Tool Thursday w/ Jed Hackett.
Just about every time I contact a prospective client I can sense the fear and hesitation in their voice about editing and tuning. It is usually an up hill battle just to get that first job with them. To tell you the truth I can’t blame them. The underlying problem is a lack of trust in editors, brought about by years of inexperienced, unmusical work. I have had new clients assume that they will have to sit with me while I tune a vocal to tell me when things are sharp or flat based on their past experiences. Others are afraid that if they have a song “tightened” it will come back stiff as a board, with all traces of musicality removed from the performance. A stigma has developed with editing and it is a real shame.
How have we gotten to this point? I think we got here because most engineers would rather have their fingernails pulled out one by one with a pair of pliers, a la Syriana, than sit and tune a vocal or tweak a track. Thus the birth of the “Pro Tools Engineer”. Young engineers figured out that a great way to escape assisting was to learn Pro Tools. The older, more experienced engineers gladly handed off the mind numbing Pro Tools work to the new guys. The problem is that until engineers gain enough musical experience, they tend to edit with their eyes, not their ears.
Now let me stop here and say that I was an inexperienced new guy at one point as well. So don’t be sending me any hate mail because you think I’m looking down my nose at the new guys. What I am trying to say is that even though editing may seem simple and mindless, it takes time and experience for an engineer to develop the musicality needed not to mess things up.
I was really fortunate to work for many years with a great producer/ engineer. When I started editing for him I didn’t know my head from a whole in the ground. I would edit a bass part, send it to him, and he would send it right back and say “ It’s a little too laid back, it needs to stay aggressive. I want it to feel like a band”...or I would tighten a drum kit and he would point out parts that seemed stiff or could push or pull more. And the rules changed as we jumped from genre to genre.
The point is that if we are going to sub out editing work to newer engineers we need to oversee things and guide them in the more musical fine points of editing, just as someone did for me. It took years before I got to the point that I was editing with my ears instead of my eyes. Let’s not forget to pass on the musical knowledge needed to be a great editor as we pass on the workload.
Until next time, take care.
Jed
Showing posts with label eSession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eSession. Show all posts
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
It Should Have Been Cut Faster
Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett.
Have you ever been in the middle of overdubs and the artist or A&R person says “I don’t know... it just feels slow to me. Can you speed it up?” Fun, isn’t it. To an extent you can varispeed the track but at a certain threshold things just get silly. You can use Pitch n’ Time, which I think is the best of the time stretch tools, but even that seriously degrades the quality of your audio. You could recut but there goes your budget. So what do you do? A friend of mine and I developed a great way to speed up tracks without sacrificing all of that hard work you put in to get great sounds.
Let me first say that this is extremely time consuming but left with no other good option, it works great!
1) Use Pitch ‘n Time on a rough mix to figure out what the new tempo should be. You don’t want to guess wrong and do all of this work for nothing.
2) Make a duplicate copy of your session just in case things go horribly wrong
3) Group all of your tracks together
4) Make a duplicate playlist of all of your tracks including the click
5) Make sure all of your fades are in order and consolidate your tracks, all from the same start position to the end of the song
6) Ungroup all of your tracks and chop the click up at every 16th note (You can do eighth notes if no one is playing anything faster than eighths)
7) Regroup all of your tracks and make sure that the tab feature is set to tab to the edge of every region, not the waveform.
8) Place your cursor at the beginning of the song and tab to the first break in the click. Break all of the audio tracks at that point.
9) Make a new grid, starting from that first click, at your faster tempo
Now comes the tedious part
10) Tab to the next break in the click and break all of the audio
11) Leave your curser at that break, go to grid mode, and shift click to the new grid mark for that beat
12) Go to Shuffle mode and delete the region you just highlighted. This will move everything up to the new grid mark.
13) Repeat steps 10-12 until you are either at the end of the song or the end of your rope! Check how things are sounding after a few bars just to make sure you are on the right path... because it is a very long path.
14) Save another duplicate copy of your session just in case something goes wrong in this next step
15) Ungroup your tracks and start smoothing out all of your edit points. For the most part you can just get rid of the edits on an instrument that occur in the middle of a note. In the case of some longer sustained notes you may have to mess with the end of the notes a bit to get things to sound right. For example, if your drum kit is for the most part an eighth note pattern you can simply get rid of the edits that occur on the 16th notes and crossfade at the beginning of every eighth note. You may however have a guitar note that is held out, and in order for the end of the note to sound natural you may have to crossfade at some point during the note to get a natural ending. This method of speeding things up works even with the occasional triplet fill or lick, just drag the edit points to the beginning of the notes. Every once in a while you may have to nudge a lick here or there depending on how far you are moving the tempo. Vocals can be tricky with this but of the 5 or 6 tracks that I have done this way we only had to recut vocals on one because the phrasing got a little to weird.
16) Consolidate your new tracks when you have all of the edits smoothed out
17) Go to your regions menu and get rid of the thousands of unused regions that you just created. Et Fine!
