Setting up your DAW for an album session, what's your method?

[AdamWathan]

Just wondering how everyone does entire album sessions? I've yet to do anything more than one song at a time but I imagine what I would do is as follows:

Create recording template to be loaded for each song
Program tempo map for each song (if using click for session)
Record each song into it's own session
Do all edits for each song
Consolidate tracks
Pick one song that covers as much of the bands sound as possible and mix that on it's own, save session
Delete all audio in session while leaving all FX, panning, levels, etc. on each track and save this session as a new template
Load all consolidated files into new sessions all using the new FX template
Perform any song-by-song tweaks necessary
Render to WAV

Anyone have a better/different method of how they approach this?

 

[Ermz]

That's about it for me, except I normally record the songs into one session with tempo maps changing to fit the tempo of each. I find it easier to jump between tracks this way, and it also makes the editing process easier too.

After that I will consolidate all the tracks, load up the main song in a brand new session, mix it, save it, delete the audio, import audio from another track and then fine tweak the settings, save it etc. etc.

 

[Zack Uidl]

^ Exactly what I do for the most part. In some situations though I do leave everything in one session (like albums that play straight through as one larger composition)

 

[joeymusicguy]

^ Exactly what I do for the most part. In some situations though I do leave everything in one session (like albums that play straight through as one larger composition)

i've always wanted to do this but figured it was impossible

how does it work out?

 

[musickey]

I used to record songs in their own project, until a wise man questioned my logic, He simple said "why would you do that?" And then it all became clear

 

[The Unavoidable]

What does consolidate mean?

 

[AdamWathan]

What does consolidate mean?

Rendering each track down to one wav file after all your editing, so you'll have a wav file for every track that all start at the same time and all of your crossfades and cuts and shit will all be rendered onto the file... Less CPU intensive to mix with one wav file for each track then to have 900 little regions on your kick track after cutting and quantizing everything, etc.

 

[Skinny Viking]

What does consolidate mean?

combining all of the audio regions on a track into one complete audio file

essentially merging everything after you've made all you edits and fades, etc ...

 

[Jevil]

I always have my tracks fragmented, sometimes I freeze tracks to save CPU.
How do you render each track? Exporting into the song or is there any 'secret' way to do it?

 

[AdamWathan]

Depends on the DAW your using... In Reaper it's just "File>Consolidate Tracks" lol...

 

[Jevil]

Depends on the DAW your using... In Reaper it's just "File>Consolidate Tracks" lol...

Sorry, I forgot to say it is Cubase.

 

[Ermz]

In Cubase drag a selection across the areas and tracks you wish to consolidate then right click > Audio > Bounce Selection

 

[Machinated]

The thing that puts me off doing the album in one go is when the band (or me) says "lets make that verse shorter", "lets double that bit up", "lets take a bar out here".

I don't find it much of a problem to run different sessions, although I agree that doing it all in one has its benefits too.

 

[Ermz]

The biggest prob with different sessions is when the band decide half-way through the album mix that they want a number of changes made across the board. That kind of shit can be tedious and take a while to boot...

Best way to prevent it? Charge the band for each change, on a per song basis

 

[Machinated]

yeah, definitely the way to go....

also I'd like to think proper pre-production would iron out these kinds of problems

 

[AdamWathan]

The thing that puts me off doing the album in one go is when the band (or me) says "lets make that verse shorter", "lets double that bit up", "lets take a bar out here".

I don't find it much of a problem to run different sessions, although I agree that doing it all in one has its benefits too.

Yeah that was my reasoning against doing it all in one session... Although I'm sure it's easy enough to split all your items at the beginning of a bar and insert a new measure that pushes all the audio afterwards forward by the same amount, it still seems like it would be easier to manage each track in it's own session.

If I was recording a punk band or something with no click track who had all the songs ironed out before hand then yeah I'd probably just do it all in one session to make the mixing stage easier. I just don't like the idea of programming click tracks that don't start at the beginning of a session for some reason, just bothers me to have track 2 starting at measure 273 of the session

 

[Force666]

In cubase I just keep all the same tracks in each separate project. If I need to add one to one for something random I add that to all projects and leave it blank.

Then you can copy and paste "All Mixer Settings" so you don't have to do each individual tweak on each track.


For consolidate in cubase I just "select all" "bounce audio" and that consolidates all edits.

I don't think my computer could handle doing a whole album in one project.

 

[musickey]

The thing that puts me off doing the album in one go is when the band (or me) says "lets make that verse shorter", "lets double that bit up", "lets take a bar out here".QUOTE]

Try it in one session, for me it completely changed the workflow night and day. As far as adding and subtracting parts is easy to remedy, I always leave a few minutes between songs, so if there is a structure change then I can just do the edits and then open up the tempo editor and adjust it accordingly. Seriously fellas try doing a session in one project, I doubt you will ever look back. By the way, thanks Dave-O

 

[fade_2_black]

I just record all into one session - takes a little while to open during editing, etc, but all good! makes things a lot easier IMO.

 

[coldthrn]

One session is easier to mix. However what happens if that session becomes corrupt? You loose all your songs rather than just one. I have had this happen to me before.