Chill Justin. Take a deep breath. I'll do a mix friday sinse I have the day free.

Edited my previous post. Be happy to share eq/signal processing as well as a tuned vocal with everyone. But especially a fixed vocal wouldn't be fair for those that have already posted mixes. And there's still mixes to come...
Couple things; Editing Justin's puzzle was half the battle. Again, more songwriting than mixing. But those edits made mixing far more straight forward. With all the extra counterpoint to work with, didn't feel the need to use effects to make up for things missing. All because the tune's existing space became more effective/important.
'Course, the other half of Justin's puzzle is mixing. The conundrum is how to get kick/bass working together. Lessor of evils here... because of the composite drum track and {not picking on Justin's bass playing} clicky note stops in the bass line. Used cab emulations and spring reverb from Guitar Rig II on the electric. Liquid Mix's 1176 emulation with "all buttons in" on the lead vocals and a de-esser after {semi-successful}. Very little EQ on most else... mostly a few cuts just for cleaning. Sound of the acoustic is all compression.
Admit to using Waves linear multi-band and Renaissance Compressor on the L/R bus and in that order. Not for loud but for over all sound. Picking on my own stuff, that was only semi-successful too.

Thanks for the info Brent. I think you've demonstrated with great results that a few simple parts can be edited and mixed to form a rich listening experience. I'm curious about how you took the one vocal part and created the harmonies using melodyne. Under ideal circumstances would you have had the singer go in a track the harmonies or not necessarily. In this case you did a remarkable job as they didn't sound artificial to me in the way you blended them in. Can you comment more on this (e.g. did you raise or lower the pitch by 3rd or a 5th, did you just listen and do it note by note, how did you arrive at your choice of "chord" for the harmonies?) Also any comments about the placement and/or delay taps?

Okay, I give up. I can't keep mixing any longer on my employers dime. Here's what I came up with. I set a few extra limits on myself, so please be understanding with your comments. This was mixed on a work computer using whatever sound card it has. I've never used the DAW software before (it runs off of a flash drive). All plug-in's are freeware.
The monitors are these cheapy headphones I got with a CD player I bought 10years ago. If you've got actual speakers let me know how the bottom end came out! I think I like Brents mix better (based on the crappy headphones). He demonstrated the arrangment problems with the song and came up with creative solutions (plus he tuned the vocal). I, on the other hand just brutally hacked whole sections out, and mercilessly killed tracks, just to make it end sooner. I might have done better if I'd added some parts, but I don't think that would have gone over too well with my co-workers. Anyway, thanks for the challenge, it's fun to see what everyone comes up with. If nothing else I've got a better handle on the new DAW.

Cheers,
Peter

Thanks recorderguy, good to get another perspective and see what can be done on the average office PC with freeware. Some tracks seem distorted to me. Some of the edits don't make sense to me so if you have any thoughts to share, please do or if not that's ok too. Glad you found it a good learning experience. Keep up your training and learning.

Justin,
I wasn't sure if there was some distortion (like in the vocals) that's what high quality monitoring gets you! I can't claim any of the edits make a great deal of musical sense! I was just trying to cut the track down to size. I felt (feel) like the song lacked some structure and was too long (as others have noted). I think Brent did a really good job of giving it some form and keeping it interesting. Frankly I was just trying to make it go by a little faster, thus my hack job. Thanks for the challenge, it's always fun to see what folks come up with. If you decide to do some more I might be able to contribute some tracks.

Cheers,
Peter

Ahh... would much rather have the harmonies to work with Justin. Hate admitting to using Melodyne so much for jingles though, can pretty much look at the screen and shove notes around on the fly to put harmonies together. Unfortunately, Melodyne has no {what I'd call} good auto routine to create harmonies... faster to use your ear. Mostly a third above here but there's a fifth below too in the final answer-back line at the end of chorus #2.
Time wise, this tune took about an hour to fix up the lead vocal and create the harmony. Harmony takes a little longer because a nifty trick is yanking out a little pitch modulation {vibrato} and pitch drift, in places. With pitch drift, notes usually have to be retuned = more time {I always do that manually because double clicking the note doesn't always put it at the correct interval.} Then when shoving the harmony track back in PT {or thingy of choice}, with a very slight timing offset, the harmony doesn't sound so much like a lead vocal clone.
But for this tune I corrected the original lead vocal track beginning to end as was. Then also built the harmony from that to use all the way thru. As things went, used "Ctrl M" in PT to mute the harmony in places. That way it was simple to get back any harmony piece later. But as far as Melodyne's useful range, I think if you stay in what would be considered the vocalist's natural range, it's pretty close to undetectable in a mix.
The filtered vocal was an unhappy accident and yes, probably somewhat overused. Unhappy because once it was there in the first verse, the only way in heck it wouldn't be stupid was to continue on with it. So left the first as was, second time around added the third and third time used both parts two lines in a row. Again... fly by the seat of your pants, song writing/production tricks. For PT users, the sound is the probably all too familiar "cosmonaut voice" plugin

