It was live, so get on your jive!

[Marty]

Lots of clip editing, gates, and parallel compression and saturation. One snare sample. It was recorded live and there is a lot of bleed, especially in one of BGVs. Oh, and a lot of sidechain ducking to deal with unpleasing bleed. Mindset was a live presentation, so used some of the bleed for ambience.
Around -11 LUFS.
Thought's?

[Dangerous]

I like it Marty,  Sounds great! Nice balance, clarity and vibe.

[Marty]

I like it Marty,  Sounds great! Nice balance, clarity and vibe.

Thanks. In all honesty, I'm not super happy with the mandolin. The mic provided was useless (too much bleed), so I used the DI. I ran it through a dozen amp sims until I found one that was the most pleasing (Slate TH-U). If it was a client project, I would have re-amped through a cabinet in the studio -- something mid-rangy and a bit dark, to have a better choice.

[mikej]

Hi!

For me I don't quite seem to be able to jive, as I feel you've perhaps lost a lot of what makes it live...

I feel you've lost a lot of that certain something that makes a live recording great. The sense of space and the blurred edges that blend everything togther to make a mix, as opposed to it sounding like a collection of individually edited parts. To me the drums sound just a bit too heavy, and the lead vocal just a bit too thin by contrast to the rest of the band.

Cheers!

[Marty]

It's not really live. Recorded live, yes -- in a studio, not a concert hall. There is no audience. There's no claps, yells, or wolf-whistles like a concert. There's no audience mics.
When you use word like blurred and individually edited parts, you are saying that it's too clean, too surgical perhaps. There is a lot of bleed and that's what makes a live studio recording special. I kept a lot of that in there. My goal was to make it sound like a concert, from an audience perspective. When I listen to the mix, that's the emotion it conveys.
Perhaps the drums could come down a db and the vocals could use a slight bump in the low mids -- I'm not saying you are wrong there. But whatever "certain something" you are referring to is somewhat arcane.

[mikej]

Hi!

Sorry, I didn't think I was being particularly arcane.

Yes. It's a folk band recorded playing together live in the studio. Between your buildup, and Dangerous' comment, I suppose I was expecting to hear a great mix that conveyed exactly that. I wasn't feeling that from this mix, so I thought I'd post my alternative opinion.

I could be wrong, but I recall the live vocals, just as an example, blended together and interacted really quite well precisely because they were recorded close together live in one room. For me that was what was special about this session.

So yes, I just felt the drums perhaps a bit heavy for the genre and with the wide panning and separation of each part here, it felt to me more like a collection of separate parts as opposed to a mix and I feel I lose that sense of blend, so to speak, for example, the vocals blending together.

Obviously you had a different goal in mind and wanted to convey something different here. I just felt it was perhaps a bit of a shame to try and turn it in to something else, which is what I meant by 'losing that certain something'. That was all.

Cheers!