MrSwift,
Somehow I "missed" your mix.
We must have been posting at the same time.
You downloaded just the stems, didn't you?
 
T
 

I panned them L & R as well, not 100%.
And I added some verb, but I didn't get the same effect.
Again, good job.
I'm not getting any love on the download front, I armed a track in SONAR and recorded it.
Its transportable now.
T

I downloaded the mp3 file mix by PATM300E, and reloaded a 'mastered' version (it's download enabled).
could get a better sound (and better lows) with a mix in wav. format (48k sample rate ideally).
 
https://soundcloud.com/user-349211608/patm300e-im-allright
 
really very good mix I thought..

patm300e
 
Mr. Swift - On my system your mix is a little bass heavy. The bass is almost louder than the vocals (do you play bass?)
The vocals are nicely done not over treated but stand in there nicely.  Did you not like the electric guitar?  It is gone until the end.  At one point the keys are out there alone until the very end!  Then that electric comes in strong.
The mix seems a little compressed especially at the beginning.  Or is this a gate?
 
 

I gave it another listen this morning, and you're right - it's a little bass heavy.  But just a bit.  I play the bass, as well as guitar and sing though, so I don't think that was the bias.  Fair question though...
 
Yeah, I hate combining that style of lead guitar with this type of song.  To me, it clashes and feels like the guitarist is trying to steal the spotlight from the rest of the band.  I felt the ending needed something different, so I "let" him play at that point, but I feel like he'd have hated me if I was their engineer!  But if it's MY mix, I don't want it.
I really liked the piano track, and knowing that most would be guitar-centric I wanted to try something different.
I was careful not to over-treat the vocals (and the rest of the instruments), maybe it's the punk side of my background showing through but I like the raw honesty.
 
That would have been a compressor on the master bus, showing through at the beginning.  I'm still hit-and-miss on master compression....
 
 
And yes, Deering, I think the stems were all I saw.  Must have clicked on the wrong link, I was a little disappointed that the drums were mostly pre-mixed.  Evidently that's why.

I thought I would give this a go during some down time. Like some of you mentioned, I am really struggling with the ending. I feel like I want to caricature the vocals as they are pretty uninspiring as is. If I don't crack it tomorrow I will upload it in any case.

here's the 'mastered' version:  
https://soundcloud.com/user-349211608/take2-im-alright
would you please drop a line when you've downloaded it ?
(the file I loaded is a hair louder iic, but sounds the same to me).
 
btw: couldn't compare this new wav stream against the MP3 stream you had.
but it might be worth checking if a wav. sounds better/louder than MP3 on soundcloud.
 
again, great mixing !

Thought I would join in the fun. Not as bad as I thought but I do miss using a de-esser and de-breath
Only plugs used were pro channel modules, sonitus fx and a lot of LP MB eq's
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2nx9luocbsl4b7d/AACBVwF01Y_XxYPRttr3dpLea?dl=0
cloned both the electric and acoustic guitars to run hard left and right with a sonitus delay on one channel and cut some snippets for the last stab as I thought the ending needed something (hopefully that is allowed)
:)
 
p.s. and yes I did listen to "Smooth" by Santana
 
Quite interesting listening to the other mixes now I have done mine. Loved the piano sound on Slug/Mr Swifts, liked the pronounced cymbals on Pats, liked the vocal clarity on the others. I didn't get on with the vocal (not enough character for me) hence adding delay. Not to everyone's taste but I thought it gave it a bit of life it was missing.

Hi Pat, will leave it on soundcloud for you untill you can download it, no need to hurry.
Hope you'll like it !
 

Hi Pat, glad you like it ! A friend who was over mastered it on his laptop in 5 minutes...must be some plugin or online mastering I don't know.
Thought your mix sounded great, I'm still learning and not sure if I ever get to your level.
Cheers.
 
 

What's up, guys? I'm late to the party, but thanks to Pat for the heads up on this practice session.

If you're not yet sick of the song, please give my mix a listen and give some feedback. I'm in the process of listening to your mixes. Cheers!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwpzUEOfkD1wSXJ2MGtiZjNlWkk
 

Hi, Mike. Wouldn't the people with a better collection of plug-ins still have an advantage? I believe skill is more important than the tools, but I'm just trying to follow your line of thinking.
 
As for me, I like the idea of working within constraints.

wow,
you guys have time to mix other peoples projects, for fun?
 
man, i barely have time to even TRACK my own stuff,
much less mix it!
 
power to you!

