réactions à la news Concours de mixage PureMix

Hi guys,

I thought I'd use some of my no-sleep time to chime in.

First, I think you should not worry about deadlines too much since the amazing thing about Soundcloud is that we can see upload dates on everything. People will probably keep on uploading stuff up there for weeks. It does not matter.

Second, it does not matter (oh no, I'm repeating myself). What matters is you mixed it, you took the time, you listened to something new, maybe you were challenged, maybe you were stressed and questioned yourself which made you better, maybe you were vindicated, maybe you were elated, maybe you saw that you can make a darn good record with ten tracks recorded live in one take with no separation and a questionable listening situation, in front of an audience who expects out-loud explanations on every mic positioning move, maybe you realized this stuff is hard... That's the point. The prizes are the cherry on top if you get them. 16 of you will and the mixes will be great at the very least. Hopefully better than mine which was done in the worse possible conditions.

Third. It does not matter (I must be getting old, please humor me). If you did it only for the prizes, I hope you get a prize or you missed the point.

Fourth. Our crew is badass. They know what we stand for or they do not work for us. We have a certain aesthetic, which is why our sponsors work with us and are so generous. It's open and democratic but it's rigorous and unwavering: If we feel something listening to your work, you're doing good. This is music after all, we are supposed to feel things. (Pain is not one of the feelings we are looking for, by the way. At least not for the Liza Colby Sound.)

Fifth. We're looking at almost 3000 mixes of the same song. You guessed it, I won't personally listen to all of them, I'd rather kill myself. That said, a vast majority of the mixes I have heard so far are exactly what I expected: wonderful and promising efforts at making a good sounding record that still need practice and more time honing the skills before being ready for primetime. All of which is very easy to tell and weeds out an impressively high amount of mixes out of the ~3K.

Sixth, we have a system. It works great. We have refined it with our internal pureMix.net contests for two years now. It's set up to make sure that it's as fair as possible. It involves spreadsheets, a 5 point rating system, blind listening, multiple passes on the top rounds and a serious dose of geekery. Our crew will handle the front lines and I'll listen, carefully, to scary amount of you guys' work. If only out of respect for the energy you put in. It'll probably eat a week of my life but that's ok. In the end, 16 of the best mixes will win something. For the others, we'll do it again next year, if this proves to be a globally positive experience for everyone, of course.

In closing, and very honestly, we did not expect this many entries. Our worry is not whether we can do it, it's whether we can do it IN TIME. If we fell we cannot listen fairly to everything in time for Gearfest 2013, we'll have to delay the winner's announcement deadline. And many people will be upset. And in the end it...well, you know what I mean, what really matters is we all learn to make better sounding records with the tools we have.

Thanks for playing with us.