Hopefully this makes sense...

Just out of curiousity - was wondering if you track everything to audio first, then mix exclusively; or if some of you are mixing as you are getting your tracks down.

The reason I ask is that I'm finding myself doing both at the same time. Not full blown mixing, but starting to pan stuff and add mixing effects as I'm recording them to audio and I kind of feel like it's not necessarily working... but not sure if that's the cause.

And also curious about your final process before actual mixing (or mastering if you want to call it that) - is it more like a performance... where you are actually recording live automation on the tracks one by one by ear, or if it is process in the sequencer (drawing automation in) for many of you.

I know there's not a single way to do it - I'm just not feeling productive in the last several months (been working on the same thing month after month) and was wondering if part of it is my process. And also feeling like drawing automation lacks an "organic" feel, but I've got to lock in some sounds before moving on to the next one (hardware limitations).

If it's irrelevant, well, then it's a dumb question.

I mix while I'm making the track.

Mixing and mastering are two different things. If it ever happens that someone wants to release one of my tracks, I'll mix it myself as I make it, but I'll have a professional engineer master it. I see mixing as part of my role as a producer, but I'll leave the mastering to the people who have waaaaaaaay more knowledge about mastering than I do.

A lot happens to audio tracks after I've recorded them, but certain things like the volume level/ how much is sent to delays, reverbs etc, is already worked out by then.

So, rather than record all the tracks and then try to sort it all out/ mix it together, it's already in the ballpark and just needs to be sculpted a little further. It's a "fine detail" thing rather than "major chopping and changing" thing.

(with "mastering"...I don't want anything to change at the mastering stage, ideally...none of the tracks in my signature below have had any "mastering" done to them at all, I wouldn't want a mastering engineer coming in and making them sound very different...)

Thanks.

I try to mix while 'composing' the track... but at a point where i'm about 90% done, I take all the track faders down to infinity, and start the true mix from scratch.

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quote:

Originally posted by Ray_Chappell Hopefully this makes sense... Just out of curiousity - was wondering if you track everything to audio first, then mix exclusively; or if some of you are mixing as you are getting your tracks down. The reason I ask is that I'm finding myself doing both at the same time. Not full blown mixing, but starting to pan stuff and add mixing effects as I'm recording them to audio and I kind of feel like it's not necessarily working... but not sure if that's the cause.

I usually go along mixing an adding effects, playing with filters, panning..etc, as I am making the track to get a rough draft of what I want the end product to sound like. I also take the time to experiment with different ideas that come along and get an outline of those down during this process.

quote:

And also curious about your final process before actual mixing (or mastering if you want to call it that) - is it more like a performance... where you are actually recording live automation on the tracks one by one by ear, or if it is process in the sequencer (drawing automation in) for many of you. I know there's not a single way to do it - I'm just not feeling productive in the last several months (been working on the same thing month after month) and was wondering if part of it is my process. And also feeling like drawing automation lacks an "organic" feel, but I've got to lock in some sounds before moving on to the next one (hardware limitations). If it's irrelevant, well, then it's a dumb question.

At this point, I take all the tracks and add a few mastering FX in FL. Then I mix them down to separate audio tracks and take them into another program for a mastering session. At times, I may put them back in FL and do all the mastering with the track separated as audio clips.

quote:

Originally posted by CReddick I try to mix while 'composing' the track... but at a point where i'm about 90% done, I take all the track faders down to infinity, and start the true mix from scratch.

What if you have volume automation to deal with in the track? Turning down all of the faders won't make a difference if your track runs into the automation portion... how do you deal with this?

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quote:

Originally posted by djillicit What if you have volume automation to deal with in the track? Turning down all of the faders won't make a difference if your track runs into the automation portion... how do you deal with this?

there are plenty of things that can control the volume level of a channel so you can just automate one of them and use another for mixing.

It's a good idea to hold back on volume automation until you have your mix set up correctly. Automating volumes is one of the last things I do before a song is finished.

quote:

Originally posted by djillicit What if you have volume automation to deal with in the track? Turning down all of the faders won't make a difference if your track runs into the automation portion... how do you deal with this?

usually there's no need for volume automation. there are a lot of other things which sound much better and do a similiar job (e.g filter)

quote:

Originally posted by thecYrus usually there's no need for volume automation. there are a lot of other things which sound much better and do a similiar job (e.g filter)

If you're after a filter effect, then yes, automating the filter sounds much better.

If you're after a pure volume effect, then automating the volume sounds much better.

quote:

Originally posted by djillicit What if you have volume automation to deal with in the track? Turning down all of the faders won't make a difference if your track runs into the automation portion... how do you deal with this?

do the volume automation on a gain effect within the channel... that way your fader never moves.

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