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About This Multitrack
#1
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: This is a multitrack of a whole band recording at once, although clearly a certain amount of baffling and isolation has been used so that spill is, for the most part, minimised -- the main exception being the bass, which has masses of drum spill on it. The drum setup comprises stereo overheads and close mics for kick (x2) snare, hi-hat, and three toms. The bass, mandolin/violin, and dobro parts have two mics each, while the piano has both XY and spaced stereo pairs. 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:
    • The bass has so much drum spill on it, you might as well treat it as another room mic. Plus it has a very pronounced low-end resonance, perhaps from a room mode, or else from the nature of the instrument used. There's also not very much in the way of midrange definition on the recording, which means that it's not easy to get the melodic nature of the line to cut through in the midrange without bringing up a wash of woolly-sounding drum spill.
    • Close-miked mandolin and dobro can be tricky instruments to mix, because of their wide dynamic range and potential for sharp transients.
    • Either the mandolin/violin player was drying their hair, or else one of the mics malfunctioned mid-take. Smile
    • The spaced stereo piano mic array has captured a lot of out-of-phase information, and suffers a big level hit in mono -- although tonally it doesn't seem to suffer too badly from phase-cancellation in the critical midrange frequencies.
  • Some Mixing Tips: I had a little play with this multitrack for an hour or so in order to get a better handle on how it worked, and here are some suggestions I'd make based on that:
    • There's a strong snare resonance at 478Hz that you may want to dip if you're looking for more overall snare tone from the close mic.
    • A combination of threshold-independent transient/sustain processing and parallel compression would be my first instinct for tackling the dobro and mandolin parts.
    • Given the lack of mono-compatibility of the spaced piano-mic pair, I'd be tempted to use them at a lower level than the XY pair, maybe 10dB down. I'd also experiment with some phase rotation between the pairs here, because neither of the basic polarity-switch settings seemed to work particularly well -- one sounds a bit woolly in mono, and the other seriously comprimises the low end.

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