Howdy all

I love Brent Mason's Country Ballad playin' and I wanted to capture some of it in an instrumental tune. But it proved to be more difficult (for me at least as an amateur) while mixing than I anticipated at first. The guitar solo varies in loudness and I wanted to preserve these natural dynamics while taming some of the fast transients on the attack on higher notes.

There are quite a number of plug-ins on the single tracks, mainly compressors, delays and tape emulations. On the 2bus I deployed (lightly) a master-compressor and a master tape emulation and a second final brickwall limiter set to -0.3 db which should be enough headroom to catch any intersample peaks and leave some space for converting wav to mp3 (192 kBit/sec in this instance).

I also always want to check the arrangements for mono compatibility. This is quite important so I'm told, but it doesn't make things easyier when creating a wide stereo field with one instrument or an instrument group (there's some slight pseudo stereo on the guitar and pedal steel).

I'm in a somewhat difficult mixing environment (no, not bedroom - but dining room table) with terrible accoustics. As usual, it's work in progress..

Daniel

http://www.songramp.com/mod/mps/srplayer.php?type=hipriv&trackid=58280

Title: Eternal Dream
Key=G , Tempo 65
Style is _BRSOLCB.STY (CountryBallad BrentGtSolo [65RS])
RealTracks in style: 366:Bass, Electric, Country Ev 065
RealTracks in song: 1538:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm PopBelieveHeld Ev16 065
RealTracks in style: ~368:Guitar, Acoustic, Strumming Ev 065
RealTracks in style: 1513:Guitar, Electric, Soloist CountryBrent Ev 065
RealTracks in song: ~688:Organ, B3, Background Pop Ev 065
RealTracks in song: ~369:Pedal Steel, Background Ev 065
RealTracks in song: 1671:Pedal Steel, Soloist CountryPaul Ev 60
RealDrums in style: NashvilleEven8^2-a:Sidestick, HiHat , b:Snare, HiHat

BIAB 2012 (ASIO) on Vista 32, Dual-Core 2.0Ghz with 4GB Memory. Main DAW is Samplitude (11 & ProX) and I like Spaghetti. BTW: Today is a good Day to have a Good Day.