Home › Forums › James Dupre – Country/Americana ‘Another Love Song’ › Feeling a little bummed.
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I’ve done my mix but to be honest, I’m not gonna submit it. I went back and looked at the past winners and I’d say this isn’t a ‘mix’ contest; it’s a ‘production’ contest.
I’m a mixer, not a producer. I feel when a client brings you a project to mix, they aren’t expecting you to re-perform parts, resample, and generally take THEIR idea and art and make it into YOURS. At least, that’s never happened to me.
As a mixer, I feel my goal is to capture the essence of what the artist is trying to say and showcase the performances within the track.
Maybe I’d get lucky and get an Honorable Mention, but I want to win. Previous contests have shown the way to win is not by mixing, but producing.
Perhaps the owners of the site should split each song into two categories: Best mix (using only supplied tracks) and best overall production.
Am I alone or do any of you agree?
Hi Bill, I agree 100% with you, a mix of the song and a total remix/production of the song are not comparable and yes i think too that who make a total remix has more chance to win.
I’m pretty sure there are two categories, mix and remix, there have been the last few times, so I would go ahead and submit.
No there aren’t two categories
Hi, I agree if you are to add parts it should honour the source material. That being said the submission rules did indicate that creating new arrangements and adding your own flavour was encouraged. That’s why I added a piano. You should submit your mix. It would be a shame especially if it had a chance to win.
Good luck with whatever you decide!
James
Oh well, that’s a shame, I know that is something they had done previously
Hi James!
I certainly do not find fault with your adding a piano to the song and based on the rules you’re absolutely allowed to do that. But it also means we’re no longer comparing apples to apples.
I also suspect that if an engineer was mixing a song for paying client most of us would think it was pretty unusual for the engineer to say, “Hang on a minute while swing around the glass to lay down a piano track on this.”
The facts of life are that when mixing, you deal with the cards you’re dealt. You tread lightly with the egos of the artist. As an engineer, I personally think it’s out of line to offer to sweeten-the-track. In over 30 years in the business, I’ve never witnessed it in a normal work for hire situation.
Make these contests either mixing or production. Award prizes for both.
I agree with the idea that there should be two rating categories.
For Mix and Remix. Similar to other competitions.
If I like the source material of a song,
I personally prefer to remix it.
Because more creativity is possible there.I could have sworn I read there were two two categories mixing and remixing but I cannot find that info now.
This is a mix and remix contest. There are two sets of prizes, one set for the best straight mix of the supplied tracks and another set for the best remix, in which you have the freedom to do whatever you want with it. Today is the deadline. Just submit it, what have you got to lose?
Here are the rules:
https://producelikeapro.lpages.co/james-dupre-remix-competition-january-2024/
I see nothing that lists two sets of prizes. Yes, you can submit a mix OR a remix, but they are all judged together.
Do you have a link to your info?
Hey Bill!
You’re absolutely right my friend, that under ‘normal circumstances’ adding or changing the artists vision of the song by laying down additional parts and playing with the arrangement etc would certainly raise a few eyebrows haha. Imagine a folk singer who sings and plays acoustic guitar laying down their parts only to be sent a final mix that has been transformed into an industrial techno track. But coming back to my point, these aren’t ‘normal circumstances’ as we were supplied with a fantastic pro-level mix by Joe Carrell and due to the sheer volume of entries I could imagine if this was strictly a mixing contest the judges would be tearing their hair out listening to 2,000 identical entries that pretty much sound like the original mix.
So being able to add our own flavour (as was the case when I added piano) really helps to differentiate ourselves. Also James Dupre himself will be one of the judges I believe. I bet he’d love to hear his track taken into a few new directions!
Hope that made sense and I take my hat off to you for having 30 years in the music business. I’m just a guy in his bedroom trying to do the best he can with what he has with big dreams of becoming a pro mixing engineer like the next CLA :-DBest regards,
JamesI’ve only been involved with the contests since the Dead to the World competition, but that one had separate winners for mixes and remixes. The Glow contest was a mix/production challenge since it was just vocals and guitar provided. Considering the updated rules for this mix still reference Glow and even the original linked files were still for that challenge, I wouldn’t put too much weight into everything being spelled out as accurate. :)
The question is, what does it hurt to submit your mix? If you already did it you’re not out anything either way. I ended up making some production tweaks in my version just as something different, but I didn’t add new elements that weren’t already there in the existing tracks. My thought was, there’s a high likelihood that I’m not going to win anyway so the worst thing that happens with my direction is they don’t like it and I don’t win as expected/usual, heh.
I have just rewatched the contest announcement video and at around 10.40 Warren says “we do two sets of competition at the same time…we do allow full-blown mixes and we have three prizes for that but we also do remixes”. Later at around 14.20 he also mentions picking the top 6 between mixes and remixes. I took that to mean there were two sets of prizes (?) though you can only enter one of them. But I could have misunderstood of course!
Here’s a link to the section in the competition announcement video where they talk about the two sets of prizes. That’s what they’ve done in the past with the exception of the Glow competition someone mentioned above.
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