When adding vocals....mixdown?

[LosingReality]

Quick question about recording vocals....

Do you record/add vocals in the same project that you did the instrumental? Or do you mixdown the instrumental and do the vocals in another project?

Thanks!

 

[lolzgreg]

Everything together. It's important to be able to cut and boost small frequencies on particular instruments to seat the vocal. It will also greatly affect the attack of the master bus compressor/limiter (if you're using one).

-Greg

 

[Damian B]

Always everything together.

 

[Forceps]

I always use seperate sessions for seperate instruments. But I make sort of a quick mix of the instruments and load the mixdown in the vocal session. Works for me...

 

[Trevoire520]

That just seems like a really weird way of working to me, it also means you can't adjust the headphone mix other than a balance between vox and instruments.

The only reason I can honestly think of doing it would be if your DAW crashes when playing back alot of tracks.

I just record, edit and mix everything in the same session, then bounce the mix to another track within the session and do the mastering, so everything is self contained.

 

[Forceps]

well, I get all guitars to 1 track, the drums to 1 track and the bass to 1 track. Somehow this works for me because else I have latency troubles when monitoring the vocals. Never had any complaints, hehe... Also my daw can only playback a certain amount of tracks, so when I have to record a lot of takes on different tracks, I get in trouble...

 

[joeymusicguy]

mix down music, import into project, save new project, record vocals to the music stem...

later: edit vocals in vocal project, when finished, export selected tracks, open music project, import track archive

done! now mix!

 

[LosingReality]

mix down music, import into project, save new project, record vocals to the music stem...

later: edit vocals in vocal project, when finished, export selected tracks, open music project, import track archive

done! now mix!

AH, i see.....so basically using the instrumental in the vocal project just to sing over.....Didnt think of that! Thanks!

 

[nwright]

mix down music, import into project, save new project, record vocals to the music stem...

later: edit vocals in vocal project, when finished, export selected tracks, open music project, import track archive

done! now mix!

Why do you do this? I don't see the benefits of this method?

 

[colonel kurtz]

i do the same thing as joey in order to save some stress on my CPU and keep the latency down while tracking the vox

not sure why he does that though, cause i'm sure his PC slays mine

 

[Zombietakeover]

Yeah i guarantee that Joey is doing that to save on CPU.....I got to do that with some stuff also

 

[Forceps]

mix down music, import into project, save new project, record vocals to the music stem...

later: edit vocals in vocal project, when finished, export selected tracks, open music project, import track archive

done! now mix!

This! Same way I work
I knew it: great minds think alike

 

[nwright]

So if your CPU could take it, would you still do it this way?

 

[Forceps]

I'm not quite sure my CPU doesn't take it, it's just that I use a lot of tracks for different takes for recording and after editing I bring all back to a smaller amount of tracks. It kind of clouds my vision when I have all these different takes and edits and punches in at the screen. This way I can completely finish bass recordings for example and then import just 1 track in the mixing session. Keeps it simple for me, but I can imagine people find it easier to do everything in 1 session file. Just a matter of taste I guess...

 

[Mikaël-ange]

i do the same thing as joey in order to save some stress on my CPU and keep the latency down while tracking the vox

not sure why he does that though, cause i'm sure his PC slays mine

Or simply for organize his project...
Standard and fast to work with MTS and SLV session imo.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Everything in same session.
I remove unused takes at the end of the day.
My mix sessions are very different from my tracking & editing sessions.

PS, always comp & tune before doing BG Vox.