GearFest Mixing Contest

[propman]

No! I mixed for the Universal Audio UAD-2 (OCTO Core)
Ive got the Neumann KH 310 A since few days - the Focasl are for you ;-)

I mixed for every price offered. I have a use for all of it.
The equipment I have right now is literally a midi keyboard and an original M-Audio Fast Track.
I monitor through headphones or some old GPX speakers from a hundred dollar Walmart stereo system.

(The headphones are Grado SR80i's but up until about a month ago, I used twenty dollar Sony's. The Grado's are awesome! They were my splurge.)

 

[heatmiser]

You entered this thing propman?

Good luck to you my man .

Those $20 sony's rock (available in every box store and convenience store in america). I used them for tracking up until a few years ago.

 

[dbths1987]

For those who have not listened and commented on my entry- here is the link.. https://soundcloud.com/abonalesaudio/01-liza-colby-oh-baby
I also promised that I will make a mastered version of my entry- here it is . audio.abonales.com -

 

[soupiraille]

I tried to go the "originality/creativity" route just simply because there were so many other good mixes that were a more standard (and probably best) approach to the song. Just thought I'd have fun with it a bit

Man I love what you did! Even if it's off competition (not sure though). Actually it could be the real song, it's so cool! Bravo.

 

[propman]

You entered this thing propman?

Good luck to you my man .

Those $20 sony's rock (available in every box store and convenience store in america). I used them for tracking up until a few years ago.

They're pretty good little headphones. I've gone through about three pair. I still use them for tracking, as the Grado's are open-ear and therefore leak.
By the way, here's my officially submitted mix:

Thanks for wishing me good luck, Heat!

 

[aarvin2]

What do you think will be the approach of the Judges for selecting the winner of the competition, creativity in the mix or respect for the original sound and overall balance?

I think it's pretty simple, if you practiced the mixing art intensively for a couple of years, it becomes quite easy to spot hard work, creativity, professional sounds and expensive sonics in any piece of mixing art you hear. On the other hand it's very easy to spot laziness in a mix too. Just depends on the person who's listening and judging. If it's Fab I bet it would be a piece of cake to spot what he has to spot. If it's not him who is responsible for the first selection tasks, then it might be a trouble, unless there are some high caliber mixing guys in the selection team.

 

[deanushka]

Hi Eduardo,

I agree, i think it will be pretty easy, i think you could pick the general tone from the first 16 bars.
After that, and ofcourse listening to many versions you would start to know what you were looking for or prefered.
Of course its all a matter of taste at the end of the day.

 

[aarvin2]

Hi Eduardo,

I agree, i think it will be pretty easy, i think you could pick the general tone from the first 16 bars.
After that, and ofcourse listening to many versions you would start to know what you were looking for or prefered.
Of course its all a matter of taste at the end of the day.

Nice balanced tight mix you got there

 

[AndyGallas]

I tried to go the "originality/creativity" route just simply because there were so many other good mixes that were a more standard (and probably best) approach to the song. Just thought I'd have fun with it a bit

I really like those tasteful ideas you brought in. Very nice! If I would be picky I'd say that there could be a bit more meat in the low-end, especially in the chorus. And that the vocal sounds a little bit too upper mid rangy for my taste.

But hey...

 

[fHumble fHingaz]

Focals? Me? Have now? I just have a pair of cheap Samson Resolv 65as and a KRK 10S subwoofer. That's why I WANT the Focals. If I don't win anything, I'm going to buy a pair of Equator D5s. I've heard some very nice things about them.

BTW my tinnitus rings at 430 Hz so it's a bit flat, with a high pitched component around 13.7 kHz I figure. Nice, huh?

And just in case you're interested in the real reason why I chose to mix like I did with that much reverb, I did some advance scouting before I started....



But where is the 4x10 Ampeg bass amp? That looks like my practice amp. Where is the Marshall stack? What's with those small boxes on the floor?

Hmmm...Big amps, tinnitus... I think I see some kind of connection here...

 

[Luc Gabriel]

The Pure Mix jury will download for listening every entry in the contest for analysing ? Hope mine does not suck so much because nobody downloaded it till now.

 

[Dave Bechtel]

I really like those tasteful ideas you brought in. Very nice! If I would be picky I'd say that there could be a bit more meat in the low-end, especially in the chorus. And that the vocal sounds a little bit too upper mid rangy for my taste.

But hey...

Thanks Andy! Just tried to have with it and do something a little different that what most others were doing... not because it needed to be different but more because I was trying to think of ways of keeping the listener/judges engaged.

