Rules And Downloads

[brandondrury]

Song: Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer
Tracks provided by kakeux (He did a great job, btw!)
Recorded at his studio http://www.kyak-studio.ch


Performed by Crossbones & Black Flags
http://www.facebook.com/crossbonesandblackflags
http://www.myspace.com/crossbonesandblackflags

Crossbones & Black Flags recently release a free album on the net (complete download without any adds or email whatever
http://www.nyoncore.com/wp/nc-record...es-blackflags/

Grand Prize
Audio Technica AT4050 (used, with a screwy shockmount ) AT makes some outstanding mics BUT I absolutely hate their shockmounts. This shockmount has definitely seen better days. I feel a little strange giving away my problems as the grand prize, but then again, if I didn't have more condensers than I needed, I'd LOVE to win this great little mic with a shockmount in need of love.


Contest Rules
--Only one entry per person

-- Last day to enter is Thursday, December 15th. There will be a judging marathon to get these completed by Christmas, but that's the goal

--Community participation is REQUIRED to win.

------- The grand prize winner is required to write a one page blog here explaining how they did "it" or what their approach and thoughts were on their mix. They've got a week to get this completed or they forfeit their grand prize.

------- In order to make the Top 16, a user must have rated 5 other threads/entries.

-- Feel free to utilize Bash This Recording and get any other help you can to make your mix the best it can be. HOWEVER, all of these will be considered 100% independent of the contest.

How To Enter
-- Go here.
-- Create a new thread
-- Write a short bit of text (or along bit of text if you feel like it)
-- Attach your 320k mp3


How To Win
There will be two grand prizes.

One will be given to the winner of the mix competition.

The other will be given to a member contributing by offering comments, critiques, and help to other guys posting their mixes. The #1 goal of this mix competition is for the guys still learning (ALL OF US!) to get better and work together as a community to do that. The more you help, the greater your chances of winning, but the winner of the participation prize will be chosen randomly.

Rating Threads/Mixes
We'll be using the thread rating functionality to rate each mix on a 1-5 scale. Feel free to start rating threads/entries immediately.


BE SURE you are rating the threads of mixes you critique on a scale of 1-5.
5 - Absolutely perfect, full blown major label mix.
4 - Pretty damn good mix with few small flaws.
3 - An okay mix, but has a few big issues that keep this from being a serious contender
2 - A mix that is seriously screwed
1 - Don't use this. No one wants to get a 1.

Winning The Mix Competition
The community will pick the top 16 entries. These will be arranged in a Final 4 style tournament. Seed #1 faces off against Seed #16. The judges pick the winner of that "game" and the winner advances to the next round until the grand prize winner is chosen.


Audio Requirements
1) It's like the band tracked their song and handed it to you to mix. Being that it's a band, their vision is down to disk and it's your job to maximize that sonically. No remixes. No adding of tracks. No copying and pasting....at least not in obvious, vision-changing ways. (I've been known to fly in good notes from other section to fix rough spots, but I do all this rather discreetly.)

2) No playing with arrangements necessarily although muting certain parts is acceptable.

3) Use whatever effects you want, but make this sound like a real band playing a Christmas song.

Christmas songs, in my opinion, have a certain aura to them. I may have went nuts with reverb on my little example mp3, but it was a fun impulse thing that does make sense in the Christmas context. You can probably cite some dry-sounding Christmas songs but I suspect they all blow.

4) Your mix should be as loud as the big Mariah Carey Christmas song. I haven't checked the RMS meter on it, but that's what the boss (wife) is already listening to and I don't want to have to adjust the volume to compensate. That is the game, fellas. Call it what you want, but mixes that are soft are going to be treated the same way they are treated by the general public.


Audio Notes
* The bass DI got screwed up when it was consolidated and ended up clipping heavily. Maybe kakeux will send me an updated one when he gets time.

Download
http://www.recordingreview.com/audio...Ruckus2011.zip (221 MB) (md5: ba73ae27249efcf6fe327130864a74d8 )
Fixed bass tracks - http://www.recordingreview.com/audio/Bass_new.zip

* Some people are having trouble with corrupt zip files....which is rather odd. I'll get this fixed ASAP. In the meantime, try this alt download location.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32388809/Rudolf_Export.zip


Tempo

For the tempo, well it should be between 80bpm and 150bpm.

