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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: As befits a multitrack showcasing a mic manufacturer's products, there's rather more multi-miking on this project than some, which makes it a good one for tonal experimentation.
    • The drums have stereo overhead mics, four different mono room mics, and close mics for kick (x2) snare (x3!) hi-hat, and three toms.
    • The bass guitar is provided as a simple DI recording.
    • The piano has been captured with two different stereo mic pairs and a mono room mic, while each of the two acoustic-guitar parts was recorded with four mics at once.
    • Four close mics were used for the electric guitar solo, as well as an additional room mic.
    • The male lead and female backing vocal were both recorded simultaneously (so there's some spill between them) and each singer had four mics pointed at them.
    • 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:
    • There's quite a lot of sympathetic ringing on the tom close mics, and probably a fair bit more than you'll want.
    • There's a lot of uncorrellated stereo information in the piano recordings, so you need to be alert to the possibility of mono-compatibility problems.
    • The timing seems pretty loose on this track, which may make it difficult to get the balance to feel stable, even if you automate to deal with some of the wide internal dynamics on some of the tracks.
    • Fitting a well-driven electric-guitar into an acoustic track like this may cause problems, not least in terms of achieving a satisfactory sense of blend/cohesion to the whole ensemble.
  • 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 use roughly half of them if I were mixing this track.
    • Don't necessarily just hard-gate the spill on the toms, because a little of that sympathetic resonance can actually help tie the kit together a bit in more acoustic styles like this.
    • I'd probably avoid panning those piano-mic pairs to the stereo extremes, because they really suffer in mono. Alternatively, try using both of the 'left' piano mic tracks as a stereo pair, or both of the 'right' ones -- the raw sound might perhaps not seem as promising, but the phase-match appears to be a lot better, so the tone should translate better to mono.
    • Careful trying to mix the different vocal mics. In my experience that tends to cause more phasing problems than it's worth if the singers are moving around at all (which they usually are).

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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Messages In This Thread
About This Multitrack - by Mike Senior - 24-04-2012, 08:58 PM