The Song Fight Bulletin Board

This is just a yet unformed idea that just popped into my head, but wouldn't it be cool if there was some way for all the talented producers around here to unite with some of the more production-challenged musicians, wherein musicians could submit their project files and have the final mix produced? Anyone else think this is a good idea? Anyone like to participate or make suggestions?

Personally, for me, it's not so much the mixing, it's the recording. Even the best producers can't do anything that amazing with badly recorded stuff.

That said, I'm sure anything could improve my crap

Exactly. If by that you mean "all the people with money send me good recording equipment," then sign me up. I will record the best songs in Songfight history.

I would think that if you're recording in Krystal or some other freeware multi-tracking program, a good producer could do quite a lot with your recordings, adding effects, EQ, compression, whatever to individual tracks, adjusting levels and panning, etc. I have some decent recording equipment, and i think my individual recordings sound ok, but I still think they could be improved substantially in the final mixing process.

In some ways, your suggestion is another type of collaboration. (For one of the Gert tunes, I think my only contribution was the final mix.) And as with most collabs, the real challenge is coordination.

Give me a link to a high-speed download of a Sonar bundle, and I'm all over a (re)mix of your track. But make me jump through hoops to download, or ask me to figure out how our DAWs can interface, or give me 128k mp3's to work with, and it's really not worth it for either one of us.

KMS wrote:Anyone like to participate or make suggestions?

I always enjoy mixing tracks for/with other songfighters. But as I said above, coordination is key. So I guess my suggestion is "find a way to make it easy for the producers." Take a look at what Mostess did over here. If you could codify that process (maybe something like what they do on remixfight?), I daresay the producers would be lining up.

Well I'm doing all of my recording now in Krystal Audio. If someone's interested, on my next project I can send all of the project and arrangement files in a zipped file to them.

I don't know about Krystal, but I just discovered that you can do some half decent EQ in Audacity. I know most people here hate Audacity, but even using its weak EQ is better than nothing ...

I'd be interested in taking a gander at somebody's mix, but I warn you it may not sound like anythign you've ever heard before.

I also would appreciate having easy downloads, although if I really liek the artist I could bear 128k mp3 bounces of each track and creating an ftp account on my (limited) server. Also, at least two days before the due date would be necessary.

The PM button is right over there. Yeah, that one.

I just got some more reviews that said I had a really muddy mix, so I've pretty much decided that I completely approve of this idea.

Best way to improve a muddy mix: listen close to the muddy parts and EQ down the bass, up the midrange. Try to EQ things such that different parts peak at different parts of the spectrum (like, if your vocals peak at around 800-1600Hz then pull down that band for the guitars, but boost them a bit at 1600-3200 to compensate).

Also when all is said and done, a multiband compressor is your bestest friend in the whole wide world for the final mixdown. (It can't do anything to help the muddiness but it does help to optimize your end result's overall EQ, and makes it easier to tune the EQ on the song as a whole without having to tune every individual track.)

Also, nondestructive EQing and compression and so on (like what you get with a real DAW like Logic or Cubase, or even with decent low-end ones like Audition and also I think Krystal) is totally your friend. Destructive EQing is slow, painful, and can cause added (and permanent!) muddiness if you aren't careful.

If you can make the coordination painless, I'm willing to give mixing your stuff a yoink. Though, I think the best thing would be for you to learn how to do it yourself.

I suggest keepin' at it and asking specific questions whenever you get stuck.