[brandondrury]

Reserved For Amendments

[teaforce]

yeeehaw! I absolutely love these mixing contests, haven't found a better way to learn, imo this is what makes Recording Review so darn special! time to bust out the eggnog

[LRM]

I have a question now that I've previewed the tracks... is it normal to have so much noise on tracked guitars? Including the DIs?
Maybe it's just me but the bass DI sounds like there is a ton of clipping going on.

Oh, and I'm not complaining, just stating what I'm hearing. I'll work with what's there.

[brandondrury]

is it normal to have so much noise on tracked guitars?

I didn't notice anything too nuts although I assumed that some of that was them having fun with their pedals, it could have been some more interesting accidental noise than I'm accustomed to.

For this kind of genre I wanted all that stuff in there. I wouldn't think of cutting it out. It seemed to be intentional to me anyway, but you never really know, I guess.

Including the DIs?

I didn't listen to the guitar DIs. I'll have to check them out.

Maybe it's just be but the bass DI sounds like there is a ton of clipping going on.

Oops, I left that out of the initial notes. The bass DI got fried in the consolidation process. I'll give an update when I get the clean file.

[LRM]

is it normal to have so much noise on tracked guitars?

I didn't notice anything too nuts although I assumed that some of that was them having fun with their pedals, it could have been some more interesting accidental noise than I'm accustomed to.
For this kind of genre I wanted all that stuff in there. I wouldn't think of cutting it out. It seemed to be intentional to me anyway, but you never really know, I guess.

there is background noise but this is amp noise. Being a total DAW musician, I have no clue what the sound is like with tracking but I recognize that what I'm hearing is coming from the amps - the DI's have the same noise just quieter which really threw me - and in that sense it comes across like a live or garage recording. My only real concern was the amount of noise because it really bleeds into the guitar sound at the start. A few bars into it, you don't notice it any more. But hey, I'll work with whatever.

Oh, the the bass sounds great (to me). I can't see needing the DI for reamping unless someone wants to get really rugged with it. So I'm fine with what I have right now.

In all, it's a lot of great stuff to fight... I mean work with. Now if I can just get past the brain dead numbing form cold med's I'll be ready to go to town on this bad boy.

[brandondrury]

there is background noise but this is amp noise.

On real amps the noise can range from CRAZYYYY to a lot. Unless a gate is used on the amp, there's almost always a healthy amount of hiss, at least on a high gain amp.

That stuff in the beginning sounds intentional to me, though. Amp noise never does that unless you do it on purpose of have screwy wiring issues.

and in that sense it comes across like a live or garage recording.

It may have been live. Not sure. It may have been a garage, too.

My only real concern was the amount of noise because it really bleeds into the guitar sound at the start. A few bars into it, you don't notice it any more. But hey, I'll work with whatever.

My advice would be to serve the genre. I may be used to this sort of thing. It's supposed to have a shitty element to it. I didn't cut any of that stuff out on my initial little quick mix. I just ran with it. This may not work in 100 different genres, but this is a noise-rock type of band. The noisier, the better. Trying to clean it up may have negative consequences. I think the quote on the click track really summed it up.

In all, it's a lot of great stuff to fight... I mean work with.

This thing is well tracked, dude. I'm not sure what it's like mixing something Massenburg tracks, but I didn't have too many things fighting me....nothing worth noting anyway. Everything I screwed up on my mix was my fault. It's important to note that mixing noisy punk-type stuff is WAY different than working with Superior Drummer 2.0 and synths.

Now if I can just get past the brain dead numbing form cold med's I'll be ready to go to town on this bad boy.

I say watch Commando or anything with Kurt Russel holding a gun. I ALWAYS stress out about not getting enough work done. Here it is 1:21am on Saturday and I'm trying to rush as I type this. When I'm sick even I throw in the towel and just turn to mush.

Brandon

[LRM]

On real amps the noise can range from CRAZYYYY to a lot. Unless a gate is used on the amp, there's almost always a healthy amount of hiss, at least on a high gain amp.

Cool. That answers my actual question. I guess I was really more interested in the concept of if this is typical or excessive for recordings and not so much of, the quality of the stuff.

I'm too much of a MIDI/DAW musician.. I need to get out of the box more.

[kakeux]

Hi,

There is noise on tracks...even on the DIs ones...well I'm not sure where the noise comes from but yes there is noise. Using for playing, a Marshal JMP1 and a Marshal EL34 100/100 amp, I think I'm really used to amp noises...I didn't use this amp here...

