Dextastic

Voted!

I'm glad to see the extension, as this was a fun one and I'm excited to hear what others come up with.

Thanks for the detailed response! Yeah I understand masking and notching/boosting in theory, but I need a lot more practice learning the proper frequency ranges to do it for each instrument. I'm going to revisit this mix and work on it some more. One problem I've had is the same as Trism: My mix sounds really good on my headphones but not as good on my speakers or other systems. I recently learned that my headphones frequency response isn't as flat as I thought, and have added some corrective eq. I've also started playing with a binaural room impulse response vst so I can hear the phantom center correctly in my headphones. I know mixing is best done on monitors in an acoustically treated room, but that's just not in the cards for me right now.
Let me make sure I understand what you said at the beginning: You are recommending starting with all instruments at 0 and bringing them into the mix one at a time, using only volume knobs/gainers, until everything is heard well enough, and then apply EQ/compression from there, right?
Also, as far as "stage placement," do you think adding some additional reverb to the piano would help it stand out more by making it sound like I've moved it back on the stage? Is that a thing that commonly works? Right now it has the exact same reverb as all the guitars so it's in the same line as them.
I promise I got more out of your post than I am asking here-I just need a little guidance to make sure I'm moving in the right direction.

Haha, great source choice!
My composition is done but I need to work on the mix.

Haha, great source choice!
My composition is done but I need to work on the mix.

Well me entry is up. Pretty simple affair overall. 

As for the starting of the mix, yeah pretty much. It is how I start every single mix I do. You're going for an initial impression over all else. You want to nail the vibe of the track before you start trying to corrective or artistic with processing. 
So, for me personally what I'd try is something a bit more drastic than that. What I'd actually do is narrow your drums down, place your guitars probably around 60-80% out then place the piano hard left or right BUT then run it through reverb hard panned the other way. You may have to do some finessing with EQ and such, but the idea here is brain trickery. You might need to let a little bit of the piano and reverb leak back into the other channel, but I've done this a few times in a few different mixes. Basically, it sounds like piano is out past the guitars. Again creating a layer of complexity to the mix. 
Traditionally on reverb you'd do some kind of glue reverb that ties everything into the same kind of space. It can be the same reverb that gets a little bit of a feed from everything or it can be separate ones with similar qualities, but they're slightly different for the different instruments. Then you'd use different kinds of reverbs for artistic reasons to get the desired reverb characteristics for that particular sound. Another classic thing to do is actually layering different reverbs and manipulating their width. So, you'd have the reverb that gives the instrument its sense of space and then you'd do stereo manipulation to make the really effecty reverb sound wider than the instrument. When the mix collapses to mono it still sounds like the instrument has some space to it. Yet another classic thing is to EQ the sends or returns from your reverbs to precisely control exactly what it is that is needed from the reverb. Simple HPF and LPF is all you need to accomplish that. Personally, I tend to like to do this on the send. The last thing I do a lot is inverting the stereo field of the reverbs. Like if a sound is panned off to the right, I just like the sound of the reverb more in the left than with it in the right. Just a few things for food for thought. 
If you're mixing on headphones then it is still possible to do a good mix, you just have to be cautious of certain things. For example you have to take into account the proximity effect. You have to take into account that your stereo image is compromised for numerous reasons. The biggest factors though are a lack of bleeding, the HRTF, and the time differences it takes for frequencies to move around the head which is kind of related to the HRTF. I've done quite a few mixes on headphones and I still use mine from time to time to help with locating certain things that I have trouble getting with my monitors. With that being said you should also definitely be referencing the mix on different systems to see what it sounds like. Cars, home stereos, cheap bluetooth speakers, cheap ear buds, etc.., each tells you something different. If you don't have a system you can trust then this kind of has to be done to ensure that your mix sounds like you want. Another useful thing is to actually contact a Mastering Engineer. I know this is kind of looked upon with a certain disdain in a lot of ways, but most of these cats have extremely accurate monitoring in a very acoustically neutral environment and have a very good listening skills. They can offer quite a bit of advice on things you can try in a mix to make it sound better. I'll certainly say that every time I've been kind of turned off on a master from one and they say what the issue their encountering is and I just do it in the mix the end result is always better. And no it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to get a single track mastered by someone who knows what they're doing. 