I used this method for a couple of songs on a country record and 3 or 4 songs on a metal record. On both projects the tracks needed to be sped up anywhere between 5 - 10 bpm. Not an ideal situation to be in but you have to give the artists and labels what they want. It took me about 2 days per track, so it is not a quick fix but in the end the sonic integrity of your recording is maintained and you will be surprised at how natural it sounds. Just put on NPR or some republican talk radio show, depending on your political slant, while your chopping the tracks up and it won’t seem so bad.
Take care,
Jed
Have you ever been in the middle of overdubs and the artist or A&R person says “I don’t know... it just feels slow to me. Can you speed it up?” Fun, isn’t it. To an extent you can varispeed the track but at a certain threshold things just get silly. You can use Pitch n’ Time, which I think is the best of the time stretch tools, but even that seriously degrades the quality of your audio. You could recut but there goes your budget. So what do you do? A friend of mine and I developed a great way to speed up tracks without sacrificing all of that hard work you put in to get great sounds.
Let me first say that this is extremely time consuming but left with no other good option, it works great!
1) Use Pitch ‘n Time on a rough mix to figure out what the new tempo should be. You don’t want to guess wrong and do all of this work for nothing.
2) Make a duplicate copy of your session just in case things go horribly wrong
3) Group all of your tracks together
4) Make a duplicate playlist of all of your tracks including the click
5) Make sure all of your fades are in order and consolidate your tracks, all from the same start position to the end of the song
6) Ungroup all of your tracks and chop the click up at every 16th note (You can do eighth notes if no one is playing anything faster than eighths)
7) Regroup all of your tracks and make sure that the tab feature is set to tab to the edge of every region, not the waveform.
8) Place your cursor at the beginning of the song and tab to the first break in the click. Break all of the audio tracks at that point.
9) Make a new grid, starting from that first click, at your faster tempo
Now comes the tedious part
10) Tab to the next break in the click and break all of the audio
11) Leave your curser at that break, go to grid mode, and shift click to the new grid mark for that beat
12) Go to Shuffle mode and delete the region you just highlighted. This will move everything up to the new grid mark.
13) Repeat steps 10-12 until you are either at the end of the song or the end of your rope! Check how things are sounding after a few bars just to make sure you are on the right path... because it is a very long path.
14) Save another duplicate copy of your session just in case something goes wrong in this next step
15) Ungroup your tracks and start smoothing out all of your edit points. For the most part you can just get rid of the edits on an instrument that occur in the middle of a note. In the case of some longer sustained notes you may have to mess with the end of the notes a bit to get things to sound right. For example, if your drum kit is for the most part an eighth note pattern you can simply get rid of the edits that occur on the 16th notes and crossfade at the beginning of every eighth note. You may however have a guitar note that is held out, and in order for the end of the note to sound natural you may have to crossfade at some point during the note to get a natural ending. This method of speeding things up works even with the occasional triplet fill or lick, just drag the edit points to the beginning of the notes. Every once in a while you may have to nudge a lick here or there depending on how far you are moving the tempo. Vocals can be tricky with this but of the 5 or 6 tracks that I have done this way we only had to recut vocals on one because the phrasing got a little to weird.
16) Consolidate your new tracks when you have all of the edits smoothed out
17) Go to your regions menu and get rid of the thousands of unused regions that you just created. Et Fine!
I used this method for a couple of songs on a country record and 3 or 4 songs on a metal record. On both projects the tracks needed to be sped up anywhere between 5 - 10 bpm. Not an ideal situation to be in but you have to give the artists and labels what they want. It took me about 2 days per track, so it is not a quick fix but in the end the sonic integrity of your recording is maintained and you will be surprised at how natural it sounds. Just put on NPR or some republican talk radio show, depending on your political slant, while your chopping the tracks up and it won’t seem so bad.
Take care,
Jed
Thursday, February 28, 2008
AutoTune RTAS Not TDM
Tool Thursday w/ Jed Hackett.
This may already be common knowledge but just incase you haven’t heard of this, here goes. Use AutoTune in RTAS mode, not TDM. Enough said... see you next week.
O.K. I’ll explain it. AutoTune use to track really well in TDM mode, but right around the release of AutoTune 3 they did something that although sonically gave a better result, it messed with the tracking and all of a sudden AutoTune wouldn’t track worth a darn in TDM mode. I don’t know what they did but it was really frustrating. I found that it was particularly bad with vocals cut at low levels. I nearly gave up on Antares until a friend of mine discovered that AutoTune would track much better in RTAS mode. So I switched to using AutoTune in RTAS mode and it tracks like a charm. I’ve been using it that way ever since.
