Big Acoustic Sounding mix

[hcaulfield]

I'm mixing a song for a friend and they are going for a sound similar to the song below. The vocals and acoustic guitar have been recorded already, on pretty inexpensive equipment (not sure of the brand of mics, but they are condensers) so I have to work with what I have. I can't post anything to share, so it's gonna be tough to work with just by posts, but any trickery to get this big sound would be very helpful. If you need anymore info from me to better help, feel free to ask.



Preferably listen to the song with headphones to get the idea.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[mixsit]

Wow. The thing is, getting there could be as easy as some gentle eq and compression and mixing, or an uphill battle where it takes triple' the effort, with half of it doing 'damage control.
It will really depend on what you're given to work with.

I'd guess you'd just go for it, them maybe come back with what you get stumped with (if that's what happens.

 

[b00n]

Most of the atmosphere and quality of that recording is in the texture of the guitars and the voices.
If your musicians don't deliver up to par there's nothing you can do.

Main guitar is stereo and has some short room on it, as your hear after the finger squeaking,
that might be room mics. The bottom part is panned left. Some tasteful compression added here, but a great player to begin with.
Second guitar is more trebly and mono, panned hard right, to balance with the bottom of the main guitar, compressed.
Voices are completely dry (in respect to reverb) and very well executed. Careful with processing, though a touch of compression and EQ could help to bring outh the breathy texture, that the singers bring to the table in the first place.

Your reference track is a classic example for "don't mess it up!"-recordings.
I got the gut feeling that your own tracks may not be.
But this is impossible to tell without listening.

 

[RecordingMaster]

^^^What they said ^^^

All's I heard was a single acoustic guitar at the beginning recorded in stereo, not overly bright, but mic'ed fairly close. After that comes in what seems to be a mono guitar track panned pretty hard right. And then some voices with little to no effects or ambiance, also mic'ed fairly close in a drier space than the guitars were recorded.

The compression on the guitars sounds very smooth and unobtrusive, transparent. So try something like an LA2A emulation or something soft-knee or optical with conservative settings. The eq wasn't very hyped or overly bright on the entire track, so when eq'ing individual sources, try to keep the curves wide, musical and natural, unless you need narrow notches for cutting out problem frequencies you can't help, since you didn't record it.

Compression on the voices was maybe a tad faster than on the guitars because the voices sounded pretty up close the whole time, but it was still rather gently handled.

As far as effects the only thing I heard was a nice room ambiance on the guitars, and maybe a medium plate-style reverb for the tails. The vox sound like they are sent to that plate a a bit too but they are pretty damn dry. The only other effect I heard was a bit of creativity with the panning on the female supporting vox. At first you hear them slightly to the right, making it sound like she's sitting right next to the lead singer (and you can hear her guitar over there too). Then later it goes into the center when the rhythm excitement picks up a bit.

So that is what I am HEARING. It really didn't sound very "big" to me. Open? Sure, because there's not much there to fight. But everyone's take on describing a song's sound is different. Take whatever you will from the description of what "I" heard and use that to judge if you can achieve what I described they are doing, but with the material you have been handed. If the guitars sound small and thin, out of phase, etc, there's not much you can do to magically make them sound fuller or more upfront. Good news is, if that's all that was recorded, and if it was done poorly, then at least it won't be a huge deal for them to re-record the bad elements upon your recommendation. If they don't want to, hand them your mix with the best of your abilities and they will see magic is just a fantasy.