General Recording & Workflow Feedback

[Whizzinby]

Try and bounce parts together if they are contributing to one musical idea, or if you are confident in their general sound/balance.

Can you expound in this? I’m assuming this means to effectively “merge” two tracks into one? So you could take a double tracked guitar part and merge it into a single track to reduce complexity when it comes to mixing? Is there any downside to this, do you lose anyone of the mojo from having them split, or just the obvious ability to pan them to different sides or I assume the ability to decouple them later if desired.

 

[DrewJD82]

Can you expound in this? I’m assuming this means to effectively “merge” two tracks into one? So you could take a double tracked guitar part and merge it into a single track to reduce complexity when it comes to mixing? Is there any downside to this, do you lose anyone of the mojo from having them split, or just the obvious ability to pan them to different sides or I assume the ability to decouple them later if desired.

That’s exactly what it is, merging the tracks together, except it’ll bounce any automation/panning/plug-ins to the new track.
You can highlight numerous tracks and bounce them to one, or just bouncing a single track to capture all the plug-ins on them, effectively “printing them to tape” as they’d say back in the day.

I mostly bounce tracks if I have a ton of plug-ins on them or it’s a VST. Like all my synth tracks get bounced down so I’m not running multiple instances of the same VST, sucking up CPU. The ‘confident’ aspect comes into play because if you EQ something then bounce it down and delete the original plug-ins/audio, if you don’t like how you EQ’d it, you’re stuck with it. So say if I had a piano track and I put a delay on it, a reverb and some chorus, if I bounced it down, the new audio track would have all those effects on it, but they can’t be taken off after it was bounced. They’re ‘printed’.

Sometimes with guitar tracks, if I’m mangling the hell out of them in Logic or I have a bunch of layers for one small section, or there’s a ton of plugins on them I’ll just bounce it down from 4-5 tracks to one stereo track. It retains all the panning and any kind of track automation you put on it, it all gets bounced down, but there’s no reversing once you’ve done it.

I don’t think you lose any mojo or anything since it retains the panning, you just have the possibility of shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t dig what you did before bouncing it down and want to change it after the fact. It’s not a huge issue, unless you’ve bounced like 10 tracks into one and trashed it in the process (and already deleted the pre-bounced tracks).

 

[fretworn]

I am so stoked for this… Just waiting on the computer to arrive and some peripheral equipment.

Totally binging on YouTube videos re: logic and mixing techniques/mastering.

If you have the time Whiz, you can go through a bunch of videos and you will start to notice distinct patterns of working, including arranging, grouping your tracks, as well as the techniques used to bring tracks into its best sonic footprint.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Glad I bumped up to 16GB when buying my M1 Mac Mini.

Given all currently available evidence, that should be as good as around 32 GB on pre-M1 machines.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Can you expound in this? I’m assuming this means to effectively “merge” two tracks into one? So you could take a double tracked guitar part and merge it into a single track to reduce complexity when it comes to mixing? Is there any downside to this, do you lose anyone of the mojo from having them split, or just the obvious ability to pan them to different sides or I assume the ability to decouple them later if desired.

Exactly.

Say you have double tracked guitars for a song. Often it’s easier to have them on a single fader, especially if you’ve done any individual cleaning up on each track. Imagine through the song, at various moments there could be lots of different tracks that are doubled. By combining them into less tracks, you can navigate your session MUCH quicker and have less distractions. Say there are backing vocals that are layered up - at some point you probably don’t need all the individual takes on their own track, but it’s easier to balance them when they’re grouped together. You could use busses, or you could remove all the distractions and just turn them into less audio files.

The same goes for sources that have multiple mics - at some point you’ll have a pretty good idea what balance you want between them and having each on a separate track won’t really help you. This could be Kick in+out, snare top+bottom, a couple of room mics, various bass mics, various guitar mics. Combine that with what I said earlier about layering and the session can be quite big.

I think as you progress on the track you can be quite confident about combining these sorts of things together - you can really focus on what’s driving the song at that point and do bolder automation moves more easily.

