The DAW DOZEN
May 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By John McJunkin
Digital audio workstation software can cause trepidation for a lot of people. If you're new to music and audio production, you don't have a frame of reference and may not know where to begin. Even many experienced DAW users suffer in silence from a fear of intimacy with their DAWs, never digging deeper beyond the features with which they're already comfortable. Consider this article the Remix 12-step program to help you overcome your DAW phobias. These tips and concepts cover beginner, intermediate and advanced topics that are relevant no matter what DAW program you're using and will steer you toward remission from your affliction.
FIRST DOSE: SIMPLE AND POWERFUL
Step 1
Here's an easy but effective task: creating a stereo image from a mono source. Simply create a new track, copy the audio that you want to make stereo and paste it into the new track. Pan the original one way, pan the duplicate the other; it's your choice how much you want to pan. Then select the duplicate and nudge it backward in time a bit to create a delay effect. The amount of panning and nudging will determine how subtle or drastic the effect is.
Step 2
In Hollywood, the pros use “stem mixes” to simplify the process of mixing the dialogue, music and sound effects for movies and TV. A stem mix can simplify music mixing as well. Just solo all your drums, for instance, and bounce them to a single stereo stem. Do the same with percussion parts, rhythm guitars, backing vocals and so on. At mixdown, it's much easier to goose up a group of instruments working from stems. This technique solves the latency issues normally associated with busing, and it's also a clever way to create tracks for live performance — for instance, you can have two versions of a song (one with and one without the guitar stem), so you're good to go whether or not the guitarist makes it to the session.
Step 3
Reamping is another old-school technique that is still widely used today. When tracking a guitar, synth or bass, record the signal clean and dry (without any effects other than EQ or compression). At mixdown, you can then dig into your bag of plug-ins or even hardware processors to fatten up or distort your clean signal. First, create a new track. If you're using plug-ins exclusively, duplicate the files into the new track and destructively process them (for example, with AudioSuite plug-ins in Pro Tools). If you're going outside the box, send the output of the original track to your processors and then record the output back onto the new track. There will be some latency, so you'll need to nudge the new track back into time alignment. You can blend it with the original if you want, but either way, the sound will have a nice fatness to it.
Step 4
Automation of plug-ins can strongly contribute to your mix. The first idea that usually comes to mind is to automate the parameters of signal processors, but you can also automate the parameters of soft synths, which is easy to do. All you have to do — in Pro Tools, for example — is click on the Auto button on your plug-in. You'll see a Plug-In Automation dialog box that lists all automatable parameters. Select the parameters you want to automate, click on Add, and they'll be included as selections in the Track View Selector. You'll be able to see the automation data just as you would the level or panning data. That is a slick way to create customized rhythmic filter sweeps, evolving delays and more.
ONGOING TREATMENT: INTERMEDIATE STEPS
Step 5
Rhythmic chopping of sustained notes (usually vocals) is a classic effect that always sounds great. There are two ways to do it. For the first method, insert a keyed gate on the track that you want to chop. Then create a new track and record a “trigger signal” (typically a transient sound, such as a high-hat tapped in with the rhythm of the chop that you want). Now send the output of that track via bus to the key input of your gate. Adjust the gate's threshold until you achieve the desired effect. The attack and release settings of the gate can give you even more control. The second method is to use your DAW's Grid mode for editing. Set the grid for a musically useful value, such as eighth or 16th notes. Now select the segments of the signal that you want to eliminate, and then either delete or mute them. It's best to work on a duplicate copy of the original signal. This method is a bit more tedious than the other one, but it's also less signal-flow intensive than the gating method.
Step 6
Everyone wants to make vocals sit better in the mix, so try soft-ducking the music bed for the vocal. Route the output from your vocal track to an auxiliary bus, and route the outputs of everything else to a different one. You'll need an auxiliary track to route the music bed back to the stereo output bus, and the vocal can still be routed directly. Insert a compressor on the music-bed bus with key (or sidechain) capabilities. Compress the music-bed bus lightly, keyed to the vocal. That process is called ducking because the music momentarily ducks out of the vocal's way. You'll want a soft-knee compressor and a very low ratio; the ratio has to be subtle, or you'll get a lot of pumping. Tucking the vocal into the mix works well, and placing a light compression over the entire mix is also a good idea.
