Greg's Mixing contest is over. No tracks to download.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Greg_L
  • Start date Start date
Your opinion is wrong, how dare you say such a thing? I never. (best I could do, rant over)

Actually, my approach was to make it bass and vocal driven, seemed like it fit.
I personally would like to say, you going through each one and making comments is pretty nice. Thanks for the opportunity and furthermore, the individual feedback.
 
You're very welcome, and thanks for playing along. I never intended to just declare a winner without explaining why I like or don't like each mix. That's not fair. No one gets anything out of that. And that's not to say my critique is the be-all-end-all of critiques. It's just my opinions.
 
Thanks for the response
didn't really do much except for panning, reverb for vocals und tremolo+agressive eq on the melodie guitar part
left it pretty much as raw as the recording was. the recording was very good btw, didn't really much if any need eq oder compression. It's really all in the pre-production pretty much :thumbs up:
don't know about balancing issues, don't have any studio monitors, just hifi speakers and headphones. and i made it in about 30minutes :d
 
Thanks so much, Greg! Awesome of you to give feedback to EVERYONE.

I wondered how my lows would sound. Too bad I didn't have my studio setup to work with. It was still fun, though! :D

Thanks again.
 
Oh wow, thanks Greg! :D This was a really fun project to do and a great learning experience. I'm glad there was a good turnout for mix submissions and, as stated, thanks for providing feedback for everyone. It's really great that everyone can benefit that way. Awesome! :thumbs up:
 
CrowsofFritz said:
Thanks so much, Greg! Awesome of you to give feedback to EVERYONE.

I wondered how my lows would sound. Too bad I didn't have my studio setup to work with. It was still fun, though! :D

Thanks again.
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Cool, you're welcome! And thanks for playing.

CrowsofFritz said:
Oh yeah, and fuck off.



:D
:D
:D
:D
:D









Just kidding.
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I'm fucking off right now! :D
DM60 said:
I think in this case, we can say that :)
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Yeah, for this contest my opinion is king, but overall I'm just an awesome guy with an opinion. :)

guitarplayr82 said:
Oh wow, thanks Greg! :D This was a really fun project to do and a great learning experience. I'm glad there was a good turnout for mix submissions and, as stated, thanks for providing feedback for everyone. It's really great that everyone can benefit that way. Awesome! :thumbs up:
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Thanks man. Congrats!
 
Greg had a cool idea for me to talk a little bit about how I approached my mix.

The one thing I did that had the biggest impact on my mix was blending in a kick and snare sample. The snare sample I used was kind of dull/muted, but had good midrange energy behind it. I kept it completely dry but added some high shelf to it to get some extra snare string sound in there. I let Greg's snare track supply the crack and presence and my sample supply the body. The kick I did the opposite with - the kick sample I used had little low end and was mostly click. I scooped Greg's kick track way out at 320Hz and boosted 3dB at 92Hz which gave me a nice meaty sound, then I layered my sample on top of that. The drum bus had a compressor on it set to 1.8:1 with 1-2dB of gain reduction. I also did something I don't usually do to the drum bus, which is put sort of a roomy sounding reverb on the bus. It helped make up for the lack of a room mic. I blended in a bit of parallel compression on the drums too.

The main rhythm guitar had a high pass at 148Hz and then some various cuts at 470Hz, 2000Hz, and 150Hz. It was compressed just a little with a 2.8:1 ratio and about 2dB of gain reduction throughout the song. There was a bit of verb on the rhythm guitar too. The only thing I did to the reggae guitar was a high pass at 240Hz and a 6dB cut at 380Hz.

I think I mentioned in my original post that the aux guitar was a struggling point for me. I felt like it always sounded too annoying no matter what I did. So I ended up compressing it A TON, EQing a bunch of the mids out, and putting a tape/valve simulator on the track. Then I buried it in the mix.

For the lead vocal I left the EQ flat for the most part, except for cleaning up the low end a bit. I compressed at 4:1 with the gain reduction peaking as high as 10dB at some points in the song. BG vox were compressed heavily and had some nice reverb on them.

I used a compressor, EQ, and limiter on the master bus as well.
 
