Reply To: Pre-Mixing

[Guido tum SudenKeymaster]

Hi Adam, good question,

depending on what I do, I have two to four stages.
When I work with students (age 13-15, who never played an instrument) tracking is very weird. We often have to record every single bar independently or single drum instruments independently. I will get huge comping stacks. I edit and reduce them. Quantizing is also done in the step. Sometimes the DAW isn't able to do that and I have to "Strip Silence" every single note and drag them to where they should be. When exporting, it's important to name the parts and export them to subfolders. I usually use "01-DRUMS", "02-PERCS", "03-BASS", …

I always put numbers in front of file names so they are sorted the way I want them. Same with "01-Kick In", "02-Kick out" etc. That way I never have to search for anything.

In the second stage I still have MIDI Data. The file name of the song will end with "(edit)". If I have patterns, I arrange them here. Vocal recording and then melodyning 😉 is also done here. I clean up everything at this stage, do fades, sometimes reduce breathing and so on. Colour coding is important at this stage, too.
In the end I export every single track, again into subfolders, named as above. I already use eqs and compressors before exporting and in case of amp emulations even some reverb or delays. I think of these tracks as something I would give to a professional mixer for final mixing.

I only have this third stage when I record my own songs. I'll have another alternative of the song, the name ending with "(score)". Here I see that I get MIDI data of all tracks or patterns and make a printable version of the score.

The last's steps name ends with "(mix)". I do have a colour coded template whith stacks that are busses at the same time, named like the subfolders above. Those can be collapsed. I use stereo monoizer on the tracks before I import them. Depending on how good the second step went this is mainly mixing and using effects.

So, we're not so different there. I don't sum large vocal sections, but make sure all processing is done in step two, so the tracks don't need further plugins. I stack those tracks and the stack get's effect sends.

I usually don't have many tracks. My guess is, that I never have any tracks, that I might or might not use. I don't record anything that will not be in the song. I also very rarely use duplicate tracks.

Cheers
Guido