You can do all this with busses too, it just means you have more complex routing and potentially more tracks to deal with than you possibly need. I used to work with a lot of busses but I’d find myself fighting what i’m doing with automation at different points. I think simplicity really pays off when there are so many decisions to be made, and ultimately the goal is to get the song down to a stereo track.

You’d be surprised too how much room there is to manoeuvre once you’ve bounced tracks down, you can usually still process them into what you need without needing to go back to an older version of the session.

You can always save the project under a different name and reimport the original tracks if you ever need more control again.

With DAW’s it’s really easy for sessions to get huge and disorganised and I think to finish the song, it helps a lot to have a simple session to understand.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Guitar EQ

• What sort of EQ do you guys do to clean and distorted guitars? I’m assuming hi and low cuts, maybe a notch around 250, and a whistle frequency around 4k?

I use whatever sounds good to me. IMO it helps to use an EQ that has an "equally loud" function (unfortunately, Logic's internal ones don't). That function reduces the output gain when you raise a band and vice versa. That way you don't fall for the "louder = better" aspect as easily. I'm often using a very easy to deal with freebie called "Luftikus" from lkjb (fixed, broad frequency bands, but it often does the job for me). There's also the fully parametric free TDR Nova from Tokio Dawn Labs offering that feature (plus, it's even a dynamic EQ).

Levels

• What’s your approach to levels? My general approach to this point has been pulling back each of the individual tracks to the point where they aren’t clipping and just flirting with mod yellow levels. Once everything is in there (regardless of how it sits with other instruments) I then use those positions as the basis for leveling the instruments in the mix. How do you approach leveling everything?

As Drew, I pull my channel faders down quite a bit when starting (my template has them like that), but you can always do that later on (select all in the mixer, pull down - just make sure to pull the master and it's VCA back up). I try to keep things in a way that the master fader can stay at 0dB without ever clipping. That way it's easier to add potential master FX later on.

Buses

• So I figured out how to do buses, which has been great to not eat up resources running plugs wastefully, but I’m curious how many you make. So, if you have say a clean section, dirty section, and a lead, (which may or may not be double tracked) do you make buses for each or do you just have a single Guitar bus? Or what’s your approach to creating or using buses?

Personally, as far as guitars go, I usually don't use buses often, for me they're really only making sense for double (or triple) tracked guitars and in case things are getting really busy. Your mileage may greatly vary, though.

What order do you track instruments?

Just the way I feel like. But I usually make sure to find at least some sort of "orientational" drum or percussion groove very early in the process, supplying the feel of the song. Especially for anything shuffled I find this to be crucial. In case one records a shuffled guitar just with a click, chances are one will be having a tough time to add anything percussive afterwards and find a really great matching shuffle value (yeah, there's "audio to MIDI groove template", but we should possibly not get into that right here). The other way around things are way easier.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Say you have double tracked guitars for a song. Often it’s easier to have them on a single fader, especially if you’ve done any individual cleaning up on each track. Imagine through the song, at various moments there could be lots of different tracks that are doubled. By combining them into less tracks, you can navigate your session MUCH quicker and have less distractions. Say there are backing vocals that are layered up - at some point you probably don’t need all the individual takes on their own track, but it’s easier to balance them when they’re grouped together. You could use busses, or you could remove all the distractions and just turn them into less audio files.

In Logic, when you use stacks, things are comparatively easy to handle - just that you can easily revert to the individual takes, should you feel like. Yeah, ocassionally commiting yourself to, say, a bounce of whatever doubled/tripled guitars is helpful, but personally, I usually don't do that. I consolidate individual tracks, though.

 

[scole]

I mostly bounce tracks if I have a ton of plug-ins on them or it’s a VST. Like all my synth tracks get bounced down so I’m not running multiple instances of the same VST, sucking up CPU.

Hey Drew- do you have a link to a Youtube video that runs through how to do this? I've wondered about this because on a few projects, I have had 3 instances of the same synth VST because I just didn't know if what you described was possible and how to do it. Thanks!

