Subject:project stages

Posted by: Kappeesh

Date:3/12/2010 1:43:35 PM

hi all,
i have a fairly powerful computer [dell p670, 2g ram, etc] but i find my arrangements take 2 or 3 projects to complete a song.

e.g:
in proj 1 i'll have all midi using 3 or 4 soft synths rendered to a stereo track [interesting topic of realtime vs quick renders too]

in proj 2 the stereo bt and then guitars, etc using other vsts

and in proj 3 vocals [if any]

anyone use a similar process?

Subject:RE: project stages

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:3/13/2010 5:02:02 PM

I would do it all in one project, using folder tracks for each of your 'projects'. It would be kind of handy to be able to nest a whole project in a folder track, but that would require that all global project setting be identical...

Unless the resources you require are too much to run all together in reasltime.

geoff

Subject:RE: project stages

Reply by: runman

Date:3/14/2010 3:16:34 PM

I'm guessing you are lacking enough power to run large projects...same with me. I find that recording effects heavy tracks to new clips saves the processor a lot of work.

Subject:RE: project stages

Reply by: inocmusic

Date:3/14/2010 7:33:34 PM

I find that I usaually do a scratch project first.
Usually Scratch guitars and vocals. this allows me to build my drum and bass parts and see if my initial ideas will fit together in principal. do I need to do any voicing changes, feel changes now I have a solid rhythm section to get a nice clean foundation.

I use midi drums so next I'll usually take my drum part from the scratch project and export it as a MIDI file and import into template that has separate busses for Kick, Snare, Toms, Hats, Overheads, Overheads and room mics already built.
This becomes the foundation of my full project

I try to limit myself to usually an SSL channel strip per track not because of the CPU overhead (I have an 8 core machine so I've never gotten it colse to even 50% load) but more because I'd rather get the source right than try to fix in the mix

Usually bus the guitars together, drums together Keys, backing vox and FX tohther, mono vocal and mono bass to their own output busses and route to a summing mixer and take the stereo mix back to a new track in ACID (Sometimes through an outboard compressor sometimes not depending on what the mix calls for)

Anyway that's kind of a long winded way of saying I generally use at least 2 ACID projects per song project.

Subject:RE: project stages

Reply by: Kappeesh

Date:3/16/2010 11:36:41 AM

thanks for the responses all,
exactly...
an 8 core machine would be way cool. i get it done - just takes a little longer.
i'm using kontact 3 with 3 or 4 instruments loaded, at least 3 or 4 instances of amplitube and vocals sometimes. i'm sort of an fx freak too so my processor just can't handle it all. i use acoustic mirror for verb on stuff that's "important" and keep the quality on 1 for previews and 5 to render.

btw, anyone use pca format?

thanks again

Subject:RE: project stages

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:3/16/2010 1:46:48 PM

Sometimes i use PCA if i need to archive a huge recording, like fitting a 2.5 hour concert on a single CD-R. But, since only SONY's applications open .pca files i tend to always keep .wav versions around too. I don't want to have to face the situation of some day in the distant future needing to open an old recording and not having any software around that can read .pca.

Subject:RE: project stages

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:3/16/2010 2:30:44 PM

A few years ago I did, but not for project media. The filesize imperitive is no longer relevant (big cheap fast HDDs now), and there must be some (albeit small) processing overhead to be converting (decopmressing) files 'on the fly' all the time.


geoff

Subject:RE: project stages

Reply by: Kappeesh

Date:3/30/2010 2:40:30 PM

thanks for the replies...

to further clarify:

i started a major effort to 'import' all my previous ensoniq songs [literally 100s] into ap7 and had to do so 1 at a time...took a while. now i am building each song. one day was looking at how much data was accumulating and pca became my format for most of the audio. i use wavs for live recording but renders are pcas. i have fairly large drives but with over 400 songs in the works(!) it helps!