The only downfall with this is that even with delay compensation On, you still get a 2 to 3 millisecond delay and it will vary roughly 1 millisecond either direction depending on how much processing Autotune is having to do to correct the pitch. I don’t know for sure, but that delay may change depending on how fast your cpu is... and for those of you on LE, the delay will be different as well, so double check the position of the tuned track relative to the original track when you are done. The thing is, to me, I would rather nudge the final tuned track forward 2 milliseconds than deal with poor tracking. And for the most part, there are few singers that couldn’t use a little nudge back in the pocket. The end result with the delay, once you nudge the tuned track forward, is an unbelievably small fluctuation of 0 - 1 milliseconds on the tuned vocal track.
I know I am going to once again spark the Melodyne vs. WavesTune vs. AutoTune debate with this article but so be it, everyone has their own valid opinion. I tune with AutoTune RTAS in graphic mode and get great transparent results. If you use something else and like it then don’t change... but if you’re using AutoTune, I highly recommend you switch to RTAS mode.
‘til next time… take care,
Jed
This may already be common knowledge but just incase you haven’t heard of this, here goes. Use AutoTune in RTAS mode, not TDM. Enough said... see you next week.
O.K. I’ll explain it. AutoTune use to track really well in TDM mode, but right around the release of AutoTune 3 they did something that although sonically gave a better result, it messed with the tracking and all of a sudden AutoTune wouldn’t track worth a darn in TDM mode. I don’t know what they did but it was really frustrating. I found that it was particularly bad with vocals cut at low levels. I nearly gave up on Antares until a friend of mine discovered that AutoTune would track much better in RTAS mode. So I switched to using AutoTune in RTAS mode and it tracks like a charm. I’ve been using it that way ever since.
The only downfall with this is that even with delay compensation On, you still get a 2 to 3 millisecond delay and it will vary roughly 1 millisecond either direction depending on how much processing Autotune is having to do to correct the pitch. I don’t know for sure, but that delay may change depending on how fast your cpu is... and for those of you on LE, the delay will be different as well, so double check the position of the tuned track relative to the original track when you are done. The thing is, to me, I would rather nudge the final tuned track forward 2 milliseconds than deal with poor tracking. And for the most part, there are few singers that couldn’t use a little nudge back in the pocket. The end result with the delay, once you nudge the tuned track forward, is an unbelievably small fluctuation of 0 - 1 milliseconds on the tuned vocal track.
I know I am going to once again spark the Melodyne vs. WavesTune vs. AutoTune debate with this article but so be it, everyone has their own valid opinion. I tune with AutoTune RTAS in graphic mode and get great transparent results. If you use something else and like it then don’t change... but if you’re using AutoTune, I highly recommend you switch to RTAS mode.
‘til next time… take care,
Jed
AutoTune RTAS Not TDM
Tool Thursday w/ Jed Hackett.
This may already be common knowledge but just incase you haven’t heard of this, here goes. Use AutoTune in RTAS mode, not TDM. Enough said... see you next week.
O.K. I’ll explain it. AutoTune use to track really well in TDM mode, but right around the release of AutoTune 3 they did something that although sonically gave a better result, it messed with the tracking and all of a sudden AutoTune wouldn’t track worth a darn in TDM mode. I don’t know what they did but it was really frustrating. I found that it was particularly bad with vocals cut at low levels. I nearly gave up on Antares until a friend of mine discovered that AutoTune would track much better in RTAS mode. So I switched to using AutoTune in RTAS mode and it tracks like a charm. I’ve been using it that way ever since.
The only downfall with this is that even with delay compensation On, you still get a 2 to 3 millisecond delay and it will vary roughly 1 millisecond either direction depending on how much processing Autotune is having to do to correct the pitch. I don’t know for sure, but that delay may change depending on how fast your cpu is... and for those of you on LE, the delay will be different as well, so double check the position of the tuned track relative to the original track when you are done. The thing is, to me, I would rather nudge the final tuned track forward 2 milliseconds than deal with poor tracking. And for the most part, there are few singers that couldn’t use a little nudge back in the pocket. The end result with the delay, once you nudge the tuned track forward, is an unbelievably small fluctuation of 0 - 1 milliseconds on the tuned vocal track.
I know I am going to once again spark the Melodyne vs. WavesTune vs. AutoTune debate with this article but so be it, everyone has their own valid opinion. I tune with AutoTune RTAS in graphic mode and get great transparent results. If you use something else and like it then don’t change... but if you’re using AutoTune, I highly recommend you switch to RTAS mode.
‘til next time… take care,
Jed
This may already be common knowledge but just incase you haven’t heard of this, here goes. Use AutoTune in RTAS mode, not TDM. Enough said... see you next week.
O.K. I’ll explain it. AutoTune use to track really well in TDM mode, but right around the release of AutoTune 3 they did something that although sonically gave a better result, it messed with the tracking and all of a sudden AutoTune wouldn’t track worth a darn in TDM mode. I don’t know what they did but it was really frustrating. I found that it was particularly bad with vocals cut at low levels. I nearly gave up on Antares until a friend of mine discovered that AutoTune would track much better in RTAS mode. So I switched to using AutoTune in RTAS mode and it tracks like a charm. I’ve been using it that way ever since.
