Hi. I too participated in this Howlin' contest. I'll copy-paste my original writing regarding my mix:
I submitted my mix couple of days ago. Took the time to take couple of screenshots from my edit window today (including some volume rides).
While I felt the song was nothing short of amazing, I felt the arrangement was lacking just a bit of meat, especially for the choruses. So I ended up mangling some of the sounds quite a lot. I was using surprisingly lots of octavers in this mix (blending octave up or down with the original signal) to pull the weight of a track to a different direction. You see no plugins in my hihat tracks because they were rendered into the tracks (to save CPU time), the hihats sound very different from the original. The Puremix team is either going to love or hate my approach
There's a small Spike Stent wannabe living inside me when it comes mixing electronic music. I'm always trying to find the maximum dynamics for the song (via obsessive riding), yet use lots of compression and distortion to bring some attitude to a song.
One thing worth pointing from the screenshots is the fact that every single track's output is routed to main out. Essentially I don't use auxes to group tracks together if there just isn't need to. IMO compressing 12 BV tracks individually sounds better than compressing them with a single compressor via aux. I also don't use any I/O template but create the FX (and the send/return) on the spot (usually right next to the track it's gonna be used on).
10-08-2014, 07:31 PM (This post was last modified: 10-08-2014, 07:32 PM by takka360.)
Nice solid mix Spede great vox solid bottom and overall eq great.
My one only small gripe is the push is a tad abrupt at 1.53 it only sems to be on the chorus push and none of the others.
Great work and best yet of this I think.
Absolutely great. I listened this couple of times.
I think you have here the modern sound of which I know nothing. I love the way the sound grows from small to explosion.
Here's also those mosquito synths have the right kind of treatment, I quess. I was suprised how well they drive the groove forward in chorus. (Well, they're still annoying to me, but who cares what an old fart like me thinks, if the target audience loves them.)
Great ending.
I'm not sure if the kick-snare groove in the opening of the song is optimal yet. But I like how your solution gives room for new sonic ideas in this song.
(10-08-2014, 06:20 PM)Spede Wrote: There's a small Spike Stent wannabe living inside me when it comes mixing electronic music.
Instead of aiming to be the small Spike Stent, just be the Big Spede, and after ten years you'll bring the first mixing grammy to Finland!
I love your ideas... using compression to add attitude and snarl. Love the distortion on the vocals and the liberal use of FX on the arps. It's way too hot for me, though... a little exhausting, even when I turn the volume down. The bridge vocals could be a bit more present, but I love the telephone effect afterward, briefly considered that myself.
Why can I hear the dog whistle in your mix and bmullens when only my dog could hear it when I was trying to figure out what weird reason they'd included it (FYI, it's been suggested to me that it was probably a joke)?
Just briefly... I'm a Spike Stent fan myself and referenced one of his mixes while working on this track. I hear echoes of his style in your work... lots of parallel distortion, and maybe you used his technique of running a vocal track through several separate parallel compressors in varying amounts? It would explain some of the cool tonal effects I'm hearing.
Good work and great ideas/creativity... but I'd dial the master compression down a good bit.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
I think you handled things well.The kic and synthbass sound tight By combining them to hold down the bottom and let the keys move the song in the chorus.I liked how you took advantage of the other snares also.
The only thing for me is how the verse and chorus sound very night and day ,but after a few listen its growing on me.
Great job !
(10-08-2014, 11:39 PM)pauli Wrote: Just briefly... I'm a Spike Stent fan myself and referenced one of his mixes while working on this track. I hear echoes of his style in your work... lots of parallel distortion, and maybe you used his technique of running a vocal track through several separate parallel compressors in varying amounts? It would explain some of the cool tonal effects I'm hearing.
I haven't heard about that technique "running the vocal through multiple parallel compressors". The only stuff I've read about him regarding this matter is the fact that he uses different inserts/FX for different sections of the song. One track for verse vocals and another for chorus vocals to create musical dynamics. And also about those infamous guitar pedals that he puts on parallel.
You can see from the images that my lead vocal is only a single track (all the lead vocs have been consolidated to it) although you're correct about the parallel distortion: One of my LV inserts is saturation plugin with a blend knob.
(10-08-2014, 11:39 PM)pauli Wrote: Why can I hear the dog whistle in your mix and bmullens when only my dog could hear it when I was trying to figure out what weird reason they'd included it (FYI, it's been suggested to me that it was probably a joke)?
I also read from some of the judges notes that it simply was a good laugh . I kept it initially simply to keep the joke going on.
The reason why it's audible in my mix is because of aliasing. I'm using quite a lot of distortion everywhere in my mix (including some of those infamous console summing plugins).
After investigating about this matter I found out you can create that same sound with a tone generator set to 20 kHz and putting a distortion plugin after it. Depening what is your session sample rate, the aliasing tone will be different (quieter with higher sample rates). This aliasing coming from distorting (=creating harmonics) the top end is actually a first time I've found a reason whatsoever to use higher sampling rate for mixing (even if the final format will be 44.1k).
There's a technique Spike Stent has talked about on occasion where he chooses several different "flavors" of compression on different parallel busses, and he mults out the vocal track and routes the split tracks to the p-comps in varying amounts, depending on the need/desired sound.
I've tried it a couple times, but I think it requires some really flavorful compressor models to really shine, and I mostly use neutral balancing models.
He uses this tactic in combination with parallel distortion on Haim's The Wire. That mix is very detailed... I catch another subtle flourish every time I hear it... helps that the song is awesome, too.
As for the dog whistle, I sorta figured you had to be using some kind of added harmonics, and distortion would be the way I'd do it, too. But in the moment, I was mainly rather amused that my dog was busting a nut, and also a little annoyed because he was barking like a fool... so I deleted it with extreme prejudice without further consideration
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
clever backing track.....dark striped down verses and bright anthemic chorus...Nice
certainly has a club-mix feel to it....first time listening through I was sure that the vocal was going to get overwhelmed during choruses...but it doesn't...