MnP ARCHIVE  updated by Trism, give him a hand of applause everyone!
PS: I really appreciate you doing this man. :D:D:D

Thanks for the detailed response! Yeah I understand masking and notching/boosting in theory, but I need a lot more practice learning the proper frequency ranges to do it for each instrument. I'm going to revisit this mix and work on it some more. One problem I've had is the same as Trism: My mix sounds really good on my headphones but not as good on my speakers or other systems. I recently learned that my headphones frequency response isn't as flat as I thought, and have added some corrective eq. I've also started playing with a binaural room impulse response vst so I can hear the phantom center correctly in my headphones. I know mixing is best done on monitors in an acoustically treated room, but that's just not in the cards for me right now.
Let me make sure I understand what you said at the beginning: You are recommending starting with all instruments at 0 and bringing them into the mix one at a time, using only volume knobs/gainers, until everything is heard well enough, and then apply EQ/compression from there, right?
Also, as far as "stage placement," do you think adding some additional reverb to the piano would help it stand out more by making it sound like I've moved it back on the stage? Is that a thing that commonly works? Right now it has the exact same reverb as all the guitars so it's in the same line as them.
I promise I got more out of your post than I am asking here-I just need a little guidance to make sure I'm moving in the right direction.

FEEDBACK POST
@Trism
I like the organ. What vst is it? 1:50-2:05 uses a different organ. Is it part of the same vst?
Unfortunately as Austin pointed out the organ part is often overshadowed by the choir parts. I'm not sure if you would want to adjust the volume levels or mix it differently to make the organ sound come through better. I still suck at mixing so I can't offer much feedback there.
I like the choir part itself. I think it fits well with the song. I also like that you let instruments like the choir part and the organ at 1:50-2:05 come in and drop out over the course of the song and it all still fits together pretty well.
I also agree with Austin that the drums sound like an afterthought. The drums on the original version are better, which should not happen in a remix. The original drum part is pretty complicated, bordering on overplaying, so replacing it with a simpler drum part would be fine, but what you have doesn't quite work. For instance, if you start counting after the first crash cymbal, the ninth snare hit should be part of a fill and doesn't sound right on its own. I know you didn't have a lot of time to work on this so it's fine, but what you wrote for the drum track sounds like an outline to be filled in later, and filling in a few little things like this fill can be enough to finish the part and make the whole song sound a lot better. My main instrument is drums so please let me know if you'd like more constructive criticism on the drum part.
@APZX
I love what you did with Cutting Edge. I wasn't sold on the idea of putting it in an EDM style when you first mentioned it, but you really made it work. As far as style goes I usually don't care much for electronic music (the kind you submitted this and the previous round)-I'm more of a rock guy-but this is something I would legitimately listen to in my normal playlist. The bass drum is heavy in the Cutting Edge section and I love it.
I think you did a good job with the Mute City part too-particularly 1:30-2:07 (and 1:57-2:07 really kicks ass)-but I don't agree that it's high energy all the way through. This is probably just my inner drummer talking, but for me I don't feel like a whole lot is going on until around 0:40, and the break from 1:04-1:20 really kills the momentum you'd built up to that point. Musically it's all fine, but if high energy is what you were going for the whole way through, that's not what came across to me.
 
