Discussion Zone

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


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

• About The Raw Multitracks: This is a lovely characterful multitrack recorded at Tiny Telephone studios by renowned engineer Oz Fritz. The production is mostly based around a full-band recording featuring drums, upright bass, electric guitar, pedal steel, and scratch vocal.
  • The drum miking features stereo overheads, stereo room, two mono rooms, and close mics for kick (front, back), snare, hi-hat, and two toms.
    
  • There are two mics on the upright bass, and a DI feed has also been recorded.
    
  • The piano is miked in stereo.
    
  • The guitar line-up comprises the main electric and pedal steel parts and additional overdubs for acoustic guitar and another electric -- the latter dual-miked (close, distant).
    
  • The scratch vocal was later rerecorded as an overdub.
    

• Challenges You're Likely To Face: Although you've got great performances here, and lots of really engaging sounds, there are still some things to consider at mixdown.
  • There's a reasonable amount of spill between the drums, piano, bass, and scratch vocal particularly, so keep your ears open for unexpected knock-on effects of any processing you apply to just one instrument.
    
  • There's a lot of low-end rumble to the kick sound here, and while it's great to hear, you may need to work a bit to give it enough room in your mix, depending on what you do with some of the other parts.
    
  • It sounds like the drummer hits one of the tom mics at 2:42, so you might want to snip that out.
    
  • The overheads are very widely spread in stereo, which may cause problems if mono-compatibility is important to you.
    
  • The levels on the first bass mic in particular are quite uneven, with some notes really booming out.
    
  • Because of the spill (or lack of it!) setting the distance of each of the instruments and getting them to blend convincingly may require a bit of work.
    

• Some Mixing Tips: Although I've not mixed this particular track myself, here are some suggestions that come to mind:
  • I'm not sure you need the full overheads spread in stereo, so I'd probably pan the channels slightly inwards for a more representative transition into mono.
    
  • Because of the kick-drum's rolling LF, I'd high-pass filter a lot of the instruments here.
    
  • If you can't get a good bass sound using mostly the DI and second bass mic, I'd suggest putting in a fairly tight notch on the first bass mic around 71Hz, where the main resonant peak appears to be, and following that up with multi-band compression or dynamic EQ if there's still an unacceptable degree of level inconsistency.
    
  • If the lead vocal feels too upfront to you, then before reaching for effects, try shelving out a couple of decibels of the vocal spectrum's top octave with EQ.
    

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

I will also listen to any mixes posted here and post my comments from an artists point of view.

You should also listen to the original mix to get a sense of my vision of the song. THis will tell you what parts I thought were more important than others.

http://wesleymorgan.bandcamp.com/album/b...m-in-tulsa