Mouche

Banda Magda

Fab Dupont's mix (mastered version)

I met Magda after Michael League from Snarky Puppy recommended me for mixing her record. I later learned that she had already had the record mixed completely once and was not happy with the results. We hit it off and we have been working together ever since.

It turns out Magda is a musical genius and is very, very prolific. Every session had 120+ tracks, full orchestras, choirs, horn sections, accordions, full on brazilian percussion sections that come in for 8 bars only, etc, etc... Starting the mix from scratch was daunting task, taxing the computer resources and pushing my system to its limits, as well as forcing me to invent new ways to make everything fit as Magda was not too keen on muting much of her work. In the end, the record came out fabulously well. It got selected one of the Top 10 World Music Records of 2013 by NPR, charted on the Billboard World music ranking, and is getting wonderful praise by reviewers and listeners alike.

It was produced over the course of a year, in many, many different studios, including her apartment, by Magda herself (She also writes lyrics and music, sings and plays accordeon, piano and percussions), with the help of her endless supply of amazing musician friends, and a little bit of me. I mixed and mastered the record at Flux Studios over 15 days, in the Fabulous room, in Protools HD10, using exclusively plugins (Sonnox, UAD, Soundtoys, Massey) on the separate tracks and a combo of Lynx Studio Aurora 16s / Dangerous 2Bus / ELI Fatso / Bax EQ / Manley Stereo Pultec for the stereo bus. The mixes were printed through a Universal Audio 2192 A to D converter.

I mastered the record on the same rig a few weeks later as Magda was not happy with the tracks she got back from the mastering houses she tried. The masters were done completely in the box in Protools and the record was sequenced with DSP Quattro.

Mouche is the song with the lowest track count of that record. It's also the one that has the most modern bottom to it so we thought you'd enjoy having a crack at it. The challenge is to make everything fit and to respect the wish of the producer which is 'Everything is there for a reason'. I left a bit of the New York City traffic that was on the tabla before I denoised it at the top of its track so you can hear the kinds of challenges we are faced with sometimes.

Tempo is 109 bpm if you feel like automating delays.

Enjoy the great song and great playing, keep it fresh and light.

Fab

Submissions

Winners

After much deliberation, here are the 5 winners we picked from the list.

#1 - Congrats to TheBoss who won an Eiosis Air Eq Plug-in.

#2 - Congrats to Ralf_T who won an Eiosis Air Eq Plug-in.

#3 - Congrats to yoda75020 who won an Eiosis Air Eq Plug-in.

#4 - Congrats to achase4u who won an  Eiosis Air Eq Plug-in.

#5 - Congrats to mhejhia who won an Eiosis Air Eq Plug-in.

Thank you all for your participation.

The pureMix Team.