Our Love Is Here to Stay-no compression,no eq,

[thedon]

This is a such a good recording ,thought i would post version 1 with no eq or compression or pluginns used on individual tracks,only 1 reverb on the master bus

Hey Don.....Brave decision to mix in the raw so to speak ...and I totally get it...In fact I'm glad you did just to see how it sounds.

Overall I think it sounds great.....having obsessed over every little setting of this mix....things i thought may not be great...sustain on piano and Sax presence...actually turned out OK.....lesson there for sure

when you say no EQ....does that mean no HP filters too?

I think lack of EQ is affecting the piano though....it does sound a bit dark...especially compared to Mikes ref. I know that the piano in "wayfaring" was dark and smoky but i think this mix can handle it slightly brighter .... but its certainly not a deal breaker

The only negative for me was your piano panning ..... and its mainly cos i cant place it with confidence....it feels on the left......with bass keys wide and treble keys central. But sometimes its sounds very mono...maybe my ears are trying to push the treble notes wide and pull the bass notes centrally....so its sounding a bit smeared...or maybe you converted to mono...

This means you've placed guitar right (understandable given your piano placement).....but the knock-on effect from the piano panning is that to me it feels a bit left/right sided...rather than an ensemble....

I think reversing the panning.... having piano right lets the treble exist out wide with bass notes more central which is more natural to our ears

Its only a small thing in the scheme of things i guess...and maybe I'm getting overly technical so take it with a pinch of salt...plus i listened in phones ... so that's probably exacerbating any effect (real or purely imagined on my behalf).

cheers

ps. love the vocal too

I mixed this at a friends place on my laptop with small cheep computer monitors to demonstrate how a basic daw works ,with no eq or hpf sounded good on them , lol ,Version 2 coming soon

Cheers !