I agree with you on the low end.... That was probably the aspect of the tracks that I struggled the most with. I had a weird monitoring thing going on because of a move from my primary rig of the past 10 years to a new setup which I did midstream with this song. I was using this contest as a bit of a guinea pig for my new MacMini and the drivers for the interface I was planning on using temporarily have not been working so I had to use the "headphone out" connection on the Mac Mini and it is pretty bad.

There's too much top end and not enough bottom on this mix for my tastes and I didn't take the time to scope it out until after I posted it and didn't want to "break the rule" of posting it more than once.

I enjoyed this... I hope they do it again!!

BTW: I do have to say that your mix is darn solid....

 

[fHumble fHingaz]

I tried to go the "originality/creativity" route just simply because there were so many other good mixes that were a more standard (and probably best) approach to the song. Just thought I'd have fun with it a bit

Oh man! Dave, this is the STUFF! LOVE it! Not only ultra-creative, but it sounds great too.

The way you created excitement & contrast was what really got me. I really dig the idea of using delays, sidechaining & other effect related stuff to create movement & interest within a mix, without necessarily resorting to additional elements to fill that role.... Getting one element to "play" another, and ambiances to be "pro-active", rather than just passive are pretty cool concepts that you can get a lot of mileage from, even outside of the typical dance/club music genre.

This is something I have been trying to incorporate into my mixes too. You've brought it to it's logical conclusion here - kudos!

 

[Dave Bechtel]

Oh man! Dave, this is the STUFF! LOVE it! Not only ultra-creative, but it sounds great too.

The way you created excitement & contrast was what really got me. I really dig the idea of using delays, sidechaining & other effect related stuff to create movement & interest within a mix, without necessarily resorting to additional elements to fill that role.... Getting one element to "play" another, and ambiances to be "pro-active", rather than just passive are pretty cool concepts that you can get a lot of mileage from, even outside of the typical dance/club music genre.

This is something I have been trying to incorporate into my mixes too. You've brought it to it's logical conclusion here - kudos!

Hey fHumble fHingaz,

Thanks for the kind words. This was a fun challenge as there were less elements that what I'd typically see when mixing a song so, it was a good challenge to come up with creative ways to make the song move along and fill it out and make the different moments in the song their own unique part.

Best of luck to you on the contest!!

 

[sixer2007]

Hey fHumble fHingaz,

Thanks for the kind words. This was a fun challenge as there were less elements that what I'd typically see when mixing a song so, it was a good challenge to come up with creative ways to make the song move along and fill it out and make the different moments in the song their own unique part.

Best of luck to you on the contest!!

Yup, that one was fun! I hope you get a prize for that, sir! Nice work!

 

[miroslav]

Yeah...it was tempting to go all FX crazy on the mix...but Puremix made it clear that the goal of the contest was to get a mix that would hit the mark of what the artist usually does and likes with their style of music....if you wanted to be competative.

 

[soupiraille]

The Pure Mix jury will download for listening every entry in the contest for analysing ? Hope mine does not suck so much because nobody downloaded it till now.

I think pureMix have a connection with souncloud; souncloud will extract all the mixes for them. Therefore it's ok if you live in Europe and you posted your mix a few hour after 23:59pm CET.

 

[AndyGallas]

BTW: I do have to say that your mix is darn solid....

Thank you Dave, I'm glad you like it

 

[Dave Bechtel]

Yeah...it was tempting to go all FX crazy on the mix...but Puremix made it clear that the goal of the contest was to get a mix that would hit the mark of what the artist usually does and likes with their style of music....if you wanted to be competitive.

That makes sense. I primarily mix projects that I have produced so I usually have the luxury of getting to know the artists and what they like and what they don't. We talk about elements or treatments that they do want and do not want in the production. I didn't have that opportunity and after listening to a few hundred... (maybe less... it just seemed like it )I thought it'd be fun to take a different approach. I'm blessed in that I get to do this for a living so I'm not as concerned with the "competition" side of things but, I am a competitive guy by nature so I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't want any of the prizes being awarded

I could be wrong but, I feel that the way I set my mix up is not "FX crazy" and if you stripped away some of the gtr delays and vocal treatments that it would still translate fairly well.

That's the cool thing about this kind of contest is that there is not one right or wrong way to mix a song like this. There are lots of possibilities both for the mixer to put his or her own thumbprint on the song and for the artist to see their art presented in a way that they may not have originally visioned it

 

[soupiraille]

You materialist guys.....