Prizes and Rules

[brandondrury]

Toontrack Mixing Wars: Metal.... Prizes and Rules


Band: Penumbra Down
Song: Bearing Teeth

Grand Prize

Superior 2.0 AND The Metal Foundry SDX AND DFH EZX

Yup! This is a SERIOUS prize for any metal enthusiast!

The Boring Stuff

Only one entry
Because this is a full blown mixing contest with a nearly 4 minute song, you get one shot to make it good. So do your best the first time. No points for second place, Mav. Once you've posted your entry, that's it. You may not post any additional entries. (Feel free to use Bash This Recording if you want some pre-entry help.)

New Thread
Create a new thread for your entry.


How To Create A New Entry (Thread)

1. Go to Toontrack Mixing Wars: Metal - Home Recording Forum
2. Click on the “New Thread” button. It looks like this:
   
3. Enter the title and a message
4. Attach 320k, 44.1k Mp3 Audio Files
5. Scroll down to "Manage Attachments".
6. Click "Browse" and find the mp3 files on your computer.
7. Click "Upload"
8. Be Patient. When the song is fully uploaded, you will see a small message towards the upper half of the box that illustrates that the file has been successfully uploaded.
9. Close the little box, submit the thread, and you should be good to go.

First Day To Enter
We'll begin accepting entries immediately. To enter, create a new thread under Toontrack Mixing Wars: Metal, upload a 320k mp3 (44.1Khz), and give a short message, maybe talk about your strategy, problems you had, etc.

Last Day To Enter
The last day to enter the contest is Sunday, Jan 3rd. As of Jan 4, 2010, the contest is sealed and we move to the voting.


How To Win
After posting your mix, the Gestapo will evaluate it and hopefully give you some mega tips to improve it. The Top 10 mixes based on the ratings of the Gestapo committee will be voted on by the entire Recording Review community. This voting will start January 4, 2010 and end on January 11th. The winner takes all.

Read This Thread

There are a number of tips, tricks, features, and problems explained on this thread on the topic of this metal recording It's highly recommended that you read the first four pages or so.

[brandondrury]

Fun Stuff
We are going for maximum metal carnage here. Make it modern and finished. The mix should be LOUD. That's what the client wants. He also wants it to “slam”. So that takes some skill. If you are having a problem with the engineering part of this gig, go ahead and post a new thread in Audio Engineering and we'll help you out.

Drums
The drums are Toontrack's Metal Foundry. At first I was going to render the full bleed tracks just like a real performance. I ultimately decided that was no fun because I'm positive that 95% of the over the top, turbo fake metal drums I like so much are samples on top of real playing anyway. So, I elected to give you overheads with the close mics with zero bleed.

I spent 15 hours on a mix with full on bleed and zero samples and it never happened. In 10 minutes I had a fun drum sound in the current state.

Guitars
The guitars are an ESP Les Paul reamped through my Rivera Knucklehead through a Maxon overdrive pedal into a 4x12 with Vintage 30s. We mic'd it with a Audix I5 and ran it through a Martech MSS-10 > Distressor > Mytek AD96.

If you hate these guitars (they aren't my best work on the tracking end) I'd be willing to post the DI tracks for reamping. Just yell and I'll get off my lazy butt.

These were the last guitars I tracked with my Mackie HR824s. The new Focal Solo6BEs IMMEDIATELY highlighted the mess down at 140Hz, 250Hz, and 400Hz. That's a topic unto itself, but lets just say that wasting ultra cash on monitors has been the best $$$ spent EVER in my recording life. PERIOD.

Bass
This is one of those SX basses from Rondo Music. You can see my review of it here:
Rondo Music SX Basses Rule! | Home Computer Recording It was recorded through a Sansamp > Martech MSS-10. I intentionally told the bass player to beat the hell out of it. I wanted all that attack and junk. It's better to have all that stuff going in and knock it off if there's too much. I like nasty bass sounds for metal, though.

Vocals
The screaming and hollering was done with a Peluso 251 > Martech MSS-10 > Distressor > Mytek. I took a chance and went ultra aggressive. WAY more than I usually do. I wanted to push the limit. On my mix I definitely had to tame the top and upper midrange quite a bit.


Quirks
I tossed a few weird sounds on empty space of other tracks. For example, the bass drop is on an electric guitar track. You definitely will want to move it to it's own track.....then again, you never know. I did that to save a 100MB. There are a couple of things like that.

[brandondrury]

Download

This is a big file (345MB)
http://www.recordingreview.com/audio...aringTeeth.zip


Reamping Files
For you jerks who just think your guitar tracking is SOOOOOOO good (), here's the DI guitar files. There's no need to download these unless you feel limited by the electric guitar sounds, bit feel free to give a stab at it.

http://www.recordingreview.com/audio/temp/reamp.zip


So What's The Song?
Take a listen below. This is NOT my entry, but it's about 95% finished. I at least wanted to give you an idea what we are up to.

Brandon

[adorian]

Brandon, do you mean December 31st as last day to enter?

"Last Day To Enter
The last day to enter the contest is January 31. As of 2010, the contest is sealed and we move to the voting."

[brandondrury]

Brandon, do you mean December 31st as last day to enter?

Fixed! Yeah, I'm an idiot. Thank God I have you guys watching my back. I'd burn this whole damn place down.

[DemonicTempest]

Haha, Still plenty of time.

Cant wait to sink my teeth into this one

[mr.L.]

Nice, definitely going to give this a try.

One suggestion however, might it not be a good idea to limit the contest to the provided guitar tracks? In my view a good mixer should be able to work with what he's offered (within bounds of course, but the guitar tracks provided definetely seem adequate). Letting people reamp the tracks might turn attention more towards guitar tracking skills than to actual mixing.

[patch]

Are there any rules regarding what we can do with the Drums. Are we allowed to use drum replacement/ effects on the drums?

[Audio~Geek]

I hope to find some time for this on Saturday.

No regulations on what we can do right? Whatever it takes to make it brutal/awesome/bone crushing?

I'd like DI tracks actually.

[Metaltyme]

No regulations on what we can do right? Whatever it takes to make it brutal/awesome/bone crushing?

That would be great.

I'd like DI tracks actually.

Me too.