Mix Analysis 4

Artist: Gordon Lightfoot

Song: Beautiful

Album: Don Quixote

Year: 1972

Genre: Acoustic/Folk

Mixing Engineer/Mastering Engineer: Lee Herschberg

Producer: Lenny Waronker

Mixing/Mastering Studio: Amigo Studios in North Hollywood, California

Two other artists the engineer worked with: Randy Newman and Frank Sinatra

Levels

Guitar                        6

Guitar 2            7

Electric Guitar            7

Vocals                        8

Synthesizer             5

Pan

Guitar                        -3 and 3           

Guitar 2            -10

Electric Guitar 10

Vocals                        0

Synthesizer            -3 and 3

Time Code

0:00 Guitars 1,2; Electric Guitar

0:19 Vocals

1:49-2:06 Synthesizer

2:16-2:32 Synthesizer

2:58 Vocals End

3:07-3:20 Synthesizer

3:20 Guitars end

I like the many different guitars used in this song and the way Herschberg panned them.  Two of the guitars are panned to opposite sides, and it sounds like they are playing to each other and the listener in the middle. There is also a guitar panned to the middle with the vocals, which joins the other guitars together in the mix, so the listener doesn’t have to listen back and forth to the other guitars.  The vocals sound like they were recorded and mixed the same way as Randy Newman’s song, ‘Sail Away,’ giving the vocals a live sound that isn’t processed that much.  The vocals were probably mixed the same way as ‘Sail Away,’ where Herschberg would add only “a little bit on the top end and a little more than that on the mids and roll off a little on the bottom.  But that was about it,” to the vocals.   The synthesizer is very subtle and adds a nice touch to the mix and it doesn’t distract the listener from the song as a whole.