Hi !

If anyone is interested. :) I used:

-Reaper
-DDMF IEQ, 6144, NY Comp
-RComp, Doubler, Super Tap Delay
-CSR Hall, Room
-Some Plug&Mix Plugins
-Nebula Tape Saturation and a Room
-Spitfish Deesser
-Some ReaPlugs

Hope somebody likes it.

Chears,

Carsten

Carsten Benninghoff_Izotope Mixing Contest_Flattery&Lies

Sorry for my english, I'm german. So imagine every 'th' as 'z'.

Maybe it's an interesting story, how I ended up here. A few
weeks ago, a friend of mine called me: "Hey, you are a bad mixer, right ?" :) . I said "Sure, I can only mix things, that sound already good." I compose film and media music semiprofessional and the soundlibaries sound most of the time good, withoust any editing.
He said: "That's exactly what I'm looking for." He wanted me to mix a blackmetal project, what should sound a little crappy. So I mixed
it and it became quite well and it was a lot of fun. I was kind of hooked for the mixing thing and began to download tracks to mix. I'm mixing every day since that.
My mixing gear isn't that high end, I use my old Cubase 4. I'm a bit scarred to update it, because it works very well for me.
I used compressors and eqs in my compositions too, but didn't really understand how espacially the compressor works. I turned it on and if it's sounds cool, it made the job.
Watching Pensado's Place was really inspirational and I realized, that mixing isn't only about the technical stuff, what kind of bores me. Most great mixers seem to be good musicians too and that is the most important point, I think.

Enough bla bla. 

For Oh baby I had a relativ clear picture in my mind. Eddie Van Halen, Lenny Kravitz and Amy Winehouse make a jam session in a rehearsal room. :) The guitar should be spaced like Eddies guitar on the early records, the bassdrum should sound like the Lenny Kravitz bassdrums and the voice a little like Amy Winehouse.
So I tried and errored for days. One of the problems for me was getting the bassdrum and the bass to work. And then the voice and the guitar. 
The sound in general should stay as it is and rock. Because it's a rock tune. :) I didn't want it to sound to much 70s, because the voice and the guitar sound 70s enough for my taste. And I think, it's really difficult to get a proper 70s sound, that works today. At least for me it is. :) It makes more sense for me to get a good sounding live performance. I think if it should sound like the 70s or 60s, it should be recorded with equipment from that period. 

Instead of using effects, I tried to automate a lot, to give the tune dynamics. I used some distortion on the bass, the drums and the voice. But only on parallel tracks, to keep the original sound.
I startet with a rough mix of all tracks. Then worked the voice sound out. Find the frequencies that for my taste have the most impact. Don't know what frequencies, because I turn the knobs around till it works. :)
After that, I worked on the bassdrum and build everything else arround the bassdrum and the vocals. 

I used mainly the renaissance bundle, the v-bundle and the ssl-bundle, the cubase stock plugins and some free plugins. For reverb I used that ik multimedia reverb bundle thing.
On the master bus I used a little Req and little SSL-compressor for the glue.
I use Adam-A7s and Edirol interface and a bad sounding room. 

I edited or triggered nothing. Used the Amp-Bass mainly, the DI only for pick attacks.

Sorry for this mix, Liza. :)

Stringgod