Hard to Cook

Michael Valeanu

Fab Dupont's mix (mastered version)

I met Michael while producing the Cyrille Aimée record. He was one of the 3 'guitar heroes' on 'It's a good day' (Check it out, it's worth a moment of your time). A few months later Michael asked me to mix his solo record and I just had to say yes.
The personel, as they write on the back of jazz records, is Michael Valeanu on guitar, Jake Goldbas on drums and Jake Sherman on organ. The record was tracked 100% live except for the couple guitar layers you'll see towards the end of the song. This song will probably make you want to go back and practice your instrument, I know it did that for me.

The whole album was tracked in one day at Acoustic Recording in Brooklyn by Michael Brorby. He did a great job as you'll hear on the raw tracks. It seems easy, but it's not. Most live records I receive have major problems to fix at the mix stage. This one was fun to work on because someone with vision did the tracking job. Which is not to say that it'll be easy to mix this. The very nature of the instrumentation will keep you on your toes. Let's talk after you spend some time making that organ bass feel steady.

There are many challenges to this track. I mixed the whole album in one day with a morning of recalls a few weeks later. That's the challenge on Jazz records. Speed. You don't have to Blitz-Mix this, that's the joy of Zelab. Take your time, enjoy the playing and the space and keep it real yo, as they say in Hip-Hop.

Submissions

Winners

After much deliberation, here are the 3 winners we picked from the list.

#1 - Congrats to Fidelis who won an Pro Tools 11 License.

#2 - Congrats to Marco Koch who won a Pro Tools 11 License.

#3 - Congrats to urbanstudio who won a Pro Tools 11 License.