About This Multitrack

[Mike Senior]

You can find the multitrack files for this project in the 'Mixing Secrets' Free Multitrack Download Library.

Before posting a mix, please read The Three Commandments!
Please post your mix as a new thread, rather than as a reply to this sticky.

Here's some more project info you might find useful:

• About The Raw Multitracks: As befits a multitrack showcasing a mic manufacturer's products, there's more multi-miking on this project than some, which makes it a good one for tonal experimentation.
  • The drum close-mic setup is pretty standard, featuring close mics for kick (in, out), snare (over, under) and two toms, except that you get two different overhead stereo pairs to play with.
    
  • Both the acoustic and electric guitar overdubs provide three mic choices.
    
  • There are recorded DI feeds for both the acoustic guitar overdub and the bass, and there's also a mic on the bass amp.
    
  • The piano was captured with close and distant spaced stereo mic pairs.
    
  • The lead vocal overdubs were captured with four different mics at once, and the female backing vocal with two.
    
  • In addition to these tracks, there are three scratch parts recorded during the initial tracking: lead vocal, backing vocal, and acoustic guitar DI.
    
  • For more information about the performers and some photos of the recording sessions, check out this page on the Telefunken site.
    

• Challenges You're Likely To Face:
  • With so much multi-miking going on, phase/polarity issues can easily catch you out if you're not careful.
    
  • The close piano mic pair has some quite strong out-of-phase components, so you need to take care with mono compatibility if you pan them wide. The close mics also have quite a dull tonality overall, so may need some stiff EQ'ing if you fancy a clearer tone.
    
  • The snare top mic has caught quite a strong drum resonance that doesn't seem to fit the key of the song. Whether that's a problem is largely a question of taste, though...
    
  • Getting male and female vocals to sit in the same track can be a tricky thing, especially when they also sing together, as in this case. A little upper mid-range rasp in Andrew's voice may also prove difficult to balance, I suspect, especially if you happen to chose a vocal mic that emphasises it.
    

• Some Mixing Tips: Although this isn't a mix I've attempted myself, here are some suggestions that come to mind:
  • Just because you've got all those mic signals available, that doesn't mean you have to use them all! For what it's worth, I reckon I'd probably only use a couple of the guitar mics in each case, and probably only a single vocal mic for each singer.
    
  • Experimenting with the piano close mics, I took about 5dB out at 300Hz and pulled the whole top half of the spectrum up by 6dB or so before they began to sound in the right ball-park for me tonally.
    
  • I'd be tempted to bring in the scratch acoustic DI (possibly reamped in some way) as a means of filling out the texture at selected moments, perhaps just for the choruses.
    
  • For Andrew's lead vocal, I think I'd probably put some EQ into the compressor side-chain to help rein in the touch of 'rasp' in his voice around 4-5kHz.
    

If you have any other general questions about this multitrack, just reply to this post and I'll see what I can do.