Mixmasters why not share your techniques? :-)

[christianmusicmaker]

Hi chaps...how do you guys go about working in Tracktion?

One of my simple approaches...open to ideas

1.Creating

I almost always start with Vsampler and use the piano roll to programme some drums. Then I will add fx, render, mute the Vsampler track (seems to cut off the CPU usage) and start on the bass track again with Vsampler and repeat the process for other tracks.

2.Arranging

I like a two bar intro followed by a one bar fill then the rest of the song structure would be

verse
fill
chorus
fill
2nd verse
fill
2nd chorus
fill
interlude
fill
chorus
anything goes around here a sudden stop with a delay maybe or a gentle fade out for the whole song using Tracktion master fade.

Even that song structure can change but it works on some songs.

3.Mixing

Drums I sometimes use Blockfish or Endorphin for compression although ozone has some great 4 band compression presets for drums which I use as well.Eq follows with maybe the linear phase Eq 2,Paris EQ, Trackitons EQ or Ozone's EQ

Other instruments get similar treatment but the amount or even use of a particular FX can vary depending on the sound I'm looking for.

All track levels are then balanced properly.

3.Mastering

Good old Ozone again is used on a single rendered version of the the whole song. It has some very nice *final cd* presets which I will tweak to suit.

I would usually dither from 24 bits using Ozone as well but I am currently thinking of working or at least exporting to a 32bit file but that takes up far more space on the hard drive. Any thoughts?

That in a nutshell is one of the approaches I use what's yours?

[bobaudio]

nice post. I am not good enough to have an approach to write, but I look forward to reading others.

[Lunch Money]

No mixmaster, I.

Songwriting is a whole other ball of wax, and the approach varies from song to song, but I'll simplify by going to the approach I took on my last song:

1. Made a list of songs that I wanted to emulate (keep in mind, the entire goal WAS an emulation, so no flaming about creativity, please!)

2. Downloaded a MIDI file of the one that suited me best.

3. Extracted the drums and shit-canned the rest.

4. Manually dissolved the drums, but did not change the actuall pattern (YET).

5. A friend and I wrote chord progressions/riffs over the beat that was playing, sort of helter-skelter (ie. without cycle recording, I'd rather just play "with the beat" and cut and move the audio clip later, rather than rewind each time)

6. On a good old piece of paper, drafted an arrangement of the song, measure-by-measure... no notation, just "main riff for 4 measures" or whatever.

7. Went BACK to the drums, and this time edited them in various ways... the actual beats, velocities, etc. were fairly changed from the original, though I still wish I had the name of the author of the MIDI file to give them credit.

8. Recorded the bass-line

9. Recorded vocals

10. Recorded guitar solos.

----

That's the foundation. Then I had to go back and, in no particular order (I had to bounce back and forth between these processes with the ebb and flow of good EQ and levels, which is to say I had a hell of a time finding good EQ and levels):

- Fixed up timing errors and performance issues
- Artificially layered the backing vocals, using the Pitch Shifter native plugin for some
- Adjust EQ, compression (as needed) and levels for each track. I also put my master limiter into the master area so that I'd be able to hear properly what the final product of each tweak would be.
- Experimented with various distortion types on my amp sim so that both rhythm guitars complemented each other
- Dialed in a few good guitar solo sounds... mostly presets, because I didn't need anything other than what was already available
- Changed the dynamics of the drums a bunch... I had a hard time deciding how hard to compress them and how loud to pump them up
- Alternated between tonnes of different reverbs, finally eschewing even the mighty SIR in favour of Classic Reverb

At some point in time, I was finally happy with the guitars and vocals, but not the overall EQ of the track, especially the bass. Following some very helpful suggestions, I finally found some space for the bass, and ended up running out of time and applying a track EQ rather than tweaking individual parts.

It still needs remixing, but I'm loathe to go back to it, still. I don't want to go through the headache of deleting my 'renders' and unmuting the effected tracks just yet.

Greg

[christianmusicmaker]

No mixmaster, I.

It still needs remixing, but I'm loathe to go back to it, still. I don't want to go through the headache of deleting my 'renders' and unmuting the effected tracks just yet.

Greg

Thanks for sharing Greg...it looks like you have got a pretty busy mix going there.

[Lunch Money]

It's busy, all right... it's a basic arrangement, and shouldn't SEEM like much in rendered form:

1 lead vocal track
1 backing vocal track
1 bass track
1 drum track
2 rhythm guitar tracks
+3 solo guitar tracks
---
9 tracks

But by the time you break some of those down into their pre-render components, I'm looking at just under 30 tracks. My CPU can't handle all that, so it's a real pain-in-the-ass juggling act going between rendered and original tracks. And to think, I used to make do with a Tascam 244 4-track.

Greg