Importance of mixing organization

[silvermaples]

This is really a post for people just starting out in mixing or in any area of recording really.

If some of the more experience members want to chime in I think it will drive the point home a lot better.

I feel it is extremely important to have a well organized easily layed out DAW in front of me when I sit down to mix. My typical layout (template) is everything color coded to their respective groups: drums all one color, bass, guitars, ect. which all run into seperate mix busses, then to my 2 mix, and then finally out to my master.

I'm sure this is the last thing a new person starting out would think of, I know I didn't, but it really helps to find your parts easier and it keeps everything nice a neat which makes it easier to work with in my opinion.

Most DAW's have the option to create a template so when you start up you don't always have to start from a blank slate, nothing wrong with that but I personally like to start a session and already know that everything is routed correctly and ready to go without me having to setup anything.

So like I said, it might seem silly to be organized and have everything color coded and what not, but it will allow you to focus on more important things like..I dunno...the music perhaps

If anyone wants to throw down their organization flows and ideas feel free, that extra minute we save might be the minute where we make that genius plugin setting or that perfect pan or fader move ;-)

Just a thought

Cheers
-Cory

 

[elapidae1]

What do you mean by 2 mix?

My template is similar.
all similar items color coded then sent to there own bus (rhythm guitar buss, bass bus, lead guitar buss)etc...
Then sent to the master

 

[Tommy Evans]

Yep!!!! All my guitars tracks are the color of the guitar I'm recording with at the time. Same with bass. All my drum shells are blue (cuz that was the color of my first drum set, oh nastalgia) cymbals are gold (get it?) and vocals are usually hot pink or lime green just to mess with the vocalist haha.

I fully agree with you on sitting down and knowing exactly what you're looking at and where to find things.

 

[silvermaples]

I setup aux channels for my groups, bass, guitar, drums, ect which I think everyone gets and does for the most part, but then I run all of those into a 2 mix aux before it goes into my Master fader. Is there any advantage? I'm not really sure, that's just the way I enjoy working and it frees up my master fader and just gives me more options all around.

I actually heard one time that there was a sonic advantage to running through Aux tracks but I'm not sure if there's any weight behind that. If anyone here knows anything about that please chime in.

Cheers
-Cory

 

[Kohugaly]

I usually dont color the tracks unless I work with midi tracks which have no waveform image on them.... just sort them: Rewire inputs, drums, bass, guitars, guitar buses, vocal tracks, vocal buses, reverb and other effects buses. sometimes I put all buses and important tracks to the bottom of the list if there are to many tracks to fit all in one window. this way I know exactly where to search this or that. Im trying to keep the tracks in the order I mentioned above to prevent mess in the mix...
Some time ago i was editing EQ and I was really mad, that it does some strange things... after 5minutes I finally looked at the track title and waveform It was totally different track I wanted to edit. I switched their order just a minute before I wrote the title of them. I keep an eye on that since then.

 

[Sloan]

I find organization is very important for most everything. The more I mix the more the better my organization becomes through trial/error and learning what works with my desired workflow.

Since I use REAPER, I use the fuck out of folder tracks to organize stuff and minimize what i'm not working on at the moment in the track view. I also color all related tracks the same, with the SWS Extensions, you can set it so that it will autocolor tracks that have a certain name, for example anything with 'snr'/'kick'/'tom'/or 'oh' gets color green for drums and anything with 'gtr' gets colored red. it really helps save a little bit of time.

I keep all my drum FX in a folder as well so i can mute/unmute all fx at once, same with vocals.