 

Thanks! The guitars are all programmed (actually everything in my track is programmed), and part of what took me so long with this track was learning how to use my guitar VST. I've still got a few things to learn on it for sure. In case anyone cares, the guitars are all AME with some freeware distorition, and one of the lead guitars has a light flanger on it for parts of the song.
I worked on that damn transition at 1:10 for a long time. I tried three or four things and finally settled on what you hear in the track. I don't know if you noticed but during the first few bars of Cutting Edge, one of the lead guitars continues playing the Mute City melody until it "links" up with the Cutting Edge melody. It's probably my favorite thing about my remix.
Thanks for the mixing feedback. I'll work on it. I'm still new to mixing though and I don't understand what you meant by this part. I'm not sure what you mean by width or layering. Do you mean doing non-static panning and automating gainers, stuff like that? I'm trying to stay away from things like stereo expanders because of the problems they have if you listen to the song in mono. In the track I submitted I used the following static panning (everything on a scale from 50L to 50R).
Rhythm guitar 1 panned hard L
Rhythm guitar 2 same part, panned hard R
Lead guitar 1 panned 29 L
Piano left hand panned 15 L
Bass center
Piano right hand panned 15 R
Lead guitar 2 panned 27 R
Drums panned statically, each piece placed in its natural position in the kit.

Organs, organs everywhere! I got a new VST, can you tell?

My bonus entry is up! As I posted on ThaSauce, I spent way too much time on this and am not totally happy with the result, but I learned a lot by doing it and that's kind of the point, right? It's a drums/guitars/bass/piano rock arrangement that starts in Mute City and ends up in Cutting Edge. Time for me to check out APZX's entry .
Anyone else getting in on this?

I'm working on my bonus entry. I'm also planning on transitioning from Mute City to Cutting Edge, but so as to not spoil my ideas I won't listen to your entry until mine is done. I'm having some trouble getting some sounds right in Mute City so I haven't quite got to the transition yet.

I tried upping the kick around 80Hz and dropping the bass and piano around there but that didn't help much. Actually there's no oomph even with the kick track soloed , so I'm going to have to mess around with compression and the other tricks you suggest next. Thanks for your help!
 
 

Ohhh I thought when there were two tracks you'd have to incorporate both of them into your remix. I bet a mashup of these two would be really nice, actually!

Alright ladies imma get the next round off the ground shortly.  Had a busy day today...shoulda done it last night, but #reasons.  Anyways round 2 is on the way.  Also, there is no such thing as over-compressing something APZX.  Wall-of-sound compression and clipping is wholesome and good - especially for the ear drums.  "Dun dun dun dn dn CLIP IT."  "Dun dun dun dn dn CLIP IT GOOD."  (done in the style of Whip It Good!)  .....okay I'll see myself out the door.  Again.  
 

Cool. I'm glad the rest of the mix sounded alright. I've been playing around with the mix a bit more today and I think I've got the drums sounding a little better now. I'm still having trouble getting the kicks to be punchy enough, but I suspect the problem there may be the samples themselves.

Thanks APZX. I might try to redo the mixing my submission and repost it here for further feedback if you have time.
Yeah, I agree with you on the guitar harmonics. I wanted to include at least one but I may have gone overboard. The drums in my submission were from TMKD and the cymbals from MT Power Drum Kit (both free). I'm sure I could do better with some commercial samples but I'm also sure I could do a lot more with these with your advice.
HoboKa mentioned he thought my "pad effects" were cool - just FYI to anyone who cares, those were all just layered samples from Orion Sound Module (free).
 

Looks good to me. Thanks!

Ok, I'll wait til voting closes. I didn't see anything about it in the rules so I'm glad I asked!

Sorry I missed the PM about thasauce being down earlier. Yes, that is my entry!

2 subs eh...I think I'll hop in and compete with you two  

I've been playing with this a little this weekend. I could use some general feedback on my mixing and instrumentation so I'll be submitting something.

I'm also probably not the best source of advice, but it sounds pretty good to me. The only things I take issue with are:
-The drums sound fake, partly in terms of sound quality, and partly because they're not quite arranged the way a real drummer would play the part. The first 30 seconds stood out to me the most in this regard.
-I don't really like the part from 1:50-2:10. To me it sounds like filler. I think you could do something to make it more interesting.