Hannes Keseberg - YouKnowBetter_3ee mix2

[Cudjoe]

Well done.

[tucks]

Hey 3ee, congratulations on the win! Well-balanced mix and a lot of attention to detail!

[Jacques]

Congrats on the win!

I didn't know that were a contest until I upload my mix... anyway great work!!!

Peace

[3ee]

Hey guys, many thanks for your kind words!
Really happy I won, I love good books on mixing/mastering! (and the other prizes are surely well received of course! )

I already have the 1st rev of Mixing Secrets (picked that up few months after it was released) .. and 1st rev of Mixerman's Zen and the art of mixing (didn't have time to go though it yet as with few others laying around here, definitely will read it in the near future! )

Some of you I already recognize, some are new but I'm sure I'll see some of you again all over the internet where there are mixing/mastering contests! ... for years now I'm taking part in say... 90% of them, searching at least weekly on google

[Cudjoe]

Mmm! There don't seems to be much congrats to 3ee here?

[3ee]

If someone is interested, here are some tech info about my mix...
Trying to keep it simple, skipping the boring stuff like 1-2 dB eq tweaks or gates etc but if someone thinks I omitted something please ask any questions.

Drums:
Had a tough time getting the drums to sound the way I wanted for this mix. I remember especially with the snare drum was hard (side-stick not so much but had to pay attention fitting it with the kick since they play at the same time. ) I was getting an interesting snare tone using the room and OHs but the cymbals were always a problem so I had to settle for a good compromise between a good snare sound and not so loud cymbals... these said, there already was a great deal of dynamic-eq and notching to try to control that.

Of course all drum tracks were touched in terms of time-phase, nudging them very slightly, trying the polarity invert, anything to get maximum punch and definition before mixing.
I look for dynamics/punch/tightness more when I'm doing phase alignment rather than tone since tone is usually easier to dial with eq and compression.

I have a couple of send and parallel tracks for the drums, will detail as I go through the drum tracks.

Kick: I have a kick group, much of the sound comes from it rather than the individual kick mics. I have a 1073 EQ for the low punch mainly boosting some very lows and cutting some low mids, then I have an eq cutting some more mainly in the 400-500Hz area, SSL E-Channel compressor for dyn control and attack shape doing 2-3 dB of compression and then a Pultec EQP1 which is the 2nd big part of the tone shaping especially the lows.

I have a parallel on the kick blended in which has a great deal of EQ to cut the lows and bring in the click/brightness, compressing hard 11-14 dB GR. which goes into a transient designer for a bit more attack. This track helps the kick punch through especially in the more crowded parts of the mix and helps shape the kick dyn and tone.

Snare: On the individual tracks I have a bit of eq and comp to shape and tone but the snare group brings them together.. color eq using a 1073 (+5.5 dB @ 110Hz, small cut at 700Hz and a faint touch of the high-shelf as it can get aggressive pretty quickly) ... then an eq and dyn-eq mainly to control tone, low resonances from the room and/or snare or kit bleed. these were at about 76Hz and 146Hz, SSL E-chan comp doing about 2 dB GR then a hard limiter doing a large 6-8 dB of GR, the snare always had a weird snappy point in the mix so I had to tame that...

To help the tone and length of the snare, I've layered another snare blended at lower volume during the choruses and where else the snare played rather than the side-stick.

Hi-hat... blended that in at lower volume until the hat in room and OH mics felt more defined.
Pretty drastic eq on the hi-hat (every time I filter or heavily eq elements in a kit or similar/layer tracks I use linear-phase EQ. So, HP set around 200Hz and many notches in the high-mids mostly in the 2-5K area. When I say notches I don't mean using a notch filter, rather a very narrow bell Q doing exactly how much cut I need, in this case the notches are around -6dB . At 5k there is a dyn eq taming the hat when it opens and when the cymbals are picked up to give a less hashy result. Then, the SSL E-chan comp doing about 5dB GR on the louder parts. Remember, this track is blended in at lower volume, it acts a bit as a parallel comp. track for the hats in the OHs and room mics.

I grouped the OHs and Room mics together.
OHs have an eq -4dB @ 300Hz to tame the snare tone mainly and boosting around 2-3k for snare tone while dynamically taming the cymbals, then I have some small notches around 3-4 Hz, I guess they are cymbal or mic resonances... then at 6900Hz I have a gentle 6dB/oct filter on the sides only... I reduced the OHs image for more focus but they asked for more reduction somehow, so it turned out that the highs were giving the impression of extra width. After that, I have a bit of overall compression to get a bit of 'room' out of those OHs also.

