David Tyo's - Never Ebb But Flow - Competition Mix

[Mixinthecloud]

Good evening fellow mixers.

Well, I must be crazy. I've got tons of hours and countless mix iterations (>12) into this throat melting opus by the talented and courageous, Mr. Tyo. I am sure I'm not the only one who had to scrape David's phlegm from the innards of their DAW. A real tour de force by the artist, this.

For sure, there were a plethora of battles to be waged across this arrangement. I don't know about you all, but I ended up with over 80 channels for this beast. Just getting all the relevant tracks grouped in order to make sense of anything took me three sessions. This is my Ogre mix 'cause, well...onions have layers.

I hope I didn't stink up the joint.

Once I got my sub-groups populated and a basic outline for the arrangement I had to come to grips with the clarity (or the lack thereof) of the lyrics. It ocured to me early on that there would be very little to be done to get lyric clarity to work effectively with the all that electric energy in the choruses. I conceded the strains to be a tone block and a texture to be used to enhance the energy of the arrangement. Just bring your libretto if you want to know the words. Besides, the title conveys pretty much all you need to know. That left me able to create a tone sculpture from the thick and rich guitars and voices. A lot of great medium to work with here. And it just so happens my needs for this mix coincided nicely with the WAVES Black Friday special so I got several plugins to help. The first was the SSL E Channel, which I used extensively both as a stand-alone channel strip or as an addition to the Schoep's Channel Strip and with my free choice I took the H Delay which is used in the intro on the acoustic guitar. My second purchased plugin will remain a secret for now. It is something I've always wanted and was the perfect solution for tone manipulation I was seeking.

After reading David's production notes, most of which I got right, I think my approach is pretty sound. Because of all the high energy, the pre-mastered mix was as dynamic as I could make it and hence not pushed too hard so there would be plenty of headroom for all the pyroclastic flows throughout the song. I built a strong and stable bottom end on top of which I was pretty free to play with dynamics and tone. I think it sounds pretty good at all volume levels. Don't be afraid to crank it some or turn it way down too. It is mastered at -11.7 LUFS; 13.4 LU

Thanks for taking a listen and, as always, I am eager to hear your stories and comments.

Thanks,
mITc

David Tyo - Never Ebb But Flow - Master 5

This piece has kicked by proverbial little butt. My But Flow has flown and I'm closer to brain drain than ever before.
Trying to get the thickness and richness of all of the voices for every instrument to sound balanced yet intelligible in an arrangement that goes from pop tickler to metal smash mouth (with environmentals thrown in just for fun) is just not an easy row to hoe. This will be my last go at this. (please Lord...)

There are some good ideas and solutions I think. I had over 85 tracks which chewed up all of my processing necessitating stemming out the bass, drums, harmony vocals and guitars in order to ameliorate the CPU drain. This actually worked out pretty well and this is the result.

If you are as sick of this piece as I am, please comment, or not.

Peace...


David Tyo - Never Ebb But Flow - Master 7

Post contest submission. I did not participate in the mix competition as I never thought I was able to do justice to this epic effort from David. If I had participated, this is the version I would have submitted.

Looking forward to hearing David's choice for this tough get.

Good luck, everyone.

H A P P Y
N E W
Y E A R

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P.S.: F-in 'boom!