The only downfall with this is that even with delay compensation On, you still get a 2 to 3 millisecond delay and it will vary roughly 1 millisecond either direction depending on how much processing Autotune is having to do to correct the pitch. I don’t know for sure, but that delay may change depending on how fast your cpu is... and for those of you on LE, the delay will be different as well, so double check the position of the tuned track relative to the original track when you are done. The thing is, to me, I would rather nudge the final tuned track forward 2 milliseconds than deal with poor tracking. And for the most part, there are few singers that couldn’t use a little nudge back in the pocket. The end result with the delay, once you nudge the tuned track forward, is an unbelievably small fluctuation of 0 - 1 milliseconds on the tuned vocal track.
I know I am going to once again spark the Melodyne vs. WavesTune vs. AutoTune debate with this article but so be it, everyone has their own valid opinion. I tune with AutoTune RTAS in graphic mode and get great transparent results. If you use something else and like it then don’t change... but if you’re using AutoTune, I highly recommend you switch to RTAS mode.
‘til next time… take care,
Jed
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The Grid Ain’t Right!
Tool Thursday w/ Jed Hackett.
I’m often really glad that with the coming of Pro Tools we are now able to see what is going on, not just hear it. The grid is an invaluable tool both with time and pitch. I use to dread flying backgrounds from one chorus to another, either with a sampler or a 1/2” machine. Thank god for Pro Tools and the grid! But the fact that we can now see the grid has brought about it’s overuse.
I get lots of people who tell me I should give beat detective another try. That it is much improved and it could save me a lot of time lining up drums. They know I sit and edit the song manually and they just want to help save me some time. I usually just nod and politely say thanks because the advice is coming from good friends who are also great engineers and I don’t wish to offend them. The problem is, the grid ain’t right.
The classical world calls it rubato, the pop world calls it groove... and it doesn’t live on the grid. There is a reason that the drummer is laying back the high hat in between the kick and snare, or rushing a fill, or pulling a fill back, or laying the snare back within the groove. There is a reason that the drums have pulled back while the guitars push forward in certain heavy grooves. There is a reason the piano is pushing and pulling in a pop ballad. An alto sax just doesn’t sound the same when it isn’t just a bit sharp. Etc. ad nauseum!
There are plenty of times when the performance can be spruced up a bit with some editing and tuning, and that’s how I make my living. However, you have to be careful that you only move those parts of a performance that detract from the whole; that you are correcting mistakes and not vibe. When we go through a song chopping the drums at every note, then quantizing them, we very often lose the groove. Overall the track may settle a bit because it now has consistency, but you’ll notice something is missing. Usually people will just deal with that lose because they just can’t take the mistakes in the original performance. I’d like to give you a few things to think about that may help you keep the musicality in a performance while editing.
1) Before you start to edit, listen to the song as a whole and get a feel for what is going on, the vibe of the track
2) Start with the instrument that is the driving force in the groove. It may not be the drums, it could be the acoustic or the piano. Go through that track first and fix what bothers you. All the while keeping in mind the overall sense for the groove that you first got when you listened to the whole track. Pay close attention with your ears, not your eyes. Use the grid only to help you verify what your ears are hearing. If the snare is right on the grid but it feels rushed, then it is rushed so pull it back. It was an eye opening experience when a producer convinced me of that. He was insisting that the snare was early and I was insisting that it was dead on the grid. I pulled it back for him and darn if he wasn’t right! That was the day I stopped worshiping at the alter of the grid.
3) Once you have that key track tweaked so that it feels really good, then go to the next key element, and so on and so forth. All the while only using the grid to help you verify what you are hearing, not necessarily to place everything on the grid.
4) When you get to the end of things, go back to the original playlists on everything and A/B it with what you did. Make sure what you have done is an improvement. If not, figure out why and make the changes.
Here are some more specific tips that can be useful to you:
1) One really helpful hint is to find a part of the song where things feel really good and zoom in, analyze what is going on and why it feels so good. If you notice a pattern in how a particular instrument was played, mimic that feel in the rest of the song where appropriate. For example, if you find that the drummer is 3 or 6 milliseconds back on the high hat in relation to the rest of the kit and you have figured out that is the reason you like those couple of bars so much, then take that in to consideration when you are tweaking the drum track and where appropriate mimic that feel.
2) Sometimes on a shuffle feel everyone has a different idea as to how far to swing, so I usually find an instrument that has the groove nailed and measure the swing on the upbeats. If I find a consistent pattern, I will use that amount of swing when I find an instrument that just didn’t get the groove and I have to fix it.
3) If you need to tighten a track, you can get away with clamping down more on drums, bass and acoustic. Then if you let the electrics, keys and vocals float more, you’ll get the stability you want in a track yet maintain the raw energy.