As told to Brandon, I just use amp sim...The funny thing is that the amp sim does simulate also the noise of real amp....I think you can easily get away with those noises, once everything goes, the noise tend to disappear..

For the bass track, there is clipping but I have no clue from what it's coming! the input wasn't clipping and the waveform looks like it wasn't clippping...A newbie error as I directly blend everything together....I should have look for it..but well, missed it. The bass track, not the DI, will make it less audible and once everything is blend, you won't really hear this clipping....The clipping only happens when the low string is hit, and I'm thinking if it's not the string itself that was hitting the microphone...

Let's say this recording was a in between a "friend having fun" and a garage recording...

On the Choir tracks, you can hear the music in the background....I had to use the monitor to play the song because I only have two headphones, and we were 4 singing in front of two mics....It was a solution, surely not the best!

I hope you'll still have fin to play with. Listening to Brandon "rough" mix, I cannot hear any problematic noise....So I assume it's possible to end up to something cool.

I didn't try to mix it, just to avoid having a bended mind listening to entries....So I'm really looking forward to hear what you guys can do with it! I already love Brandon's one, even If I would have gone with less Reverb...So let's go!!

Have fun with it!

Cheers!

[kakeux]

Forgot to mention, that you can delete the noises-talking-tone testing at the beginning if you want.....because it wasn't designed to end up in the mix, even if I have absolutely no problem letting them in the final mix....should be my punk mind coming back to life!

[james rock]

I know this is a mix only thing so we cant add tracks but can we mute specific parts for sections (which essentially changes the arrangement a little)?

[kakeux]

Well, Brandon is the chief on that....personnaly i don't have any problem if you mute things and you're mix is a killer ;-)

If your mix is not good, well I'll find it worse with muted tracks

Let's hear what the Commander is thinking about that.

[kakeux]

I will go re-track the bass tomorrow...so you should have a new track tomorrow evening (US time, don't know where in US but somewhere for sure)

Cheers!

[brandondrury]

I'm too much of a MIDI/DAW musician.. I need to get out of the box more.

I LOVE both methods and I think there is a huge benefit to being fluent in both. It seems that most people choose just one (maybe there is something for specialization) but after a 15 hour session where I'm dead, I can switch over to MIDI mode and it's like the morning just began. It's really strange. There are aspects of the MIDI side that get taxing, too, over time. I definitely miss good ol' guitar noise....the desirable kind.

Let's say this recording was a in between a "friend having fun" and a garage recording...

That's why I like it so much. You hear the old timers preach about how a band should sound like a band, not use a click, etc. In real life, I consider that just one way of working.

With Christmas music, I seem to fully embrace these old school ideas. I don't care if the kick drum is pounding. I'm only concerned with pushing/pulling groove stuff when there is a distraction. I just want it to sound like a Christmas Party. The "fun" element is almost always directly associated with the "raw" element in my view. I think the world may agree. Listen to Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Clause Is Comin' To Town". That guy hits maybe 3 notes in that entire song. No one seems to mind.

I can't put my head around trance production (which I normally love) and Nashville production (which I rarely love) for Christmas music. There's something way too slick about both that just kills it for Christmas music.

Forgot to mention, that you can delete the noises-talking-tone testing at the beginning if you want.....because it wasn't designed to end up in the mix, even if I have absolutely no problem letting them in the final mix....should be my punk mind coming back to life!

I'm leaving all of that crap in there on mine. I've never had French talking noise before.

On the Choir tracks, you can hear the music in the background....I had to use the monitor to play the song because I only have two headphones, and we were 4 singing in front of two mics....It was a solution, surely not the best!

Sometimes I have more bleed than that when using headphones. You are fine, dude.

even If I would have gone with less Reverb.

Yeah well, if you think Dead Kennedies production makes sense at Christmas, you are full of shit. There is a Ramones Christmas song that is fairly popular that they do keep dry. As I said in my post Christmas IS reverb. That's my view anyway. I'm gonna try to get mine older sounding, somehow. That's a sound I've never really gone for in the past.

Brandon

[brandondrury]

I know this is a mix only thing so we cant add tracks but can we mute specific parts for sections (which essentially changes the arrangement a little)?

It's different for every band/client. The general rule when mixing is it is okay to throw stuff out. If I tell a band, "I couldn't make the shaker work" they rarely make a big deal about it. If I tell a band, "I added congas" that WOULD NOT go over.

On my rough mix I actually killed the left guitar in the first verse.