Performing Fade ins/Fade outs

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GamezBond

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Is it better to perform a fadeout/fade in on the overall tracks or on the individual tracks the mix eveyrthing together?
 
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If you are talking about a song fadeout where everything is fading at the same rate at the same time, it is best to do that in mastering.
 
GamezBond said:
So I assume it's done to the overall track, since most mastering is done on a single stereo track?
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Yeah ... if your talking about fades on a song as a whole.
You can also do fades on individual tracks (i.e. guitar or whatever track ... fades in/out in a portion or portions of the song) if that's an effect your after.
 
It can be part of the creative process of course, not something you may always want to leave to the ME. For example on one song i did recently I wanted the drums to fade out first leaving the piano playing which then later faded out. I couldn't leave a job like that to a ME in my absence, he wouldn't know exactly WHEN to do it.
 
glynb said:
It can be part of the creative process of course, not something you may always want to leave to the ME. For example on one song i did recently I wanted the drums to fade out first leaving the piano playing which then later faded out. I couldn't leave a job like that to a ME in my absence, he wouldn't know exactly WHEN to do it.
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The ME only has the stereo track, he would not be able to fade just the drums out anyway. The big reason to let the ME do an overall song fade is so the music stays consistent sounding on the fade. If you hand an ME a song that you faded out, any compression that he applys to the mix will fall apart during the fade as the mix falls below the threshold. Depending on the amount of compression, the song might not sound like it fades until later, after it gets below the threshold. The mix will just start coming apart and then start fading.
 
so starting a song out with a reverse cymbal, and ending with a cymbal would mess everything up?How does it work when you want to do it like that?
 
Fade all the tracks individualy before you mix so you don't get any noise from the other tracks when the cymbal is decaying (in either direction)
 
If you find yourself mentioning any individual instrument in your description, you'll probably want to take care of that in mixing. Otherwise, leave it for mastering.
 
ryanlikestorock said:
If you find yourself mentioning any individual instrument in your description, you'll probably want to take care of that in mixing. Otherwise, leave it for mastering.
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I understand the creative point of taking care of fades in mastering, but this is just a matter of communication with the ME.

The main reasons for fading during mastering are:

1. You can't add what has been taken away. Even though you can try to add reverb to re-create some ambience at the tail

2. Noise reduction. A good ME will use a profile of the noise at the end of a track to remove noise at the end of the song (if needed). If you fade this out during mixing the noise is not available to analyze.

3. For cross-fading one song to the other it's better to have the complete song in order to make adjustments between the 2.

Also, don't cut the intros too close. A little bit of ambience before the song starts is a good thing.
 
GamezBond said:
Why do most songs usually have .25/.5 seconds of silence before the song starts?
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Mostly has to do with CD indexing, not always the case. Just giving older CD players enough time before the start of the song or it could possibly be cut-off.
 
masteringhouse said:
Mostly has to do with CD indexing, not always the case. Just giving older CD players enough time before the start of the song or it could possibly be cut-off.
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I had a car stereo that would compress the first 0.3 seconds of the song for some reason. I figure this is probably more common than just my car stereo... and, doesn't usually affect the tone of the song at all... so, why not?
 
so how would you exactly start a song with a reverse crash cymbal and end it with a reg crash cembal, without making it impossible 2 compress without messing it up?
 
Consumer CD players have different unmute times as well, so a track that sounds fine on one player will have a clipped intro on another.
 
GamezBond said:
so how would you exactly start a song with a reverse crash cymbal and end it with a reg crash cembal, without making it impossible 2 compress without messing it up?
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Most of the time cymbals aren't loud enough to be into the compression that much. The compression problem is when a compressor is used to glue the mix together. If you fade pre-compressor it will sound strange as the mix gets below the threshold.
 
Ok, on the new JLO song, at the end, everything fades out except the background vocal rhodes and piano.Would it be safe to do that, or would I include seperate tracks for the guy doing mastering so he could do it himself?
 
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