Cur An Long Ag Seol - Juraj's mix

[The_Metallurgist]

I can't stop now.

good attitude

and a much better mix...it's coming along nicely. your work on the bass has paid dividends too!

i'd warm the mix up a bit, go for a cozy Irish bar kinda ambiance (low reflections because of the carpets and decor...people too make great absorbers!). you have an aircraft hanger on the vocal which needs re-aligning to something a bit more down-to-earth, sort of thing? think of something that will give a smaller room feel (early reflections) and blend to suite the depth of his vocal in the stereo field relative to the band. i think ambiance is important here (it's important everywhere, eh?), but this vocal has to sound "right" and an appropriate ambiance will do wonders to your presentation here.

reverb can be a difficult call to make. i've gone through a few monitors over time, and each has told me a different perspective. and of course, if the monitors don't quite deliver it (it's a tweater thing and phase alignment primarily and a few thousand other things on top), then you can't make an informed judgement on the ambiance balance. check your mixes over gear with small speakers and see how your mixes translate, they will be quite critical. the general rule for a reverb, is if you can hear it when the instrument is soloed, it's probably too much - unless you are after a specific effect of course.

the warmer ambiance (a loss of bright reflections....roll off the hi-end of your reverb emu's, say), will also help tame the overly bright delivery of the strings generally. but it all depends on your vision really, and what you want your listeners to "feel" here.

i'm still getting the compression, and it's adding to the harshness of the mix. go wild, back all your compressors right off and push the fader up a bit. it should feel better. i don't know the kind of genre that appeals to you, or if you listen to rather a lot of mp3 instead of CD (tut, tut), but what you listen to and how you listen to it will dramatically impact on your mixing approach. something to be watchful of

i complement you on sticking with it. i'd recommend taking a break now and coming back later on and having another listen with a fresh perspective and you will spot things that you will have overlooked today. fresh ears are important.

good effort Juraj, you've brought the mix forward a long way since the original posting! cool.
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PS. the bleed of the acoustic in the mandolin mic needs careful attention. if the bleed isn't timed to the acoustic guitar, you will experience comb-filtering and a coloration of the acoustic guitar in addition to your EQ. it's especially important here because of the extent of the bleed, eh? sure, experiment with nudging the mandolin track (soloing both the acoustic and the mandolin so you can focus), and see how shifting one of them radically changes the perception of the acoustic overall.
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laters
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