 7th! :)

Shouldn't take forever to mix with seven tracks... but I won't submit crap either.
 
Rusty Falcon said:
Man... hoping to get to it... just got accepted into a new band and have to learn their versions of about 30 songs by June 7th! :)

Shouldn't take forever to mix with seven tracks... but I won't submit crap either.
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Sounds like you have your work cut out for you - Looking forward to it!
 
fHumble fHingaz said:
Hey Taylor, I had a listen to your mix with my Sennheiser HD 650 headphones, so I might be missing some info happening way down low, but generally I really enjoyed your mix.

It has a very "vintage" tonality, with slightly subdued highs and mids, and the reverb on the vocals absolutely nails that "older" style.

Overall the balances seem very good. My only suggestion would be to perhaps either bring up the rhythm section a bit during the verses, or pull back the guitar and vocals just a tad.

My personal preference would be for a louder and more driving rhythm section, but that would probably run counter to the general vintage aesthetic you have cultivated here. Nice job!
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Thanks sir! I'm tweaking the eq on the snare, bass, and kick, and so far they sound better to me. I think I'm also going to start playing with the dynamics a bit to try and get a little more variance in the feel of certain sections.
 
I had a bash:



How do you link it to the contest?

I used Sonar X1 and crysonic, waves, rob pappen and soundtoys, breverb plugs via Roland quad capture USB and Alesis monitors and ATH-M220 heaphones.
 
New draft

soundcloud.com/taylor_hudson/oh-baby-3

After another 2 hours of work, some tweaking of eq's on snare, kick, and bass, I think I'm close to where I want to be. I also added a little delay on the vocals.
 
thefyn said:
I had a bash:



How do you link it to the contest?

I used Sonar X1 and crysonic, waves, rob pappen and soundtoys, breverb plugs via Roland quad capture USB and Alesis monitors and ATH-M220 heaphones.
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You might want to trim a little low end off the kick. You've got a lot of sub-bass happening there. Also could do with trimming a little around 200hz out of the kick would clean the low end up too.

To link your mix, you have to join the Gearfest contest "Group" & then "add" your mix to that group - (There is a tab under you mix called "Add to Group).
 
F13Bubba said:
New draft

soundcloud.com/taylor_hudson/oh-baby-3

After another 2 hours of work, some tweaking of eq's on snare, kick, and bass, I think I'm close to where I want to be. I also added a little delay on the vocals.
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Listening on my studio monitors this time - Nice. I feel the kick could do with less sub lows & more punch around the 100hz area, as well as a little bit of bite in the high mids around 4k to bring out the attack.
 
fHumble fHingaz said:
Listening on my studio monitors this time - Nice. I feel the kick could do with less sub lows & more punch around the 100hz area, as well as a little bit of bite in the high mids around 4k to bring out the attack.
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Thanks again. I did boost at 4.6k, but I could stand a little more. I took the Lo-Air I had on the kick off, but I'm having trouble with it getting lost in the mix. I've used the c-1 sidechain to duck the bass with the kick, but honestly that's about all I have in my bag of tricks for dealing with low end.
 
F13Bubba said:
Thanks again. I did boost at 4.6k, but I could stand a little more. I took the Lo-Air I had on the kick off, but I'm having trouble with it getting lost in the mix. I've used the c-1 sidechain to duck the bass with the kick, but honestly that's about all I have in my bag of tricks for dealing with low end.
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Have you tried high passing the kick around, say 30-50hz?
 
fHumble fHingaz said:
Have you tried high passing the kick around, say 30-50hz?
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I just did that. The Lo-Air really just adds sub-bass, which a good lesson to learn now lol. I also cut at 260, and boosted around 65 and 4.2k. I'm still having trouble getting heard in the mix without smashing it to hell with a limiter. Although, perhaps I'm mixing everything else too high.... I suppose if I drop everything proportionally, I should be able to get my kick to come through a bit better.
 
F13Bubba said:
I just did that. The Lo-Air really just adds sub-bass, which a good lesson to learn now lol. I also cut at 260, and boosted around 65 and 4.2k. I'm still having trouble getting heard in the mix without smashing it to hell with a limiter. Although, perhaps I'm mixing everything else too high.... I suppose if I drop everything proportionally, I should be able to get my kick to come through a bit better.
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That might do the trick!
 
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