4) If in doubt, always tweak less. I always err on the side of less and if at the end I find out I need to go farther, then it is really easy to do so. Once you go there, it is hard to go back. If you over tighten you’ll end up starting over from the original track. And that’s no fun.
Well I think this article is long enough and it’s too nice out today not to go running. Talk to you soon.
Take care,
Jed
I’m often really glad that with the coming of Pro Tools we are now able to see what is going on, not just hear it. The grid is an invaluable tool both with time and pitch. I use to dread flying backgrounds from one chorus to another, either with a sampler or a 1/2” machine. Thank god for Pro Tools and the grid! But the fact that we can now see the grid has brought about it’s overuse.
I get lots of people who tell me I should give beat detective another try. That it is much improved and it could save me a lot of time lining up drums. They know I sit and edit the song manually and they just want to help save me some time. I usually just nod and politely say thanks because the advice is coming from good friends who are also great engineers and I don’t wish to offend them. The problem is, the grid ain’t right.
The classical world calls it rubato, the pop world calls it groove... and it doesn’t live on the grid. There is a reason that the drummer is laying back the high hat in between the kick and snare, or rushing a fill, or pulling a fill back, or laying the snare back within the groove. There is a reason that the drums have pulled back while the guitars push forward in certain heavy grooves. There is a reason the piano is pushing and pulling in a pop ballad. An alto sax just doesn’t sound the same when it isn’t just a bit sharp. Etc. ad nauseum!
There are plenty of times when the performance can be spruced up a bit with some editing and tuning, and that’s how I make my living. However, you have to be careful that you only move those parts of a performance that detract from the whole; that you are correcting mistakes and not vibe. When we go through a song chopping the drums at every note, then quantizing them, we very often lose the groove. Overall the track may settle a bit because it now has consistency, but you’ll notice something is missing. Usually people will just deal with that lose because they just can’t take the mistakes in the original performance. I’d like to give you a few things to think about that may help you keep the musicality in a performance while editing.
1) Before you start to edit, listen to the song as a whole and get a feel for what is going on, the vibe of the track
2) Start with the instrument that is the driving force in the groove. It may not be the drums, it could be the acoustic or the piano. Go through that track first and fix what bothers you. All the while keeping in mind the overall sense for the groove that you first got when you listened to the whole track. Pay close attention with your ears, not your eyes. Use the grid only to help you verify what your ears are hearing. If the snare is right on the grid but it feels rushed, then it is rushed so pull it back. It was an eye opening experience when a producer convinced me of that. He was insisting that the snare was early and I was insisting that it was dead on the grid. I pulled it back for him and darn if he wasn’t right! That was the day I stopped worshiping at the alter of the grid.
3) Once you have that key track tweaked so that it feels really good, then go to the next key element, and so on and so forth. All the while only using the grid to help you verify what you are hearing, not necessarily to place everything on the grid.
4) When you get to the end of things, go back to the original playlists on everything and A/B it with what you did. Make sure what you have done is an improvement. If not, figure out why and make the changes.
Here are some more specific tips that can be useful to you:
1) One really helpful hint is to find a part of the song where things feel really good and zoom in, analyze what is going on and why it feels so good. If you notice a pattern in how a particular instrument was played, mimic that feel in the rest of the song where appropriate. For example, if you find that the drummer is 3 or 6 milliseconds back on the high hat in relation to the rest of the kit and you have figured out that is the reason you like those couple of bars so much, then take that in to consideration when you are tweaking the drum track and where appropriate mimic that feel.
2) Sometimes on a shuffle feel everyone has a different idea as to how far to swing, so I usually find an instrument that has the groove nailed and measure the swing on the upbeats. If I find a consistent pattern, I will use that amount of swing when I find an instrument that just didn’t get the groove and I have to fix it.
3) If you need to tighten a track, you can get away with clamping down more on drums, bass and acoustic. Then if you let the electrics, keys and vocals float more, you’ll get the stability you want in a track yet maintain the raw energy.
4) If in doubt, always tweak less. I always err on the side of less and if at the end I find out I need to go farther, then it is really easy to do so. Once you go there, it is hard to go back. If you over tighten you’ll end up starting over from the original track. And that’s no fun.
Well I think this article is long enough and it’s too nice out today not to go running. Talk to you soon.
Take care,
Jed
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Knowing When To Make A U-Turn
Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett.
I just recently edited a track for a client... drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, etc. As I worked, everything seemed to be falling into place quite nicely as usual. However, when I finished with the track something just wasn’t settling with me about it. Usually when I get that settled feeling I know everything is right. With this track I just couldn’t get to that point. Each part individually seemed to groove but the whole picture just seemed a bit off. When I went back to the original playlist I realized that even though it had problems, the underlying groove felt better to me. I knew I couldn’t just leave the track in it’s original state because it did have a jerky feeling to it that the producer wanted to fix, but there was something that had gotten lost in all of my tweaking.
