'Cur An Long Ag Seol - Olli H

[Pedaling Prince]

What a nice song and relaxed playing! And especially I liked the singing. I think I must study irish music more.

I was thinking the same thing but for different reasons.

I'm from Sydney, Nova Scotia which is situated on eastern Cape Breton Island. We have a strong Celtic tradition here; if you ever go down to the waterfront to see the 17 meter tall Ceilidh Fiddle you'll have no doubt just how much Celtic music is a part of our culture. As a result, the Gaelic language is also a big part of our culture; The Cape Breton Gaelic College is world renowned for the promotion of Gaelic culture. Irish and Gaelic are part of the same language family so they sound very similar on casual listen; I love the sound of the language, and listening to Mr. Reilly's performance made me feel like I was listening to an old Gaelic tune. It just made me feel right at home. And now that I know Irish and Gaelic sound so much alike (they're part of the same language family I found out) I too would like to find out more about Irish music and culture.

When I begin with this song, I thought it would be quick job, but it ended up to be very difficult for me to mix. So, at least to me it was very good practice.

I had the same experience on Secretariat's "Borderline." And this song, to a lesser extent.

Main difficulties to me were:
- I had no idea what to do with that drum. When I brought the drum in, it somehow fooled me to think that the bass sound is compressed.

It was an unusual drum to say the least. I usually begin my process by using stock plugins then sweeten them to the sound I'm looking for, but there was no plugin for this particular kind of drum; I pretty much dropped it into the mix as it was and, fortunately, it played pretty nice with the other tracks once everything was balanced and EQed.

- I wanted to bring up those nice bass fills, but they also brought some nervousness. For some reason it was very difficult to preserve the acoustic sound of the bass and at the same time make it audible.

Yeah. You were the one who suggested I use compression to smooth that out, something I generally prefer to avoid on acoustic instruments, but I tried it and I think it helped. I've got my revised mix posted if you'd like to pop over and take a listen.

- to establish the right kind of groove I would have wanted to use more compression with guitar and mandoline, but they were probably over compressed already.

In my mix I did, in fact, use a little gentle compression on the guitars but I left the mandolins alone.

I didn't quite reach the sound the song would have deserved.

I disagree; you did a wonderful job here. And that's coming from a guy who grew up where this kind of music is a big part of his culture so I know what I'm talking about. I can't see any way to improve what you've got here. Well done!