much too much

[pauli]

good golly, this was really hard! what a great song I played guitar in a jazz combo like this in high school, so I was naturally drawn to this excellent tune, but I fear I haven't done it justice. obviously there's an experience obstacle with live recordings, and I can't seem to get the balance between the room and close mics. all of the bleed introduces overlapping horns which create a cumulative effect during the peaky sections :| I can't seem to tame it, even with automation and compression! killing the bass bleed was easy with filters, but the horn bleeds are killing me... I can't seem to get the rhythm section and vocals at a proper balance without either compressing the life out of the horns, bring them way down, or clipping the peaks.

in this version I've put a peak catching limiter on the the room track, as well as subduing the bottom, extreme top, and 2k to 4k range to allow the close mics to provide that information, but I'm still getting that nasty sounding, hollow snare/ride echo. I did my best to tame the brightness in the brass and drums, but I'm questioning that decision.

and once again, the vocals either sound too present/loud or get washed away by the horns, even with automation and the closest I could get to matching the room mics ambience.

experienced mixers of the discussion board, please beat me to a pulp! brutal honesty here, I know it's bad, but I can't seem to figure out how to fix it!

[Voelund]

Havent tried this one yet but I think you are a tough judge on yourself. It sounds ok to me, just some small lvl thngs and audible compression.
I think the rhythm group, especially piano and guitar are too big and sound close miked. The challenge is creatin illusions with what you have at hand. I love a roomy big band soun and bleed in that situation is hard to avoid.
Would it be possible pannin the trumpets, saxes, trombones so they have each their space in stereo field or does the bleed make that hard. Maybe just one of the can be separated from the rest, then try visualise the band and create an illusion with pan, rhythm group closer together and try a shelvin locut on piano and guitar to make it blend more with the horns. I miss the 4-5 k nastynes from the trumpets a bit, but it could be in the bleed you try to kill
Anyway Im tired but it sounds much better to me than your words suggest.

Singer could be a tad less lvl.

[pauli]

thanks for the listen! I'll give your tips a shot and see what happens.

[thedon]

Hi Pauli

Sounds like a pretty well balanced sounding mix !

I had a look at my multi tracks as requested and I didn't use any compression on the brass mics and used the combination of the bleed on all mics to get a bigger sound and boosted the top end , had to do some sharp parametric cuts to sax 1 at 8.6 and 4.5 k to tame the ride cymbal bleed, I did pan the trumpets full left and right and panned the saxes slightly a stereo delay on all brass and also used a harmonic exciter !

[bmullen]

This is a tough mix because of all the bleed through. I agree with the others that you have gotten off to a good start with it. Don't be afraid to allow this style to be more dynamic in range than most others on this site, ie. the trumpets.

[pauli]

thanks all for the advice and encouragement! compression is still a bit of a tough subject for me, so I'll try and be a little more discriminating in when and how I use it.

[Voelund]

Been workin on this one today, real fun, I was the playin teacher in the rhythm group of the music school bigband many years ago and changed between the drummers seat, the guitar bas or piano if a student were missin. ... Brings back memories this one :-)
What you miss is clearly the room tracks, they sound beautiful. onna master my mix and give it a listen if you have the time.

[Pedaling Prince]

good golly, this was really hard!

So you're saying it's much too much...?

Seriously, though, I agree with Voelund about you being way too hard on yourself on this one. This actually sounded pretty good. The only thing that didn't work IMHO is the aforementioned compression. IMHO audible compression should never be used on purely acoustic recordings like this; these types of recordings scream for a more "natural" sound. If you took out all the compressors and relied on automation alone to let that vocal out (maybe some gentle compression on the vocal alone would help keep it out front) you'd have a much smoother mix. And don't worry if the vocal gets buried once in a while; that happens in live performances and will only add authenticity. Just make sure that the parts getting buried are parts where she's singing words the audience has already heard earlier in the song; that way loss of intelligibility isn't an issue.

I'm not a big fan of big band music, to be honest, so I'd never done this mix. Once again, though, to properly judge yours I felt I needed to do it. So I did, and I'm going to go post it right now for you to check out. I'll also talk a little in the posting about how I addressed the unique problems created by all the mic spill.