Step 7
“Flying in” a chorus is not a new idea, but doing it with a DAW is a lot easier than the old-school way. Say your vocalist is having a rough day, but she was able to sing the backing parts of the chorus well one time. Simply cut and paste those particular vocals for every iteration of the chorus. As long as you've paid careful attention to tempo and timing, you can simply grab a copy of all the backing vocals in the song's chorus and paste them into position without a lot of nudging to get the timing right. Even if the vocalist had trouble, once you edit, tune and smooth out a part, it can be flown in wherever it is repeated in the song.
Step 8
Applications such as Reason and Live have good mixing capabilities, but they're not as sophisticated as DAWs like Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Logic and Cubase. Using the DAW is a much better way to mix the outputs of your ReWire-enabled applications, and it's not a difficult task. Pictured in the screenshots, the outputs from several instruments in Reason are routed via ReWire to Pro Tools. It starts with a session consisting of only MIDI tracks feeding Reason and returning the audio via a single stereo input. Add the word “MIDI” to all MIDI-track names and create a new audio track (with “Audio” in the name) corresponding to each — for example, “Bass MIDI” and “Bass Audio.” With all 24 tracks routed by way of ReWire, audio and MIDI sit side by side. Pro Tools has a superior mixer with a huge suite of plug-ins for high-quality mixing. Record all the parts, remove the MIDI tracks from view and mix the recorded audio.
PERFECT PRESCRIPTIONS: ADVANCED STAGES
Step 9
You can separate mixes into frequency ranges to gain greater control, just like mastering engineers do. Typically, three bands are used, but you can use four or more if you want. Create and name a new track for each band, then copy the mix into each of those. In a 3-band scenario, the low-frequency band ranges from the bottom to approximately 250 Hz. The middle band ranges from 250 Hz to 2.5 kHz. The high band is anything above 2.5 kHz. Use a good filter or EQ that has the capability to do steep cutoff (18 dB per octave or greater), and then filter each track appropriately to create your bands. Don't be afraid to experiment with different cutoff slopes to suit your needs. The point is to create the ability to compress each range individually for greater control over the final mix. There are plug-ins, such as Waves C4, that simplify and consolidate this process; this is just another way to accomplish the same thing and to enable as many bands as you like.
Step 10
Propellerhead ReCycle is the preeminent application for cutting and manipulating loops, but you can also perform that function within your DAW. Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Logic and Cubase all have the ability to create and yield some interesting results. It's best to create a new track so that you can work on the loop. Grid editing enables the selection of individual notes and pieces of the loop. Pro Tools has a powerful feature called Tab to Transients that allows you to navigate to the transients in the audio. That is a great way to select the individual elements in a loop. Once you've separated the elements of the loop to your liking, experiment with the available signal processing, and remember that you can make each slice of a loop different. You can pan, increase or decrease gain, compress, EQ, add effects and whatever else you can imagine. Once you've tweaked the loop to your liking, bounce it down to a new file; now have a handy loop that can be used any way you like.
Step 11
Since mixers first appeared, they have bused together groups of signals and compressed them to punch up the mix. Drums and percussion instruments are frequently handled that way. You can accomplish that by setting up an auxiliary input for the group and routing its constituent signals to it via auxiliaries. Compress, EQ, distort, excite or enhance the group as a whole, and mix it back in underneath the original. This technique can punch up any group of signals and is most often applied to drums or percussion, but a vocal bus, a rhythm-guitar bus and synthesizers can also be enhanced.
Step 12
A repeating, delayed vocal that builds up to the beginning of a verse or chorus (as opposed to decaying away at the end) is a cool effect. The same is true of reverb, and both are easy to do. Create a new track, and copy the first bar of the vocal into it. Reverse the bar and apply a destructive reverb or delay, with an appropriate delay time — usually one beat. Make sure the delay feedback is set relatively high to create a lengthy decay and that the destructive edit process captures the entire decay. Once it's complete, reverse it again and align it so that the very end of the new piece aligns with the very end of the first bar of the original. Mix to taste and enjoy. You can also try this with parts other than vocals. Don't be afraid of stereo delays and filtering the build-up — the sky is the limit, so have fun.
RECOVERY
Of course, this 12-step program isn't a comprehensive guide, but hopefully it has provided enough practical and creative ideas to dissolve the mental barriers that stop you from getting to know and love your DAW. Now take what you have learned and fearlessly dig deeper.
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