I started comparing the two versions closely and decided to switch back to the original playlists on the electrics in the choruses, let some of the lead instruments and vocals rush a bit more and pushed some of drums fills. I ended up with a compromise between the original and the tweaked track. Once I did that I finally got that settled feeling and knew it was right.
When we dive into editing, or tuning for that matter, it is easy to lose perspective, even when we are aware that it can happen. When I finish a track I always go back to the original playlists and compare it to my tweaked version just to make sure I did the song justice. I usually find a few things that I like more about the original and incorporate them into the final product. I think the hardest thing to do as an engineer is to know when to turn around. There are plenty of times when we can use technology to enhance the music we work on, but we have to possess enough humility to know when we’re just messing things up.
See you next week,
Jed
I just recently edited a track for a client... drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, etc. As I worked, everything seemed to be falling into place quite nicely as usual. However, when I finished with the track something just wasn’t settling with me about it. Usually when I get that settled feeling I know everything is right. With this track I just couldn’t get to that point. Each part individually seemed to groove but the whole picture just seemed a bit off. When I went back to the original playlist I realized that even though it had problems, the underlying groove felt better to me. I knew I couldn’t just leave the track in it’s original state because it did have a jerky feeling to it that the producer wanted to fix, but there was something that had gotten lost in all of my tweaking.
I started comparing the two versions closely and decided to switch back to the original playlists on the electrics in the choruses, let some of the lead instruments and vocals rush a bit more and pushed some of drums fills. I ended up with a compromise between the original and the tweaked track. Once I did that I finally got that settled feeling and knew it was right.
When we dive into editing, or tuning for that matter, it is easy to lose perspective, even when we are aware that it can happen. When I finish a track I always go back to the original playlists and compare it to my tweaked version just to make sure I did the song justice. I usually find a few things that I like more about the original and incorporate them into the final product. I think the hardest thing to do as an engineer is to know when to turn around. There are plenty of times when we can use technology to enhance the music we work on, but we have to possess enough humility to know when we’re just messing things up.
See you next week,
Jed
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Trashing Those Preferences
Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett...
Is your Pro Tools rig prone to crashes? One source of trouble for your rig are preferences. Certain changes you make to your Pro Tools session are stored in temporary files called preferences. For instance, when you change your hardware, playback engine, or preference settings, those changes are stored in preference files. When Pro Tools crashes, those preferences are easily corrupted. If you don’t get rid of them after a crash you are much more likely to experience more crashes until you do.
Note: PC users consult with digidesign about this before you do it. This is meant for mac users.
After a crash you should throw away the following files found in Home>Library>Preferences:
1)DAE Prefs
2)Digisetup.OSX
3)Pro Tools v7.x Preferences
4)com.digidesign.ProToolsHD.plist
Next, on each hard drive connected to your system there is a folder called digidesign databases. Trash that as well. Don’t worry, Pro Tools will rebuild all the files that you just trashed the next time you fire up the program.
Once you have thrown those files away, reboot your computer. When the mac reboots, it will repair any damage to the boot up drive before launching OSX.
After your mac reboots, open the disk utility program located in Applications>Utilities. You will notice that for each drive on your system the disk utility lists the technical name for the drive and underneath is the name you gave the drive when you formated it. For example 233.8 GB Maxtor 7Y250MO>Mac Drive. Click on the tech name for the drive so that it is highlighted and click Repair Disk Permissions. This will take just a minute or two. The disk permissions are also easily corrupted and repairing them will help alleviate problems.
Next, launch the Pro Tools software, then open the session you were working on. Pro Tools will be just a bit more sluggish opening up for the first time after you follow these steps; it has to rebuild the files that you just trashed. Pro Tools will set your preferences back to the factory presets.
The last step is to set your session settings back to the way you like to work. For those of you that don’t live and breath Pro Tools tech geek stuff, here are some basic settings to restore:
1) Under Options> turn on Quick Punch and Mute Frees Assigned Voice. Also, make sure your Delay Compensation is set as you want it. On if you’re mixing, Off if you’re recording.
2)Go to Setup> I/O and make sure your I/O settings are back to normal. How you set them will depend on the type and number of I/O’s you have.
3) Under Setup>Preferences>Display turn off Tools and Tips. I don’t know about you, but the constant pop up bubbles drive me nuts!
4) Under Setup>Preferences>Operation choose Record Online at Insertion Selection. For Open Ended Record Allocation Select Limit to XX Minutes. Set the number of minutes to the maximum amount of time that you would ever need to record a song, for most people that would be 10 minutes. Lastly, make sure that AutoSave is turned on.
5) Under Setup>Preferences>Editing change Conversion Quality to Tweakhead (Slowest).
6) If you have Pitch N Time or another TC/E plug-in, under Setup>Preferences>Processing change the TC/E Plug-in back to the one you wish to use. If you don’t have an alternate TC/E program just leave this setting alone.
