{"id":7740,"date":"2012-04-06T14:37:01","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T18:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/?p=7740"},"modified":"2012-04-06T14:37:01","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T18:37:01","slug":"sonar-x1-for-the-win-interview-with-the-mixfest-competition-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/2012\/04\/06\/sonar-x1-for-the-win-interview-with-the-mixfest-competition-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"SONAR X1 for the win!  Interview with the MixFest Competition Winner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alex Niedt (pronounced &#8220;neet&#8221;) is a Kansas City recording artist, producer, and mix engineer whose releases include the <em>Don\u2019t Forget To Tip Your Bartender<\/em> and <em>Song To The Siren<\/em> EPs and the Lex Luger-produced single \u201cHold Me Down\u201d.\u00a0 In early 2012, Niedt won the MixFest Competition, hosted and judged by Grammy-winning mix engineer Dave Pensado, and appeared on the 52nd episode of Pensado&#8217;s Place.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/bwnolaughyA.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-7822\" title=\"Alex\" src=\"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/bwnolaughyA-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Pedal to the Metal &#8211; winning mix by Alex Niedt<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F32110495&amp;show_artwork=true\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em><strong><!--more-->Tara:<\/strong> Can you give us some information about your musical background and what prompted you to become a musician?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex<\/strong>: I grew up in a highly musical, highly artistic environment.\u00a0 My father\u2019s life-long profession has been the classical guitar.\u00a0 My mother was a ballerina.\u00a0 Beautiful music was in the air for hours every day from the time I was born.<\/p>\n<p>I started playing the electric guitar in first grade, refusing to actually take lessons from my father, then picked up the electric bass, drums, piano, and steel and nylon-string acoustic guitars.\u00a0 In fourth grade, I started the violin, which is the one instrument for which I\u2019ve truly taken lessons. I\u2019m relatively new to the engineering\/mixing world, which I entered out of necessity, wanting to record the music I was writing.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Tara<\/strong>: Can you explain a bit about what you did to mix the song \u201cPedal to the Metal\u201d for the competition?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> The session was a well-organized Pro Tools session, and the first thing I did was dump it into Sonar X1.\u00a0 I organized the tracks into folders:\u00a0 Drums, Synth\/Keys, Guitars, Vocals.\u00a0 Track cleaning came next, checking for pops, clicks, noise, etc.\u00a0 Listening through the song, I decided what element should be the focal point in each section \u2013 what was important when \u2013 and what was unnecessary and begging for deletion.<\/p>\n<p>In the final mix, I used a lot of automation to bring the important elements to the foreground when they needed to shine and tuck them back when they didn\u2019t.\u00a0 The song called for excitement and energy, so I really wanted things to move.<\/p>\n<p>I replaced the kicks and snap with my own samples via Slate Trigger, and moved some of the synth elements out of the center with tools like Waves Center and S1.\u00a0 One of the most important things I did was remove some 808 kick occurrences when they clashed with the synth bass.\u00a0 I made sure the replacement kicks and synth bass were strong enough in the low end that the 808 kicks were not missed in those sections.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing I\u2019ll touch on is vocal consistently.\u00a0 The many different sections of leads and backgrounds in this song carried different amounts of sibilance.\u00a0 The vocals really came together when I evened out this sibilance with a combination of Waves RDeEsser and clip gain on each vocal track.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Tara:<\/strong> Did you use another DAW before SONAR?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> I started with a Teac tape machine!\u00a0\u00a0 My first DAW was Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, and I\u2019ve had every version of Sonar since.\u00a0 I also own Pro Tools and Reaper, and have \u201cdabbled\u201d in others.\u00a0 There are things I enjoy about each DAW I come across, and they all have their short-comings (some more than others), but there\u2019s no platform I\u2019d rather use to create music than Sonar.\u00a0\u00a0 And I love the fact that I\u2019ve seen some of my feature requests implemented in the X1 updates.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Tara:<\/strong> What are a few of the features in SONAR X1 that you could not live without?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> Fully customizable key bindings:\u00a0 I customize all my bindings from scratch, using a reference chart I made to continually see what could be switched around for more logical mental grouping.\u00a0 This alone makes my speed in Sonar much quicker than in Pro Tools.<\/p>\n<p>Searchable<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cakewalk.com\/products\/SONAR\/X1-Producer\/feature.aspx\/Skylight-User-Interface\"> browser<\/a>:\u00a0 There is nothing more annoying than searching through long lists of plug-ins to find the one you want.\u00a0 In X1, I can type \u201cTri\u201d and there\u2019s my Softube Trident A-Range, ready to be dragged wherever I want it!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cakewalk.com\/Products\/SONAR\/X1-Producer\/about.aspx\/ProChannel\">Bus Architecture<\/a>:\u00a0 After using other DAWs, it\u2019s always nice to return home to Sonar\u2019s user-friendly bus architecture, and I love X1\u2019s additional ability to ALT+Click a bus to select everything routed to it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cakewalk.com\/products\/SONAR\/X1-Producer\/feature.aspx\/Smart-Tools\">Smart Tool<\/a>:\u00a0 Not all smart tools are created equal.\u00a0 I\u2019ve used DAWs whose smart tools aren\u2019t smart enough to apply to everything, and I\u2019m left having to select other tools to get the job done.\u00a0 The less I have to think about what tool to select, the more I can concentrate on the music.\u00a0 In X1, the smart tool is all I ever need.\u00a0 It makes Sonar\u2019s Piano Roll workflow even better, too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cakewalk.com\/Products\/SONAR\/X1-Producer\/feature.aspx\/Active-Controller-Technology\">ACT<\/a>:\u00a0 I absolutely love controlling my faders, pan knobs, and all plug-in parameters via my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roland.com\/products\/en\/A-500PRO\/\">Roland A-500 Pro<\/a>, and ACT makes it so incredibly easy to map things however I\u2019d like.\u00a0 The integration between DAW and controller is fantastic.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Tara:<\/strong> Thank you so much for walking us through this and congratulations again on your win! Any final thoughts?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> Since the contest win, people have often asked me what they should buy if they\u2019d like to get closer to my mixes.\u00a0 The funny thing is most of them have as much or more equipment, plug-ins, etc than I do.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need a lot of stuff.\u00a0 Learn to be great with what you have.<\/p>\n<p>You can check out more of <a href=\"http:\/\/alexniedt.bandcamp.com\/\">Alex&#8217;s music<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, if you want to try SONAR X1 Producer, you can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cakewalk.com\/products\/sonar\/web-trial.aspx\">download a free trial version<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alex Niedt (pronounced &#8220;neet&#8221;) is a Kansas City recording artist, producer, and mix engineer whose releases include the Don\u2019t Forget To Tip Your Bartender and Song To The Siren EPs and the Lex Luger-produced single \u201cHold Me Down\u201d.\u00a0 In early 2012, Niedt won the MixFest Competition, hosted and judged by Grammy-winning mix engineer Dave Pensado, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/2012\/04\/06\/sonar-x1-for-the-win-interview-with-the-mixfest-competition-winner\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;SONAR X1 for the win!  Interview with the MixFest Competition Winner&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1591,49,1],"tags":[55,12,122,123,94,1440],"class_list":["post-7740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-blogger","category-sonar","category-uncategorized","tag-artist-news","tag-cakewalk","tag-producer","tag-production","tag-recording","tag-sonar-x1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}