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Sascha Mix by MMT93
#1
Hello to everyone here on the CMT Forum. Long-time lurker, first time poster. Skip past the "----" if you want to avoid the drivel!

I've been using the multi-tracks made available by Mike and all of the excellent bands/engineers that have contributed their hard work here to help with all of our mixing needs for the better part of about 5 years now, through my entire time at both college and university where I studied Music Technology.

The existence of this forum and multi-track library is the single thing that has kept my dream of becoming a successful recording/mixing engineer alive since I discovered I had an interest in pursuing such a career path. With limited space and not much in the way of recording/mixing equipment - I own a Scarlett 18i6 interface, a pair of £30 headphones, Pro Tools and nothing else! - these resources have truly been a godsend for me and have kept me creatively sated for a long time now, allowing me to experiment and practice honing my craft on a wide variety of music captured with various different levels of equipment and at very different recording "standards" - if that is the word I'm looking for and I mean that with all respect.

One more thank you to all of you guys here that keep this forum alive and make me feel like I'm not the only guy interested in the world of audio recording and mixing technology - or "DJing" as my family call it. Thanks to Mike for moderating and setting up this resource, for his incredible book which is sat by my bedside as I type this and again to all of the bands/producers that post their material here for our use.
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Now then. This must be the 1000th time I've opened this multi-track and had a practice with the mix. In my opinion, this is one of the most dynamically interesting multi-tracks available on the site due to the many complexities that the files in the pool contain. Some of the most challenging things to battle in this mix for me were:

- Snare drum. Tonnes of ghost notes and subtle roles that I've worked to bring out using upwards compression.

- Bleed. Lots of bleed. Nobody said that bleed was a bad thing. In the case of this multi-track, it absolutely makes the overall song. The first time I ever mixed this track I took all of the bleed out using gates instead of working with it. Everything is wide open in my latest mix and I think that this helps to keep the energy and long term dynamics of the drum track alive instead of having it steadily flapping along. It has also helped to thicken up the guitar tracks as their bleed is also all over the drum takes.

- Bass guitar. Lacking steady dynamic rhythm. Very hard to find a static fader balance for the bass guitar. In the case of this mix, I've got a little bit experimental and tried to do something with the bass that is a little unconventional. If you can guess what it is, I've made a mistake and it needs re-doing! I'm aware that my bass guitar levels in this mix aren't perfect, however, the current state of mix is all that I could frankly manage to crank out. I've remixed this so many times that my ears just grew tired of working on the track, so I've left it out in the open warts and all. Classic mixing fatigue.

- Intro. I find the "count-in introduction" to be an incredibly overused and underwhelming way to open a track. I took out the kick+side stick intro all together and replaced it. I printed out some of my snare drum track, automated some mid-EQ cut/boost sweeps and a high-pass filter sweep to create what I feel is a more exciting intro. I also threw in some manual snare stutters just before the main drum track drops in to give it that newish production thing. Ew.

There is so much more. I'm aware of a lot of the flaws in this mix, bass level, hi-hat level, guitar tones etc, but as I said I just hit a wall of classic mix fatigue. I want to lay this out in the open and just see what you guys think of what I came up with so far, since this is the first thing I've EVER put out. I might come back to this one day based off of your feedback and post the results here.

Cheers guys!



.mp3    Sascha Mix.mp3 --  (Download: 13.35 MB)


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#2
Welcome to this awesome site ,I'm impressed you used this great track as your first post as this is one mix I have also had quite a few attempts but struggling to get a decent outcome.
listening to your mix is an inspiration to give it another shot as you have done a great job with the overall balance and gluing everything together .
Maybe the kick could come down a touch as sounds a touch too punchy in the low end and distorting (or peaking the limiter )especially 2.57 when the music builds up.