Similar eq, dyn-eq for the room but the low-mid cuts are around 400-500Hz and the comp is a bit harder.

Both together on a bus: Multi-band comp taming the low "bump" from the kick mainly and the high-mids to highs (this part is doing up to 6dB GR when the cymbals hit), then I have an eq and dyn-eq notching some high-mid cymbal resonances around 3-4k and a broader dyn-control around the same area... those cymbals were always tending to be harshy...

DRUMS bus:

a bit of eq, dyn-eq for the lows-kick and around 3k area, a bit of compression, tons! (6dB GR) of limiting as the drums/snare were always peaky in a weird way.. then, most of the tone comes from Pultec EQP1, then multi-band comp taming some parts prior to tape and finally Tape to smooth things out

Drums bus has a parallel aux doing loads of compression+limiting blended in at lower level around -16dB

Some elements from the kit have a few sends to reverbs and transient designers but the Snare has many sends to different 'general' send-return effects like pitch shifters (for extra weight and impact, gotta watch that phase relationship though) , reverbs, slap-echoes etc... basically those sends are for extra image and depth giving the snare better blend, more presence without the need to make too louder in volume.

...getting a bit long, will continue in the next post

[Digitaldruglord]

Mmm! There don't seems to be much congrats to 3ee here?

You're right, Congrats 3ee!!

[3ee]

Mmm! There don't seems to be much congrats to 3ee here?

You're right, Congrats 3ee!!

Thanks! .. and I though Cudjoe was being sarcastic a tiny bit... I mean, I thought I got many congrats so far, given that mixing contests are highly subjective probably most others maybe though that my mix was obviously not that good or something..

[3ee]

PERC:

I remember them being very dynamic and peaky to I had to limit them quite a bit.

Congas: Had to thin it out a bit.. I have a dyn eq doing about 5 dB GR @ 220Hz, steep LP filter @ ~ 8k to tame the transient, was a bit too distracting in the mix, then a tiny bit of compression.
Timbale: similar processing but with added expansion and eq boost around 3-4k + I have a parallel aux compressed and band limited to 400-2.5k through which I send to some effects: Plate, chamber and 1/8 Delay.

Claps: processed them together. I have a gate to re-shape the clap decay, EQ to cut the very highs (LP @ ~8k) and give some high-mids (3dB boost at @ 6k), compression to bring them together and some tape for saturation and color.

PERC bus: overall eq and dyn-eq to thin them out some more for the mix, a 100% wet 'static' phaser for that freq diffused punch effect.. and finally an aggressive (almost clipper) limiter doing about 4 dB tops
Perc bus "smash" aux: doing some extreme and fast compression and limiting, blended in at very low volume.

Perc bus and smash aux have some sends to some effects which includes: -5st pitch shifter, plate and spring reverbs, some 1/64 and 1/32 slap-back echo..


BASS: is going to the GTRs bus to glue it with the guitars. Not sure if there were more bass tracks but I ended up using only the DI track and made some parallel tracks around that.
Have plenty of processing on the Bass in total so let's start with the main track: Gate to get rid of some noise, have some EQ HP @ 40Hz, some cuts in the low-mids and mids and a large 13 dB boost @ 2.5k for some more string. LA-2A comp modded to be very fast doing 5dB GR tops, nice color and action from this comp that's for sure! , Pultec EQP1 eq to color, shape the lows and do another heavy boost @ 3k, then a saturation device to round/drive it a tiny bit and finally a bit of sidechain comp triggered by the kick, doing about 1-2 dB of GR so it's more of a "technical" SC rather than pumping.

bass density parallel aux: blended in a low volume,... basically a heavier compressed and limited and eq'ed version of the bass.
bass low-mids aux: eq'ed and distorted track to get some more upper harmonics from the 50-100Hz area so that the bass feels a bit fuller/more present on smaller systems. Also blended in a low level.

Forgot to mention a have a tiny bit of send from the main bass track to a chorus and early reflections tracks to make it a bit less focused and more blended in the mix.

..to be continued

[Cudjoe]

[quote='Cudjoe' pid='80144' dateline='1551761412']
Mmm! There don't seems to be much congrats to 3ee here?

You're right, Congrats 3ee!!

Thanks! .. and I though Cudjoe was being sarcastic a tiny bit...
No 3ee thats not my style i like to give credit where credit is due,you won fare and square and there were some really good mixes, i just thought you would of got some more messages,once again well done.