 

[Sascha Franck]

Hey Drew- do you have a link to a Youtube video that runs through how to do this? I've wondered about this because on a few projects, I have had 3 instances of the same synth VST because I just didn't know if what you described was possible and how to do it.

I'm not Drew, but well... are you using Logic, too? In that case, "bounce in place" is your best bet I'd say. CTRL-click the parts in question and go to the "Bounce and Connect" submenu, you'll find "bounce in place" there, the following dialog will present you some options that you should look at to become familiar with it. Select what's appropriate and bounce away.
(note: I'm running Logic in german, so some names might be somewhat different, the menus are the same, though)

 

[Whizzinby]

Exactly.

Say you have double tracked guitars for a song. Often it’s easier to have them on a single fader, especially if you’ve done any individual cleaning up on each track. Imagine through the song, at various moments there could be lots of different tracks that are doubled. By combining them into less tracks, you can navigate your session MUCH quicker and have less distractions. Say there are backing vocals that are layered up - at some point you probably don’t need all the individual takes on their own track, but it’s easier to balance them when they’re grouped together. You could use busses, or you could remove all the distractions and just turn them into less audio files.

The same goes for sources that have multiple mics - at some point you’ll have a pretty good idea what balance you want between them and having each on a separate track won’t really help you. This could be Kick in+out, snare top+bottom, a couple of room mics, various bass mics, various guitar mics. Combine that with what I said earlier about layering and the session can be quite big.

I think as you progress on the track you can be quite confident about combining these sorts of things together - you can really focus on what’s driving the song at that point and do bolder automation moves more easily.

You can do all this with busses too, it just means you have more complex routing and potentially more tracks to deal with than you possibly need. I used to work with a lot of busses but I’d find myself fighting what i’m doing with automation at different points. I think simplicity really pays off when there are so many decisions to be made, and ultimately the goal is to get the song down to a stereo track.

You’d be surprised too how much room there is to manoeuvre once you’ve bounced tracks down, you can usually still process them into what you need without needing to go back to an older version of the session.

You can always save the project under a different name and reimport the original tracks if you ever need more control again.

With DAW’s it’s really easy for sessions to get huge and disorganised and I think to finish the song, it helps a lot to have a simple session to understand.

This is interesting because right now I’m messing with a project that I’ve double tracked guitars for two different guitars, so 4 individual guitar tracks, if I could “bounce” them down to only two tracks (one for each guitar) that would greatly declutter things.

 

[Sascha Franck]

This is interesting because right now I’m messing with a project that I’ve double tracked guitars for two different guitars, so 4 individual guitar tracks, if I could “bounce” them down to only two tracks (one for each guitar) that would greatly declutter things.

My reccommendation would be: Try to use a summing stack before doing so. Results in something sort of similar, but you could still do corrections later on.

 

[Whizzinby]

My reccommendation would be: Try to use a summing stack before doing so. Results in something sort of similar, but you could still do corrections later on.

Ok, I don’t know any lingo here, what’s a summing stack?

 

[scole]

I'm not Drew, but well... are you using Logic, too? In that case, "bounce in place" is your best bet I'd say. CTRL-click the parts in question and go to the "Bounce and Connect" submenu, you'll find "bounce in place" there, the following dialog will present you some options that you should look at to become familiar with it. Select what's appropriate and bounce away.
(note: I'm running Logic in german, so some names might be somewhat different, the menus are the same, though)

No, unfortunately, I’m using Reaper as my DAW

 

[MirrorProfiles]

In Logic, when you use stacks, things are comparatively easy to handle - just that you can easily revert to the individual takes, should you feel like. Yeah, ocassionally commiting yourself to, say, a bounce of whatever doubled/tripled guitars is helpful, but personally, I usually don't do that. I consolidate individual tracks, though.

Yeah, I've used Logic a lot (before switching to Pro Tools years ago. I like folders for some things, but I usually end up clicking around a lot more when I use them and need to find a particular track. They can also muddy things up if the contents of a folder are all routed to an output - sometimes its handy to have the contents routed to the same output, but sometimes you'll want certain things in the same folder to go to different outputs. Summing stacks have always added extra confusion to my sessions, but I usually have a good idea of where I want tracks routed before putting things into a folder. If I use folders, its always the kind without any routing and purely for organisation.