On your part Justin, there's really nothing here that doesn't sound good. Piano was a little strident but that's surely nothing to do with the recording. I mentioned the lowend being somewhat of a battle but that's just part of the hand dealt.
As far as the mix, I really don't think there's anything special here. If there is any difference, it's mostly song first. Then trying to make it sound big with acoustic guitar/vocals as opposed to what would usually be used for "big."
No matter what, hope it was as much fun for everyone as me.

Great response Brent, Thank you!

I guess I'm behind the times because I didn't realize melodyne has a plugin' version that integrates with Pro Tools and other DAWs. Here's the link. Pretty affordable too as plugins go - definately seems like a must-have plugin. Very cool.

For those like me who didn't know...
http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=plugin4&L=0

We could probably debate the tasteful/subtle uses of this tool versus more dramatic uses but hell, it sure does sound good.

great contest, i like it

1) Justin Arey Mix sounds over 7.5,
the audiophiles mix16, has a nice vibe also but dont like the snare reverb, too much reverb in the snare for me,
the fronk10's Mix 24 , vocal reverb at the end sounds similar vibe to a colds play song, but i dont like the drawback organ,
the recorderguys mix27 has a nice idea of muting the drums,
but i would not mute drums, becouse the snare intro sounds great, i feel like moving the drum track to preserve the snare intro+the guitar solo intro, but who knows, could lower the vibe energy level,
the others... no comment...

2) i downloaded the big file, but guitar track has pops, how could this be? its compressed, did you verified it when compressing it ? cant be download problem becouse rarsoft would tell wrong crc or something, must be the source file, can you check that please, pops in high freq. guitar track

uhmmm, listening the Justin Arey Mix also guitar pops can be heard, quiet but there are some

3) heres my "0 effort mix"
i felt to much stress making it, thats why i coudnt spend more time making it better, but i think its a nice song, vocals could sound better with a nicer mic or pre like at4060, rode nt-2 or mxl v?? + john hardy m-1+jensen or spl gainstaton1, millenia stt-1 , or a presonus mp80/20 with burrbrown moddification http://www.imjohn.com/PresonusJensenXfrmrs/TestsByOthers.htm or something,

overall i rate over 8.0 recording and music,
thats remebers me that im eager to purchase/hear those cd/dvd rom from 3daudioinc i, replica, pres in paradice , 3d pre cd vol 1&2, and the other cant remember
http://www.3daudioinc.com/3daudio_prelppix6.html
that remembers me that
i really like the Madonna - Confessions On A Dancefloor kind of sound
in the tour vocal goal was to be exacly like the studio, sennheiser condenser + focusrite liquid channel to replace the original vintage mic-pre,
http://www.focusrite.com/news/79
but i dont like the tour sound, sounds too blended with ambient/crowd mic
would be so nice to hear those dbx blue mic pres, vs. the focusrite liquid chnnel dbx blue replica vs. others
uhmmm,
i wanted to try those akai harmony vst plugins in those parts i felt solitary at the end, but im too lazy, too much stress for me

4) beware that i dont know much about this genere kind of music, im more into 70s, 80s disco & y2k electronic music, trance, electro, techno, house, progressive, etc...
i dont spend time listening your genere kind of music

5) listening other mixes vs. my mix, i feel that my "0 effort mix" sounds too much mono in the lead guitar and in the voice, like it needs like a arboretum hyperprism vocoder or a ring modulator or akai vst plugin, loud delays with filters or something,
i feel it needs more effort,
i feel sometimes its too dry, and also i feel my drums sounds to much in the back, i feel that my snare should be more like EWF 12 mix, like it needs a +6dB near 500hz or something, with a semi-narrow Q
anyway...

nice contest i like it, nice recording also,

justin,
why is brent's mix in bold?