Well Done Big Grin


Please Help Mike Keep This Awesome Educational Site Alive And Become A patron !
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#3
(08-10-2016, 08:34 AM)thedon Wrote: Welcome to this awesome site ,I'm impressed you used this great track as your first post as this is one mix I have also had quite a few attempts but struggling to get a decent outcome.
listening to your mix is an inspiration to give it another shot as you have done a great job with the overall balance and gluing everything together .
Maybe the kick could come down a touch as sounds a touch too punchy in the low end and distorting (or peaking the limiter )especially 2.57 when the music builds up.

Well Done Big Grin

Hi TheDon,

Nice to see your message here, I've saw your name appear a lot on the forums over the years Smile

Thanks for your kind criticism, I definitely think that you're right and that the kick could come down a few dB during the more intense sections of the track. I wasn't particularly careful with setting the limiter when I bounced this out either and so your guess that this was a factor that could have been causing some mild distortion is probably right!

Thanks again for your kind words, I look forward to listening to your mix of this track in the future if you decide to complete another one!
Please message me for recording/mixing collaborations. I'm looking to work with people from around the world to make great music!

Scarlett 18i6 Interface
£30 pair of headphones
Pro Tools

Fab Filter Pro-MB, Steven Slate Drums, Steven Slate Trigger, Blue Cats Audio Analyser, TDL Kotelnikov.
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#4
An ever so slightly altered version of my original mix. I have very slightly backed off the kick drum's parallel compression aux and reduced the threshold on my master bus limiter. This is all!


.mp3    Sascha Mix_2.mp3 --  (Download: 13.38 MB)


Please message me for recording/mixing collaborations. I'm looking to work with people from around the world to make great music!

Scarlett 18i6 Interface
£30 pair of headphones
Pro Tools

Fab Filter Pro-MB, Steven Slate Drums, Steven Slate Trigger, Blue Cats Audio Analyser, TDL Kotelnikov.
Reply
#5
(08-10-2016, 11:54 PM)MMT93 Wrote: An ever so slightly altered version of my original mix. I have very slightly backed off the kick drum's parallel compression aux and reduced the threshold on my master bus limiter. This is all!
Nice One !
It's amazing how a couple of subtle adjustments can make a big difference, the bottom end sounds much cleaner on my monitors now.

Cheers Big Grin

Please Help Mike Keep This Awesome Educational Site Alive And Become A patron !
https://www.patreon.com/CambridgeMT/posts

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#6
(09-10-2016, 12:19 AM)thedon Wrote:
(08-10-2016, 11:54 PM)MMT93 Wrote: An ever so slightly altered version of my original mix. I have very slightly backed off the kick drum's parallel compression aux and reduced the threshold on my master bus limiter. This is all!
Nice One !
It's amazing how a couple of subtle adjustments can make a big difference, the bottom end sounds much cleaner on my monitors now.

Cheers Big Grin

Thanks again, 'Don, good to hear Big Grin
Please message me for recording/mixing collaborations. I'm looking to work with people from around the world to make great music!

Scarlett 18i6 Interface
£30 pair of headphones
Pro Tools

Fab Filter Pro-MB, Steven Slate Drums, Steven Slate Trigger, Blue Cats Audio Analyser, TDL Kotelnikov.
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#7
(07-10-2016, 08:53 PM)MMT93 Wrote: Hello to everyone here on the CMT Forum.

Welcome!

Good mix. I think the levels are well balanced, some very interesting work on details.
(I haven't pulled the multitracs for this one, so shooting a little blind here).

Only comment would be that somewhere in the lowish mids there's some buildup that's hurting clarity. I don't think its more than a gentle notch on the 2-bus EQ. (Belay that comment: found the later mix, which has that corrected.)

Hear you on getting too focused in on a specific mix to hear the details, and find the right balance. A little time helps -- come back to it in a few weeks, and it will be self evident where the levels should be Smile (Hint: I figure they're already pretty close).
All sound is a distortion of silence / soundcloud.com/jeffd42
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