PureMix has announced Zelab Mixing Contest, a free mixing contest for everyone to join. Unfortunately, the contest ends on June 1st which is only two days from now, but I figured that this could be useful for BPB readers because you can practice your mixing skills with the provided recording stems.
You can use any DAW, any plugins, anything you like. The point is to mix the existing production, not to fix what you don’t like about it, just like if you were hired to do it by the producer. Special exception for old school Acoustic Polka remixes.
My apologies for not spotting this one earlier, though. In a way, it sucks to announce a mixing contest at a point when it’s pretty much finished. Still, my reason for featuring this on BPB even though the contest ends in two days is because you can still download the free stems if you join the contest right away.
The thing is, good multi-track recordings from professional recording sessions are hard to find online and they are actually the perfect learning material for improving your mixing skills. Ever since I started producing music, pretty much 99% of the mixes I’ve made were basically mixes of my own songs. The biggest leap in my music production skills came when I started working as a mastering engineer for my friend’s DnB label.
Working on other people’s tracks gives you a fresh perspective and makes you better understand your tasks and possibilities as a mix engineer. You can’t just go back to the piano roll and fix a few notes. You can’t change that reverb preset on the guitar, either. You have to work with the raw WAV files you’ve been given and you really need to push your skills to make it sound good.
So, to get the free files you’ll need to create a user account at the PureMix website linked below. After registering for a free user account, download the files and give your mixing skills a good hard training. Who knows, maybe you’ll even knock out a great mix within the next 48 hours and submit it as your entry in the contest? After all, three winners will get the Sonnox Essential Bundle worth $999.
Come on, you can do it dear readers! BPB power!
Here’s the song you’ll be working with. The singer’s name is Amber Skye.
Download
To join the contest and download the stems, visit the official contest page at PureMix. Good luck and happy mixing!