Now that you have set things back to normal you are all set to go. This may seem like a lot to go through but it is well worth it. You will have fewer crashes and less stress.
Take care,
Jed
Is your Pro Tools rig prone to crashes? One source of trouble for your rig are preferences. Certain changes you make to your Pro Tools session are stored in temporary files called preferences. For instance, when you change your hardware, playback engine, or preference settings, those changes are stored in preference files. When Pro Tools crashes, those preferences are easily corrupted. If you don’t get rid of them after a crash you are much more likely to experience more crashes until you do.
Note: PC users consult with digidesign about this before you do it. This is meant for mac users.
After a crash you should throw away the following files found in Home>Library>Preferences:
1)DAE Prefs
2)Digisetup.OSX
3)Pro Tools v7.x Preferences
4)com.digidesign.ProToolsHD.plist
Next, on each hard drive connected to your system there is a folder called digidesign databases. Trash that as well. Don’t worry, Pro Tools will rebuild all the files that you just trashed the next time you fire up the program.
Once you have thrown those files away, reboot your computer. When the mac reboots, it will repair any damage to the boot up drive before launching OSX.
After your mac reboots, open the disk utility program located in Applications>Utilities. You will notice that for each drive on your system the disk utility lists the technical name for the drive and underneath is the name you gave the drive when you formated it. For example 233.8 GB Maxtor 7Y250MO>Mac Drive. Click on the tech name for the drive so that it is highlighted and click Repair Disk Permissions. This will take just a minute or two. The disk permissions are also easily corrupted and repairing them will help alleviate problems.
Next, launch the Pro Tools software, then open the session you were working on. Pro Tools will be just a bit more sluggish opening up for the first time after you follow these steps; it has to rebuild the files that you just trashed. Pro Tools will set your preferences back to the factory presets.
The last step is to set your session settings back to the way you like to work. For those of you that don’t live and breath Pro Tools tech geek stuff, here are some basic settings to restore:
1) Under Options> turn on Quick Punch and Mute Frees Assigned Voice. Also, make sure your Delay Compensation is set as you want it. On if you’re mixing, Off if you’re recording.
2)Go to Setup> I/O and make sure your I/O settings are back to normal. How you set them will depend on the type and number of I/O’s you have.
3) Under Setup>Preferences>Display turn off Tools and Tips. I don’t know about you, but the constant pop up bubbles drive me nuts!
4) Under Setup>Preferences>Operation choose Record Online at Insertion Selection. For Open Ended Record Allocation Select Limit to XX Minutes. Set the number of minutes to the maximum amount of time that you would ever need to record a song, for most people that would be 10 minutes. Lastly, make sure that AutoSave is turned on.
5) Under Setup>Preferences>Editing change Conversion Quality to Tweakhead (Slowest).
6) If you have Pitch N Time or another TC/E plug-in, under Setup>Preferences>Processing change the TC/E Plug-in back to the one you wish to use. If you don’t have an alternate TC/E program just leave this setting alone.
Now that you have set things back to normal you are all set to go. This may seem like a lot to go through but it is well worth it. You will have fewer crashes and less stress.
Take care,
Jed
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
deliver me a house
check out this story on how one of our eTalent members, Byron House (bass) saved the dixie chicks tour!
dixiechicks.msn.com
image by bryan sutton
peace!
dixiechicks.msn.com
image by bryan sutton
peace!
Thursday, December 6, 2007
tool thursday, with jed hackett...
Clean Up Your Room! Or in This Case, Session.
So you’ve got your tracks cut, overdubs complete, and things are all tweaked up and ready to be shipped off to your favorite mix engineer. Let’s talk about a few things you should do to make everyone’s lives a little bit easier.
First of all, save your mix as My Song for (some engineer with three names) so that when you clean things up you don’t lose your original files. Now it’s time to do a little house cleaning. Get rid of every track that you are not using from your new session. Then remove every alternate playlist from the tracks that you are keeping. If you have a hidden playlist that you would like to include with your session, make a new track and bring that hidden playlist to the top layer of that track making sure you label it appropriately, like “Alternate guitar solo”. The idea is to only have the tracks that you want the mix engineer to use in the mix, in this session, with no alternate playlists.
The next part requires a little communication with your mix engineer. Find out what plug-ins they have on their rig. If you are using a plug-in that they do not have and it is critical to the sound of an instrument, say Guitar Rig or Amp Farm, then you should print a track for them with the audio processed by that plug-in. If you have soft synths like Trilogy or Stylus in your session, make sure you print those tracks as well. You may also have a chat with them about the size of your session and see if they would like you to submix any parts together, like the 16 tracks of Oohs you put in the chorus. See if they like automation and plug-ins left in the session. Some engineers like to build off what you already have going on and others just want a clean slate. If you use the comments field to leave notes about the tracks, make sure you leave that field open so they realize you have left comments. You may also want to warn them that they should look for the comments. It’s also not a bad idea to print a rough mix for the engineer so they know what you and the A&R department have gotten use to.
