Tracking/mixing multiple songs per session?

[brianhood]

When my band recorded with Jamie King, he tracked and mixed all of the songs in the same session. Is this a common practice? I can see the benefits of keeping consistency from song to song, but i havent seen anyone else do this.

Or maybe everyone else does this and i just dont know?

 

[NickL]

...you mean one day for everything? That's faster than shit.

 

[heavenshell]

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the dude were recording with is doing that to it was a first for me but it makes total sense ill def be doing it in the future , if your computer can handle it y not just do all the automation and tempo changes and bounce the cd or recordings out on 1 track then bring them back in a chop them !



Andrew

 

[Torniojaws]

Well, I sort of do the same thing. I have a single rough template I make, and then use it for all songs when tracking. And when I mix, I mix a single song and then apply all parts that apply into the other ones, and then go from there. The only difference is that it's a little lighter on the resources than one single huge project. Though if it's only for a few songs (3-4), I don't think it would be a problem even with lots of VST instruments and all. But I don't think a full album would make sense in a single project, resource-wise.

 

[brianhood]

...you mean one day for everything? That's faster than shit.

I meant loading a single session file, and it containing every song on the album(as opposed to having 10 different session files for 10 different songs)

 

[brianhood]

Well, I sort of do the same thing. I have a single rough template I make, and then use it for all songs when tracking. And when I mix, I mix a single song and then apply all parts that apply into the other ones, and then go from there. The only difference is that it's a little lighter on the resources than one single huge project. Though if it's only for a few songs (3-4), I don't think it would be a problem even with lots of VST instruments and all. But I don't think a full album would make sense in a single project, resource-wise.

Makes sense. The session that Jamie King did was only 3 songs, so yeah, not a big resource hog. Thanks for the clarity on that!

 

[vespiz]

Yes, for 2-4 songs it's ok, but for an album, no. The sessions just get too large (at least for my pc!)

 

[brandy]

I usually track all songs in the same project. If the drums are complex and need much editing I have first seperate projects for the individual songs, because editing slows down in Nuendo (I don't know why) when you have hundreds of edits on a single track.

And usually you change something here and there in the tempotrack during recording. So you better have single projects.

But later I prefer one single project for everything, this works MUCH faster for me. I prefer having tons of tracks over closing/opening projects all day just to do a little overdub here and there. And I hate re-doing stuff all over again, for example creating new tracks including some routing and processing.. I don't want to do that 10 times over and over.

Ok, there are sessions were the songs are all different, then I prefer single projects.

But a "regular" deathmetal band usually prefer one drumsound, one guitarsound etc for the complete record instead of experimenting with new and funky sounds for each song.

 

[brandy]

Yes, for 2-4 songs it's ok, but for an album, no. The sessions just get too large (at least for my pc!)

I have no problem to handle a 300 track project with about 70 min of music in it using 50GB of HD.

 

[xFkx]

I work like that, when some songs have some additional stuff (clean vox, synths) i just automate the inserts on/off so it doesn't use up resources.

 

[::XeS::]

I asked the same question to Tue Madsen and Jacob Hansen some time ago.
Tue records and mix the whole album in a single project.
Jacob said he used this method in the past because he thought it was faster doing a good mix (when the first song sounds good you have only to do little adjustements for the others)..but it became a pain in the ass if there was more than 4-5 songs. Now with ProTools 7 he makes projects for each song because the import features have improved

 

[AudioGeekZine]

I've done that once and it was convenient for a lot of things. I ran into trouble when I did beat detective, couldn't get the audio off the drive fast enough. Had to split the songs into their own sessions.

 

[Allu83]

I do the same thing too... actually I'm recording 10 songs in just 1 session (Logic), and I never had problems with it...

I just keep about 4 different backups everyday..
If that session will fuck up I'll probably shit bricks..

 

[-J-]

might be a good idea for one of those projects where all the songs lead into one another like one big song.

 

[Torniojaws]

I have no problem to handle a 300 track project with about 70 min of music in it using 50GB of HD.

How about when you have 50 VST instruments in the same project? They are what eat the most resources (CPU time, RAM, and disk I/O accesses if (=when) the samples come from a compressed file) Not an uncommon amount for a 10-song album when using VST instruments in the songs. And if just 3-5 of those are one of those humongous orchestral plugins, you'll quickly run out of gas even with a top-spec computer.

 

[mintcheerios]

I think freeze is your best bet on projects with lots of VSTi's. I remember when the freeze function was broken in Cubase 4, a lot of people doing orchestral stuff were pissed. EastWest Platinum Orchestra with the PLAY engine will pretty much put any computer to its knees as of now.

 

[krokit]

Ive asked this question before as I used to record up to 10 or more songs in one session when I used logic. When I started using PTLE about a year ago I was told its better to record 1 song per session. This is great as far as playlists are concerned but its a pain to have to close the session and then open another to mix the next song. I prefer to have the songs next to each other in the same session so that I can jump to each song in an instant, its so much quicker and I can stay 'in the moment' rather than have the mojo start to drain away while Im waiting for the next session to open!

Ive just started working in a studio which has HD3 and Im sure 'file > import session data' has a lot more options than LE which would make mixing songs in different sessions a lot quicker and easier than in LE. (please correct me if Im wrong here)

 

[ze kink]

Tried it for the first time in my last project, and it worked quite well for me. I liked how I could jump between different songs and parts of songs instead of opening and closing stuff all the time. I can imagine that it gets a bit heavy if there's a lot of vst's and stuff though. I don't really know if I should continue putting everything in a single project or go on as I used to (mixing every song individually).

 

[aortizjr]

I tend to do both depending on the project.

Cubase is pretty good about being able to save all the mix settings and importing them into the next file.

So typically for live recorded demos, I use one session.

For real projects (ie. editing, tempo tracks, automation, etc.) I use multiple.

 

[brandy]

How about when you have 50 VST instruments in the same project? They are what eat the most resources (CPU time, RAM, and disk I/O accesses if (=when) the samples come from a compressed file) Not an uncommon amount for a 10-song album when using VST instruments in the songs. And if just 3-5 of those are one of those humongous orchestral plugins, you'll quickly run out of gas even with a top-spec computer.

I usually don't use any VSTi's

Beside the clicktrack, haha

Ok, seriously: In fact I barely use any VSTi - I have a dedicated Gigastudio System (very oldschool) and after I am done with all the orchestration and stuff I immediately record those channels to audiotracks inside Nuendo.

Larger VSTis like dfhs are running via FX Teleport from another system as well, so I always have all the ram and CPU I need....