I think if something needs to be done to the track, its best to do it and get it out of the way rather than to keep loads of options open and needing attention. Try to make decisions with the end goal in mind. Logic in particular can be a nightmare for not committing to things - in theory you can have a track with timing and tuning edits still "active" with loads of plugins on top and complex routing and automation. Sometimes automation can be for a production effect and when trying to mix, its easier just to have all that printed into an audio file thats easier to work with. IMO, if its a production choice, try and get it as close to what you want and print it to audio. There's usually a point in the process where I know something is pretty much there, and any heavy handed processing Ill try and commit earlier.

My goal these days is to be able to open any session and be able to quickly get to grips with what is going on - a smaller session where its clear to see what parts are playing at what time, and where they are routed helps me focus more on creative aspects and less on the technical side.

I remember years ago studying some CLA articles online, and reading the Sound on Sound interview (https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/secrets-mix-engineers-chris-lord-alge). At the time I was so fixated on the gear and settings that I overlooked the track sheet that showed the channels he had on his console. A huge reason of why he's able to mix at the speed and quality he does, is because he can be hands on with the tracks that are important. Check the article for how he goes from a 159 track Pro Tools session to something that fits onto his desk. If you treat the stereo ones as a single track, its 25 tracks that he's working with when mixing. Its not a CLA thing either, its just a workflow that is useful to adopt from the analog days.

Just to go a bit further, I think its really beneficial to try and not leave too many options open - it can become really overwhelming if there are LOADS of decisions to be made when you're trying to mix. It really transformed my work when I changed my mindset to get the sounds right early and then build other decisions on top of them. Sounds all relate to each other, so if you change one thing, it'll affect something else.

There are websites that try and teach mixing, and they make it sound like its normal that the starting point for a mix is drum MIDI, guitar DI's and everything really raw. Picking drum/guitar/vocal sounds is all part of the production and should be dealt with well before the mix. When the production is finished, the rough mix should get the point across of the song and things should roughly be in place. At that point, its good to reduce the tracks down and make things more simple, so the mix is more about enhancing the song (than trying to piece it all together).

 

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, I don’t know any lingo here, what’s a summing stack?

Kinda like a bus, available straight from the main page. Just select a bunch of tracks (hold CMD to select multiple ones), then right- or CTL-click for a context menu and select "create summing stack" (might be "track stack" in english and you select the nature in the following mini dialog).

 

[Whizzinby]

Kinda like a bus, available straight from the main page. Just select a bunch of tracks (hold CMD to select multiple ones), then right- or CTL-click for a context menu and select "create summing stack" (might be "track stack" in english and you select the nature in the following mini dialog).

What exactly does it do though?

 

[Sascha Franck]

What exactly does it do though?

There's two options: Summing Stack and Folder Stack. Folder Stack will keep everything as is, it's really just an organisational tool. A Summing Stack however will automatically create a bus and send all selected tracks to that bus, so you can mix the bunch as one single track. Just try it out, can be reversed easily.

Also look at Drews pics and explanations, he's doing just that.

 

[Whizzinby]

There's two options: Summing Stack and Folder Stack. Folder Stack will keep everything as is, it's really just an organisational tool. A Summing Stack however will automatically create a bus and send all selected tracks to that bus, so you can mix the bunch as one single track. Just try it out, can be reversed easily.

So I already have them routing to a guitar bus, but this might be a method to do that next time. I need to look at the folder stack option.

 

[Sascha Franck]

but this might be a method to do that next time.

Yeah, it's way faster and more convenient (at least usually - sometimes I still use the oldfshioned manual method, though).

 

[DrewJD82]

Hey Drew- do you have a link to a Youtube video that runs through how to do this? I've wondered about this because on a few projects, I have had 3 instances of the same synth VST because I just didn't know if what you described was possible and how to do it. Thanks!

Hey brudda, I don’t use Reaper so I can’t confirm the information is correct in this vid, but I believe this is what you’re looking for!