Stems, Subgroups, Etc.

This is basically our week:


To Mix in the Box:
A 1-2 out of Pro Tools into 2 Track

Creating Submixes in Pro Tools
~Group instruments together (bass and guitars, vox and bgv, drums, keyboards & whatever, 1 channel for Aux Sends) or (vox and bgv, bass and drums, keys and guitar)
~Can create a Stereo Aux Channel, or to record them to stems, stereo audio channel
~Ouput Audio Path Selector output to that particular bus
~Makes it easier to add inserts and effects, easier to navigate, decreases how much we have to think about individual tings
~Mastering engineers now accepting stems

Drum and bass tracks are out bus 5-6, and in A 1-2, guitar tracks are in bus 7-8, and out A 3-4. Then create 2 new stereo Aux tracks, send the drums and bass to one of them, the guitars to the other. The Aux channel with the drums and bass, set the input as bus 5-6. The Aux channel with guitars, set input as bus 7-8. Then, create new stereo audio channels and have their inputs bus 5-6 and bus 7-8. So this is the in-the-box stems. Then, we add two more corresponding audio tracks to go out of the box. We have to set the outputs as the Pro Tools outputs on teh patch bay you would want. Patching so far would be out ProTools 1-4 into Line 1 Inputs 37-40 (for convenience sake). Pan 37 and 39 hard left, and 38 and 40 hard right. Take the faders and put them at unity gain. Go to the top of the channel strips 37-40 at the group bus, then press the 1-2 button on the drums and bass channels, and 3-4 button on the guitar channels. Then go to the group bus 1-2 (red faders) and turn them up to unity and the gain fully clockwise, and the same with group bus 3-4. We also have to pan the group pan 1 and 3 hard left and group pan 2 and 4 hard right. To give control to the Master fader (now that it works) and just push the MIX button, and NOT the 2TK 1 (like we did before). So, we sent the audio channels from Pro Tools into tracks on the board (as a subgroup), then sent the board channels into monitor groups (another subgroup). Next, we can record stems into Pro Tools by getting two new Stereo audio channels in Pro Tools, and setting their input as something like B 1-4 (1-2 for drums and bass, 3-4 for guitars). On the patch bay, that would be group outputs 1-4 (again, 1-2 is drums and bass, 3-4 is guitars) into Pro Tools A 9-10 for drums and bass and A 11-12 for guitars. Then, we record-enable the in-the-box stems and out-the-box stems. Record them, and you have the in-the-box and out-the-box stems.




Monday and Wednesday were dedicated to the understanding of this process. Tuesday in lab, Andy and I mixed Jonsey through the box with the methods listed above and recorded stems. Basically I did it, with Andy asking questions throughout. We undid it, and I re-did it again. Then we moved onto cleaning up Raw Tracks 4, which was pretty much an awful song. There is no other way to describe it. I'm not attacking it, exactly, just stating a fact. It was tracked horribly, the drummer never found a groove, the vocalists couldn't keep in time to save their own lives, and I don't even want to talk about the guitar tracks. But we still cleaned it up as much as we could. Thursday's lab we did the same thing as Tuesday's lab, but did it pretty much for an hour and a half. Then, so our heads wouldn't explode, we looked at our 306 projects on the MTA 980. Andy's was much more impressive than mine, as I don't have the MIDI experience that he does. His flanging, frequency sweeps, and crazy automation was picked up very well through the board. Once I start changing the velocities of some of the drums and make them feel more natural. Putting effects like reverb would also help.