Mixing/Record question please

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Joyof60

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Thanks guys for all your help so far! You all have been overly generous with help and advice, Thanks again!
This may be a stupid question but here again they may be indeed the easiest to answer. Lets say I have recorded all my tracks....piano, bass drums vocals, horns, guitars. during playback of all tracks to be mixed, there may be certain areas that I may want to attenuate or boost the piano but then bring it back down a bit in others. How does one do this or is it possible? I can adjust the slider to achieve the volume of expression that I need at the time but that adjusts the volume or gain of that particular instrument for the remainder of the song, as well as changes the volume/gain globally on that track for the duration of the song. Is there a way to do volume/gain levels adjustment without editing the sound wave itself ? Or am I destined to the continual re recording of tracts and manipulation of levels on /during consequent takes.
Thanks again for all you do!
(recording/mixing with Cakewalk Sonar X3, Cakewalk FA66, , Win 7 and what not. )
 
Have a look in the manual for the term "envelopes" which will give you a way to automate the level changes and make them completely repeatable without actually changing the original. Once you read about it, it should be pretty clear (but it's a bit complex to try and explain here.) However, getting envelopes down pat is key to almost everything you'll do so it's really worth figuring it out.
 
Once you get the hang of using automation, you'll find that it's indispensable--you'll also find that the zoom functions are indispensable too.
 
Everyone starts somewhere :)
Interesting how often this comes up. Coming up on mixers it was (or seemed at the time) pretty intuitive that, well you had to move the faders during a song. The progression evolved into, ok so that means I gotta' remember to move 'this one here, and another one elsewhere'. Then ok, let's put tape next to the faders with marks on them. :D

Could be there's something about 'screen and mouse' vs having nobs and faders there in front of you that fuzzes the connection.
 
Even in the analogue world, fader automation has taken over from cue sheets.

In the vein of "I used to walk 20 miles barefoot through the snow" when I first started, we'd have a cue sheet for, say, a half hour TV show and if we got to the very last cue and screwed up, it was back to the start because there was no facility to do a "rock and roll" edit. In those days, each track was a separate reel of 16 or 35mm film on players that had to run in sync--hence the inability to roll back and edit until we bought (shock horror) time code gear!

Maybe this is why I'm such a fan of today ITB mixing!
 
Thanks guys, I'll give it a read. Thanks so much! What hair I have left has been gray for a long time, I have been doing the 'swells' during initial recording and thought technology had caught up. That's the only way I knew to do it and if you missed it...well, you missed it. Thanks again!
And I didn't have two feet of snow, but I did walk two miles uphill to school, both ways...
 
Using Automation Envelopes in Sonar X3 you can not only automate the volume levels but most every other parameter. Compression, stereo pan, reverb, and probably most important - your equalizer settings.

Automation envelopes can be displayed directly below the track that they belong to by clicking on the 'zig zag' button at the bottom of the track header in 'track view' then selecting what you want to automate from the drop-down list.

Glen
 
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