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Greg_L said:
bouldersoundguy:
Whoa dude, way too hammered. Mashed, smashed, and undefined. Some pumping going on. Sounds like it was recorded live in a basement. That's kind of cool, but not a clean mix. Kudos on getting the fadeout in there.
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Yep, was late for work and overdid a comp on the master that should just have been tapping the mix rather than crushing it.
 
Greg_L said:
You're very welcome, and thanks for playing along. I never intended to just declare a winner without explaining why I like or don't like each mix. That's not fair. No one gets anything out of that. And that's not to say my critique is the be-all-end-all of critiques. It's just my opinions.
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It's a lot of work listening to all the mixes, taking notes and comparing. Good job on your contest and thanks for putting it out there.

Congrats to guitarplayr82. :)
 
Heartiest congratulations to guitarplayr82!
Thanks for the feedback for myself and everyone else Greg.
Woofy kick - yep that's be me.
How do I address that or rather how would you address that from the raw track?
I'd like to add that to my little box of howto.
It was great to mix from a set of solid tracks.
 
rayc said:
Heartiest congratulations to guitarplayr82!
Thanks for the feedback for myself and everyone else Greg.
Woofy kick - yep that's be me.
How do I address that or rather how would you address that from the raw track?
I'd like to add that to my little box of howto.
It was great to mix from a set of solid tracks.
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When you record a kick with one mic in a makeshift home studio, you typically can't easily get all of everything you want from a kick drum, so sometimes drastic EQ might be necessary. Rock and roll mix kick drums don't really sound anything like a real kick drum, so you usually need EQ and compression to bring out the goodness. For me, cuts in the lows actually make the kick sound tighter and deeper. Seems backwards, but it's true. All that woof and boxiness in the low end works against you if you want a clean and deep tight kick sound. So you listen to the kick in the mix and try to identify aspects of it you might wanna change. Lock in on it with your brain. Then do an EQ sweep. I like to do a boost sweep for low end stuff. Draw in a spike, boost the hell out of it, then slowly sweep it. When the bad sound you identified earlier sticks out like crazy, flip the spike and cut that shit out. Usually a cut in the 100-200 region and around 400 can really tighten up a kick drum. Then do the same for attack, but boost it. There's all kinds of attack up above 1500hz. Just sweep around up there and find the region that's a nice slap without being clicky. You might need to boost or cut a bunch. No big deal. Like I said, kick drums in music don't really sound like kick drums in real life. You gotta do unnatural things to get unnatural sounds. Then compress to taste. Play with attack and release to find a nice combo. You can subdue the attack to bring out body, or vice-versa. The EQ cuts and boosts work with compression to make a one mic kick drum sound great.
 
Hey Greg, I missed the deadline, but I'm really happy with my track.
I know the contest is over, but would you mind if I post it here, or in the MP3 clinic for people's thoughts?
 
sixer2007 said:
Hey Greg, I missed the deadline, but I'm really happy with my track.
I know the contest is over, but would you mind if I post it here, or in the MP3 clinic for people's thoughts?
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Fine with me dude. Knock yourself out.
 
Greg_L said:
When you record a kick with one mic in a makeshift home studio, you typically can't easily get all of everything you want from a kick drum, so sometimes drastic EQ might be necessary.
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I was spending a lot of time trying to eq the kick to my liking and could never quite get it. I ran out of the time I had allotted to the project, which is when I did a sloppy job with the limiter and posted it.

[Edit] Okay, so I couldn't resist doing some tweaks.

http://bouldersoundguy.com/media/Safe European Home 2.wav
 
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Hi Greg,
Thank you for the review! I can't seem to let go of this, I'm still working on your tune, even though the contest is done. Yeah, the vocals were goofy on my part in the mix i sent you, I've been re-working the whole thing, but with a reference track. Kind of my, oh duh moment, why the hell wasn't I doing that in the first place? I usually mix smaller groups, almost never drums, so this is great practice for me. I didn't even know the tune before, but I'm pretty well hooked on it now. Take care.
 
I'm having trouble downloading the files. Here is the error message I get: {"result":"error","error_code":"1012","error_string":"Cannot find requested object id "} I just found out that the contest is over. Whoops! I'll live to mix another day.
 
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