I firmly believe you can achieve really excellent mixes even with limited plugins.
 
Just looking at Artist you have got the entire Anderton Collection.  Wow!  Then all the Sonitus stuff.  (Essential Suite)  They are all great plugins too plus the Classic Creative Suite.  More than enough.  No one is at a disadvantage with Artist alone.  I for one would be very happy with just the Artist plugin suite.
 
I was watching an interview on Pensado's Place with a famous engineer, can't remember who and he said how many compressors do you need.  Like he used one or two.  (stock ones at that)  They are all very similar you know.
 
Great mixes are the result of the decisions and choices you make. Not so about about how many plugins you actually own.  I have got tons you know and still only use a handful every time.  Funny about that.
 
It can sometimes be good to be restricted in what you have.  Restriction often leads to innovation and being creative.  I started out (in 1980) with a Teak Model 2A mixer that had no active EQ only filters.  I became good with it. Very good.  (It forced me to program the synths I was recording much more in order obtain the sounds I wanted.  Became very good at synth programming) I started out with only four tracks and practiced mixing only up to four sources for 3 years before I got an 8 track. I became very good at that. Very good. Jumping into 32 track mixing sessions is just dumb.  Practice mixing a small number of sources first.  You will learn so much from it.  Work Up.

mudgel
As it stands now, those who don't have Platinum will be left out. It's a difficult situation to include everyone who wants.
At least if folks explained how they used their plugins we'd know how they got a particular sound. If someone wanted to use Sonar only plugins because that's all they had, fine. I tend to overthink things, making it far more complicated than it needs be. Just some food for thought.

I think anyone who has Sonar (even Home Studio) can do this, just using a different set of plugins.  I would be happy to share everything I did from the ground up to final mix.
The first thing was to get all the wav files into SONAR which is a simple File, Import for each channel.
Then I played it back with ALL of the faders at 0 and set the level using the Input level (also known as gain staging and a VERY important step!).
 
After gain staging, I then put in an effects free rough mix to get the levels where I wanted them.
While listening back (still no effects!) I set up some basic panning to get things in space the way I envisioned this band would set up.  The background vocal tracks panned HARD left and right, electric guitar kind of near center (~20%) and the acoustic lead at about 20% the other side of the electric.  I out the leys out further at first,
 
I then applied Prochannel presets based on the type of input.  I used the existing presets and tweaked (mostly the EQ) them.
 
After the panning was set and the presets selected, , I set out to make some room for the instruments and vocals.  I used EQ on each track to do this.  (Great information about this here: http://therecordingrevolution.com/mixing-with-eq-carving-eq-holes/).
 
Once I had all that going, the mix started coming together and I changed the panning a bit moving the keys closer to center.
 
I then started applying the effects I created a new stereo bus and called it Reverb.  I set up the Rematrix Solo on the Pro Channel of the bus and dialed in the GoToVerb for 100% wet.
 
I sent up sends on each Vocal channel to go to the Reverb Bus.  By setting the level on the sends, I was able to adjust the amount of reverb for each vocal.  Then I used the reverb bus fader to control the overall amount of reverb in the mix.
 
I created buses for the Vocals, Percussion, and Guitars. I set the basic levels on the channel faders and then listening to the entire mix, set the levels with the buses.  I was unhappy with some of the percussion. Then I realized that I needed to set up gates for the Tom hits.  I did this and I felt it really helped tighten up the percussion.  I would have liked individual channels for ALL of the percussion, but since it was not provided, I used what was there.
 
 
My Final Mix has the CA - 2A compressor on it.  That may be counted as cheating as it is not included with Sonar, but Cakewalk offered this for free for about a month so I felt because of that it was OK.
 
I used a preset for the Final Bus Pro Channel. 
I can do a screen shot of these OR maybe even a short video if anyone is interested.
 
Total time was about 2 hours.  I am one who really has a tough time letting go...I am NEVER really happy with the final result, but I gave myself a time limit (2 hours) and that really seemed to help me let go of it.
 
 
 I do own the new version of Sonar Home Studio and would be happy to remix this in that if anyone is interested.
 
 

Im a little late to the party, but here is my first crack at it.
 
https://soundcloud.com/greg-s-moreira/im-alright-master-mp3
 
normally Id sit on it for a night and master it in the morning, but I just powered through start to finish in somewhere around 3.5 hrs or so.  
 
I used only plugins available in sonar platinum(obviously ones that come with it lol).