1st Try Recording – Part II

B

BeagleFaceHenry

Member
Thanks to everyone who gave me tips for my 1st ‘Live’ recording session, I’ve noted them all. (For those just joining, I’m using Sonar X2 and a Tascam-1641 to record a blues-rock band in a live (but audience-free) setting.

So, now I’ve got 14 tracks of live session. Ok, I won’t have them for couple more weeks, but let’s assume I do. I’m about to start EQing, compressing, mixing, etc. What do you recommend as a 1st step? Or, back a step, what should I have thought of before I hit record? I’ve only recorded individual tunes; this is my 1st foray recording an entire set, or album side, in one sitting.
My plan is record the entire set as one session. This session will be a few hours long and include several takes of several tunes. Is this the recommended method? I assume this makes sense so I can EQ everything only once, and then split it into individual songs, yes? I will probably save a few iterations along the way for redundancy, plus I assume my RAM would appreciate me pausing the process once in a while.

Is there something you always do before you start mixing? Is there something that experience has taught you to do before you get too deep?


Is there an easy way to get rid of extra takes and false starts? Is there an easy way to break the session into tracks without deleting and re-saving?

What am I not even thinking of?

Keep the tips flowing! I'm a sponge!
-j
 
Since this is a large session, I would make sure you have a hard drive with you to make sure you don't run out of space, do clean up afterwards. You don't want to have to make decisions under pressure.
 
DM60 said:
Since this is a large session, I would make sure you have a hard drive with you to make sure you don't run out of space, do clean up afterwards. You don't want to have to make decisions under pressure.
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Great advice!
 
Yeah, thanks! That's already in process. I've been freeing up room on both my hard drive, and an external drive. I'm using this as an excuse to purge and it feels great. I plan to save a few iterations, just in case something goes wrong, I won't lose everything and I plan on backing up the session immediately on the eternal.
 
I would stop and restart the recording several times during the session. You wouldn't want some glitch or crash near the end to wipe out the whole day of work.
 
Assuming you are aiming for the best 'live sound' recording of each song, I'd split the whole file(s) into songs first, then work on each separately, you can copy over EQ and other settings into each song/project as you move along, it'll be a lot less heavy on your RAM if you don't have 60 minutes of 14 tracks all loaded at one time.
 
That may be my biggest question, MJB.
I can think of serious pros and cons to both methods, splitting tracks before mixing or after. Obviously final mix would done after splitting, but I'm on the fence as to how to start. How do most people do it? Is it too late to start a poll?
 
I would stop and restart the recording after every song.

For mixdown I would start the process with the whole session intact. First thing I would do is use Clip Gain (or whatever is Sonar's equivalent) to trim all the audio to the correct levels (averaging around -18dBFS) and then get the basic balance and tone in the ballpark with faders and track eq. Then I might "save as" each song for more detailed work.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
I would stop and restart the recording after every song.

For mixdown I would start the process with the whole session intact. First thing I would do is use Clip Gain (or whatever is Sonar's equivalent) to trim all the audio to the correct levels (averaging around -18dBFS) and then get the basic balance and tone in the ballpark with faders and track eq. Then I might "save as" each song for more detailed work.
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To add to this, create a template so when you bring up a new project, all of your mic labels, etc. are set and you can punch record and keep going.
 
DM60 said:
To add to this, create a template so when you bring up a new project, all of your mic labels, etc. are set and you can punch record and keep going.
Click to expand...

You could do that, but I would just use one session to record and stop/start after each song so things get saved and file sizes are smaller. Then you can apply fader and eq settings to the songs globally before splitting them out to separate projects for more detailed work.
 
First off, if you haven't heard the stems yet then why do you think you need to add Eq and compression? Now then, you probably will but my point is listen first and then decide what you need. A well tracked project will require very little Eq... try using my placement instead.

Use track markers for larger projects. It will help you find where a song changes... you can also use markers to mark areas to be fixed later.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
You could do that, but I would just use one session to record and stop/start after each song so things get saved and file sizes are smaller. Then you can apply fader and eq settings to the songs globally before splitting them out to separate projects for more detailed work.
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OP, Boulder does bring up a good point, if you did do my approach, you would set your global plugins, save them so that when you brought up a your project (during mixing), you could go grab them so you already have a starting place for the global VSTs.
 
Beer, I'm planning on keeping a log of what we play with notes as to what we hoped from each tune. Is that typical? I was just trying to make my life easier when I sit down to mix. Pictures would be nice. It'll only be the 4 of us, I'm tempted to ask someone else to come to get some live shots.
 
BeagleFaceHenry said:
Is there something you always do before you start mixing? Is there something that experience has taught you to do before you get too deep?
-j
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I like to do my gain staging at first, trimming and all that, before you start mixing you should have perfect tracks if its not perfect then record it again if possible and if you can't well fix it as good as you can.
 
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