Mixoff Contest with Mike Senior - Win Mike's New Book!

I hope too, because i worked hard and it is late 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12572442/YoungGriffo_BloodToBone_gLOW-x.mp3

Hi everyone,
Wow these mixes are sounding great! Appreciate all the hard work everyone is putting in and has really opened our eyes(ears) up to the potential a track can have in the hands of a mixer. Appreciate all the novels you are writing as well Mike, it's helping us understand the reasons why something sounds 'right' and 'wrong' which is such a valuable skill for an indie band. Won't stop me from always telling a mixer to turn up the guitars and lower everything else but its a great start

Keep up the great work, we can't wait to hear everyone's final submissions.

Cheers,
Paul
Young Griffo

http://soundcloud.com/javy_a/blood-to-bone

Heres Mine If you guys are still taking them

Thanks for the feedback 

It's been a great learning curve & i've learned alot from what you wrote.
The main curve is, i did this mix with the help of someone else & the two influences are clear in this mix & it ended up a mish mash, not what i wanted.

I'd say i should start again with this mix & give it more of a rock feel which is what i normally mix.

Thanks again for taking the time to listen & give feedback. 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21986881/Blood%20to%20Bonemp3.mp3

I'm afraid I missed that you'd posted a WAV, and critiqued from the MP3. Still, that didn't stop me liking your mix a lot -- it's a good solid balance which lots of good individual timbral decisions. Blend is excellent, and there's a nice sense of size too -- wetter than Daunt's balance, for example, but no less valid for that. Criticisms from a balance perspective are therefore pretty few and far between: the vocal is perhaps a bit muffled, and I'd probably look to add a little 2kHz to bring it forward; the hard-panned toms image doesn't really fit with the cymbals presentation in the overheads; and there seems to be a note clash on the final 'bone' of both vocal choruses (a slip of the Melodyne? ) between the lead and double-track, plus there's some distracting flamming between the consonants. Really good work, though, in the main.

Beyond that, though, there are some elements of the long-term dynamics of the choruses which could do with a tweak. The problem is that at the moment the first two feel like a little bit of a let-down in the context of the verse material that precedes them. A big part of this is I think to do with the vocal levels, which are probably over-pushed in the verses, and a little under-balanced in the choruses. However, the guitar and bass levels might also benefit from rising slightly in those choruses too, and a little more buss compression might actually assist too, if my own experiments here are anything to go by. (Incidentally, I'd expected that buss compression might actually be counterproductive in this instance, but you never can tell anything for sure with audio processing until you try it out!)

That said, listening to the killer long-term dynamics moment at the beginning of the final choruses, I was surprised how well this worked, as it didn't initially seem that you'd added anything to the arrangement. However, listening more closely, it sounds like you've edited together a 'fake' double-track for the main guitar riff in the chorus, or used some kind of ADT, and this really makes a difference. The wide panning of these elements, though, does rather reduce the benefits in mono, so I'm not sure I'd be ready to proclaim this a complete solution just yet.

Overall mix tonality isn't bad at all -- in particular you've managed to navigated a good course between 'bright' and 'harsh' in the mid-sections where the guitars and cymbals start giving it some elbow grease. However, I'd scoop out a couple of decibels around 300Hz and give a little more emphasis to the 8kHz region myself. Much more of a concern is the mono compatibility, because this mix suffers quite badly when summed to a single channel. The high end of the cymbals in particular really dives, while the guitars also lose quite a lot of brightness and the vocals sacrifice some important 'air' frequencies. Looking at the top three octaves of the mix on a vectorscope, I'm wondering whether you've been applying some kind of high-frequency M&S-based stereo-widening effect, because the display 'blob' looks consistently flatter than I'd expect. I realise that some people are willing to take a tonal hit at the high end in mono in return for greater 'sparkly width' in stereo, but even if this is your aim I still think you've probably overdone it.

All in all, though, this is a very capable mix indeed, and while it's not perhaps as overtly inventive as some of those we've heard already, it does provide an excellent showcase of the band's material and shows that you clearly know what you're doing.

hey mike, thanks for the critique. i did find that it was pretty spot on. as far as the hf widening effect, i suppose i did apply a light flanger (metaflanger) to the overheads that pushed some the information (hf information?) out of phase. the vocal loosing some air is kind of baffling, though. i have been fooling around with slightly different mid and side eq settings on things like the lead vox buss, especially in the top end. basically, i've just been trying to figure out a way to have a wider image while maintaining a solid, "locked in" mid channel. might this be the culprit? thanks again.

Here is my mix http://soundcloud.com/martin-olsson/blood-to-bone-martin

Not totally happy with ut, might to a revision before the 11th...

edit: after a rest, the first thing thats going to be corrected is the LOUD bass drum.... Sorry for that.

Here is my mix http://soundcloud.com/martin-olsson/blood-to-bone-martin

Not totally happy with ut, might to a revision before the 11th...

Right folks. It looks like Martin Olsson's mix is the final one that'll get a critique. Congratulations to everyone for making this such a hot contest and for providing so many great angles on this track. On a practical level, though, I think we're already up to more than 60 mixes so far, and given that I've only critiqued 40 or so, I think we should probably push the competition submission deadline back by another week so that I have enough time to sort out the remaining critiques before then. Shall we say the midnight of the 18th John? To be honest, I only anticipated that we'd get maybe a couple of dozen entries , and while it's great that this has been more popular than I thought it might, it does mean that it's taking more time than I'd planned. (I could probably still get things sorted this week if I weren't headed for the Frankfurt Musicmesse tomorrow.)

Quote from: mrtuesday on Today at 01:44:03 AM
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24660599/blood_to_bone_MIX_040411.mp3


What a drop! I just wish I hadn't been taking a sip of my tea at the end of mid-section 2. It wasn't pretty. 


Quote
Thanks again for all your time & effort.


My pleasure. More than worth it for a drop like that. I had to listen to it again three times straight away. That's a serious stunt you've pulled there. Love it!

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brilliant mix i'm loving some of the effects added! how did you manage to create that drop effect by the way it sounds really slick! :-)

I copied a bigger drum "hit" from another section of the song & applied a short "tape stop" effect to make it sound like it's being sort of "sucked in".
Then added some reverse reverb (that i eq'd heavily) & aligned to match when everything comes back in (so it feels like everything jumps out again).
Plus lots of edits & automation of tracks & sends etc.

Wasn't sure how it would translate from my head to reality but pretty happy with how it came out.

Mike - hope the tea wasn't too hot 
you said it needed something to highlight the last chorus.

Cheers
Malcolm

http://soundcloud.com/robinmarder/blood-to-bone-young-griffo

Please can you enable the download link so that I can get it onto my studio system? Thanks!

http://soundcloud.com/javy_a/blood-to-bone
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Ditto the download link.