The Mix our Song Contest

[odsus]

Hey Ya'll, just to let you know the http://bullet-reaction.co.uk/odsus site will be open again on the morning of the 30th (or late EST on the 29th) they gave me a little more space so things should be fine from now on (I hope) .

[trashy]

Hey, I've been fooling with mixing this. Thanks alot; I love to do this stuff. I haven't listen to what anyone else has done yet, or even read the responses to those posts: I don't want to "accidentally" steal anyone's ideas!

Anyway, I was wondering about the drums... do all of the tracks made available have that weird gating on them? I hear in this thread that there are some discrepancies in the drum tracks made available. I'm on a shitty connection, and I don't want to download again if this is what it is. Can you lay out exactly how the drum tracks differ?

Thanks!

[trashy]

Oh, by the way, the tracks I downloaded are the playinbass ones, about two minutes after he first posted...

[greenmeansjoe]

Anyway, I was wondering about the drums... do all of the tracks made available have that weird gating on them? I hear in this thread that there are some discrepancies in the drum tracks made available. I'm on a shitty connection, and I don't want to download again if this is what it is. Can you lay out exactly how the drum tracks differ?

I think they do all have the weird gating, Trashy. It's an old recording. We didn't exactly know what we were doing. So, uh, that's just part of the fun?

As far as the discrepancies go ... the first time we posted the tracks, the drums fell back a beat or two starting just after the intro. Odie could better explain to you what happened. But I think playinbass posted the tracks with the drums in-line.

Joe

[trashy]

I think they do all have the weird gating, Trashy. It's an old recording. We didn't exactly know what we were doing. So, uh, that's just part of the fun?

You're totally right: that is part of the fun. Actually, most of the fun, when I come to think about it.


Thanks! You'll be hearing from me soon... literally!!!

[Bear]

I just want to say, this is a fantastic idea. Kudos to you, Joe.

[rockstarfactory]

Todd,

I'm not sure if you're clear on this or not, but odsus (Odie) and I (Joe) are actually two different people. We're both in The King & Caroline and we both post here.

oops. you're right. i was mistaken about that. sorry.

In my avatar, Odie's the one on the right, I'm on the left.

lol i thought one was The King and one was Caroline. sorry about the mix-ups.

But yeah, man, your mix came out really nice. We were both impressed. Cool stuff. You took some poorly-recorded source material and made it sound very professional like. My girlfriend said the overall feel of it reminded her of the most recent New Pornographers record.

wow, high praise indeed! i like to set the bar high for myself, and i thought it would be fun to set it high early on in this "contest", and like i said, i'm not afraid to go over the top.

What sort of rig were you using on the guitar track?

my web site has pictures of my equipment. pretty soon it's going to be updated with more close-up, artsy pictures of all the cool stuff. i have an ancient magnatone tube amp, and for the choruses i used an old guild starfire through a tube screamer, double-tracked. for the clean delay parts i used a les paul through a line 6 delay modeler. the synthy keyboard sounds were direct, and the "organic" ones, like the rhodes and mellotron stuff, were played live and recorded through the amp. for the guitar track that was originally on the song, i intended to use it a lot more than i did, but it was slightly out of tune with the other instruments, so i sort of brought it in and out throughout the verses, but then used my own tracks through the rest of the song.

i really really want a reamp so i can use all those pedals on my mixes!
todd

Joe

[playinbass]

Just so folks know...the tracks that I had posted up a few days ago had the drum tracks that WERE lined up.

I had to turn off the server because my network just didn't have the bandwitdh to handle all the uploads. While they were happening all the other computers were bogging downsomething awful. We need a fairly fast connection for our work since we are searching databases online and I couldn't do it for any longer.

If people want to do some more downloads let me know and I could turn it on over nght tonite.

[greenmeansjoe]

I just want to say, this is a fantastic idea. Kudos to you, Joe.

I wish I could take the credit for it, Bear, but it was Odie's idea. He's the one who deserves the kudos.

So kudos to Odie.

Joe

[Bear]

Oh. Well, Kudos to Odie then.

[greenmeansjoe]

http://justinpenney.com/samples/Trigger2.mp3

Nothing too much done. I went for direct and a little gritty.

Man, that sounds good. Nice work. I like the grit in the choruses a lot (I've got more to say about that in my post on playinbass' mix). The whole song feels more open than in our original mix too.

What, exactly, did you do?

Joe

[greenmeansjoe]

well here's my version.... a bit "mooshier"

http://belltower.net/mixtest/Trigger_playinbass.mp3

I liked the 2nd incomplete vocal line so grabbed the entire 1st chorus and copied that to the final chorus position too. Attached the existing fade out onto that part.

Not too much else....left the first vocal track in the background loud enough to be obvious..added a harmony on the 'just pull me back" section and some echo....

Most of this was done on the Roland 1880. Had to play the tracks in analog and then manually line them up. Did just a bit of make up volume in Peak before converting the mp3.

This was an amusing project. Anybody else got some tracks they want victimized?

Yes!

I love the delay on the vocals in the chorus -- sounds kinda "Instant Karma"-ish. The harmony on the "just pull me back" section is cool too.

It sounds like you added guitar in the choruses too. Am I right?

One of the things I really like about some of the mixes I've heard so far is that people are giving the guitar in the chorus some grit. It definitely gives the song more immediacy. There's that sudden, jarring transition from the stretchy, laid-back verses to the double-time, crunchy chorus.

It's like BLAM, here's the chorus, fool.

I don't think we drew enough of a distinction in our original mix.

Joe

[spankenstein]

http://justinpenney.com/samples/Trigger2.mp3

Nothing too much done. I went for direct and a little gritty.

Man, that sounds good. Nice work. I like the grit in the choruses a lot (I've got more to say about that in my post on playinbass' mix). The whole song feels more open than in our original mix too.

What, exactly, did you do?

Joe

Starting with the drums. Squashed and Eq'd the overheads. Squashed and EQ'd the kick. light compression on the snare with just a touch added to the lower mids. Sent to a bus and squashed a little more.

The bass is just a little compression and a little boost around 800Hz.

I cloned the guitar track. Panned them hard. The left is going through a JCM900 sim. The right is delayed 20.1ms and put through a Fender Twin simulator. At the end I added tube screamer to the right channel guitar and switched on the dirty channel on the marshall sim. These were sent to a bus and compressed a little.

Vocals 2 (the one through most of the song) was squashed with an LA-2A sim and a little reverb. The other vox was put through the blockfish compressor with the saturation knob all the way up. A little reverb added too.

A little multi-band compression on the master bus.

This damn song is stuck in my head now for sure!

[playinbass]

Yes!

I love the delay on the vocals in the chorus -- sounds kinda "Instant Karma"-ish. The harmony on the "just pull me back" section is cool too.

It sounds like you added guitar in the choruses too. Am I right?

I just cloned the guitar and ran it through one of the guitar sim effects and panned it over to the right. I boosted it a bit for the choruses, but it's in there the whole way through at a lower volume too.

Like spankenstein, I messed with the eq and added some compression on almost every track. It's tempting to add additional tracks, but I wanted tp try using just the original takes as much as possible (except the added harmonies which I just kept hearing in my head anyway!)

[greenmeansjoe]

No new mixes yet?

Lazy, good-for-nothin' musician types ...

Joe