How We Mix a Live Session From One Take
A live session is a band playing a song all the way through, together, in one room, captured in one take with no overdubs. Mixing one is the hardest version of the mixing job, because every microphone hears every instrument and nothing can be fixed on its own track. It is also the thing Tapetown is known for. For fifteen years we have recorded and mixed bands this way in Aarhus, Denmark, from Iceage and The Murder Capital to Danish artists on festival stages, and the Live at Tapetown archive has passed three million views on YouTube.
This is how we think about mixing a single take, and why it matters even if your own record was tracked one instrument at a time.
What makes a live session different to mix
In a normal studio record, the snare lives on the snare track. In a live session the snare is also in the vocal mic, the guitar mics, the overheads and the room. That is bleed, and it is the whole character of the thing. You can't pull the snare down without pulling half the room down with it. You can't retune the singer without the cymbals bending along with the correction. You can't move the bass player's late note, because the late note is in six microphones.
So a live mix is not a sequence of repairs. It is a set of decisions about one performance that already happened. Either the take holds or it doesn't. Our job is to make it hold on a laptop speaker, in earbuds on a train and on a big system, without changing what it was.
The room is the picture
The room microphones are the closest thing to what you would have heard standing there. We start from them. The close mics add detail and focus to a picture the room already painted, not the other way round. Build a live mix from the close mics outwards and it sounds like a studio record with a problem. Build it from the room inwards and it sounds like a band.
Bleed is not the enemy
The reflex from studio mixing is to gate, cut and isolate. On a live take that is how you end up with a thin, nervous mix where the drums vanish every time a gate closes. We leave the bleed in and deal with what it does. A snare that is too bright in the vocal mic gets a small cut on the vocal, not a gate. Two mics that argue with each other get lined up in time until they agree. Most of the work is in the balance, and most of the balance happens in the first hour.
Decide what the take is about
Every good take has one thing that makes it worth keeping. Sometimes it is the singer leaning into a line. Sometimes it is the drummer pushing the last chorus harder than he did in rehearsal. Once we know what that is, the mix has a direction. Everything serves it, and anything that competes with it goes down. Without that decision you end up turning everything up until it is all equally loud, which is exactly how a live recording starts to sound like a rehearsal tape.
What we won't do to a live take
We don't replace a live drum kit with samples. We don't tune a vocal onto a grid, because on a live take you would hear the whole room warp with it. We don't limit the mix until the quiet parts are as loud as the loud parts, because the difference between them is the performance. None of this is a rule against tools. It is a rule against making a live band sound like it was assembled.
Four sessions, four different rooms
Iceage, Tapetown Sessions. A loud band in our studio. Live session, recorded and mixed by us. Watch it here.
The Murder Capital, For Everything. Live session at Tapetown, recorded and mixed by us. Watch it here.
Rigmor, full performance live on KEXP at SPOT Festival 2022. A quieter set on a public radio stage. Mixed by Tapetown for KEXP. Watch it here.
Angående Mig, live at Musikhuset x GRIM. A concert recording in a venue. Recorded and mixed by us. Watch it here.
A loud band in a small room and a quiet one on a radio stage are the same problem. Keep the performance, lose nothing.
What to send us if you have a live recording
If you recorded a gig, a rehearsal or a session somewhere else, send us every channel as a separate WAV file from the same start point, including the room or audience mics even if you think they sound bad. Tell us which take you want and what you love about it. If there is a rough balance you already like, send that too. It tells us more than a paragraph of description.
Why this matters for your studio record
Most records we mix now arrive as stems, recorded one part at a time, often at home. The judgement is the same. The mix still has to decide what the song is about. It still has to keep the moment the band played something they could not play twice. And it still has to resist polishing the song into something safer than it is. After fifteen years of mixing takes that can't be fixed, we are in no hurry to fix the ones that can. We would rather find out why they work. If you are weighing up who should mix your record, we wrote about how to choose a mixing engineer for alternative music, and about why pop mixing templates ruin indie rock.
Send us a rough mix
We mix and master online for bands all over the world. Send a rough mix or a link and tell us what you love about it. Gustav reads every message and replies himself, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it. Start on our mixing page.
Frequently asked questions
What is a live session in music?
A live session is a recording of a band or artist performing a song all the way through, together, usually filmed, with no overdubs or edits between parts. Tapetown in Aarhus, Denmark, has recorded and mixed live sessions for fifteen years, with artists including Iceage and The Murder Capital.
Can you fix mistakes in a live session recording?
Only a little. Every microphone picks up every instrument, so you cannot edit or retune one part without affecting the others. That is why choosing the right take matters more than anything done in the mix.
How do you deal with bleed when mixing a live recording?
Keep it and work with it. Gating or cutting bleed makes a live mix thin and nervous. Build the balance from the room microphones inward, line the microphones up in time, and use small EQ moves where one instrument is too loud in another instrument's mic.
Who mixes the Tapetown live sessions?
Tapetown records and mixes the sessions filmed at the studio. For KEXP's recording of Rigmor at SPOT Festival 2022, Tapetown did the mix.
Can Tapetown mix a live recording I made somewhere else?
Yes. Tapetown mixes and masters online, so you can send multitracks from a gig, a rehearsal room or a session. We listen first and tell you honestly whether we are a good fit.