Now that you are on the same page with your mix engineer, it’s time to clean up the remaining tracks. Go through and check that all of your crossfades are clean… you did put in crossfades, didn’t you? Clear out any unwanted noises between phrases, check that you didn’t cut off any breaths on your lead vocal, etc. Once you are sure you have everything all neat and tidy, no laundry on the floor, go ahead and copy the first click of the song from the click track to every track that you have. This will give the mixer a fail safe way to line up your tracks if for some reason they aren’t lining up when he/she spots them in their session. ( And don’t be putting a click over some audio you intend to use at the top of the song! Make sure you paste these clicks before everything starts.) Now consolidate every track from the same start point to the end of the last piece of audio in the session. Once you so this, every track will have only one piece of audio, start and end at the same point in time, and have a click at the front just in case.
The next thing you need to do now that you have cleaned up all the clutter is to empty out the trash. Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, as I said before, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
The final step is to Create a new folder on your drive entitled Ready to Mix and save a copy of your mix session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. Also check the box labeled Session Plug-in Settings Folder. If you don’t check these boxes, your audio files and plug-in settings won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Congratulations! You now have a very neat, organized and hopefully idiot proof session to send to your mix engineer. If you follow these steps you will quickly become one of their favorite clients. Cleaning things up like this can cut hours off of their set up time and leave them more time to do what they do best…mix. It may even translate into cheaper rates for you in the future!
Mixers, please write in with any other helpful advise on this subject. Thanks and see you next week.
Jed
So you’ve got your tracks cut, overdubs complete, and things are all tweaked up and ready to be shipped off to your favorite mix engineer. Let’s talk about a few things you should do to make everyone’s lives a little bit easier.
First of all, save your mix as My Song for (some engineer with three names) so that when you clean things up you don’t lose your original files. Now it’s time to do a little house cleaning. Get rid of every track that you are not using from your new session. Then remove every alternate playlist from the tracks that you are keeping. If you have a hidden playlist that you would like to include with your session, make a new track and bring that hidden playlist to the top layer of that track making sure you label it appropriately, like “Alternate guitar solo”. The idea is to only have the tracks that you want the mix engineer to use in the mix, in this session, with no alternate playlists.
The next part requires a little communication with your mix engineer. Find out what plug-ins they have on their rig. If you are using a plug-in that they do not have and it is critical to the sound of an instrument, say Guitar Rig or Amp Farm, then you should print a track for them with the audio processed by that plug-in. If you have soft synths like Trilogy or Stylus in your session, make sure you print those tracks as well. You may also have a chat with them about the size of your session and see if they would like you to submix any parts together, like the 16 tracks of Oohs you put in the chorus. See if they like automation and plug-ins left in the session. Some engineers like to build off what you already have going on and others just want a clean slate. If you use the comments field to leave notes about the tracks, make sure you leave that field open so they realize you have left comments. You may also want to warn them that they should look for the comments. It’s also not a bad idea to print a rough mix for the engineer so they know what you and the A&R department have gotten use to.
Now that you are on the same page with your mix engineer, it’s time to clean up the remaining tracks. Go through and check that all of your crossfades are clean… you did put in crossfades, didn’t you? Clear out any unwanted noises between phrases, check that you didn’t cut off any breaths on your lead vocal, etc. Once you are sure you have everything all neat and tidy, no laundry on the floor, go ahead and copy the first click of the song from the click track to every track that you have. This will give the mixer a fail safe way to line up your tracks if for some reason they aren’t lining up when he/she spots them in their session. ( And don’t be putting a click over some audio you intend to use at the top of the song! Make sure you paste these clicks before everything starts.) Now consolidate every track from the same start point to the end of the last piece of audio in the session. Once you so this, every track will have only one piece of audio, start and end at the same point in time, and have a click at the front just in case.
The next thing you need to do now that you have cleaned up all the clutter is to empty out the trash. Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, as I said before, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
The final step is to Create a new folder on your drive entitled Ready to Mix and save a copy of your mix session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. Also check the box labeled Session Plug-in Settings Folder. If you don’t check these boxes, your audio files and plug-in settings won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Congratulations! You now have a very neat, organized and hopefully idiot proof session to send to your mix engineer. If you follow these steps you will quickly become one of their favorite clients. Cleaning things up like this can cut hours off of their set up time and leave them more time to do what they do best…mix. It may even translate into cheaper rates for you in the future!
Mixers, please write in with any other helpful advise on this subject. Thanks and see you next week.
Jed
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
tool thursday, with jed hackett...
Hello everyone! I have been asked by the powers that be to head up a weekly column on the esession.com blog called “Tool Thursdays”. I’ll be talking everything Pro Tools... editing tricks, session management, how best to format your audio when sharing files with musicians and engineers through esession.com, etc. Some articles will be targeted toward the musicians and artists using the site. Other articles may be more useful to you engineers out there, so keep checking in weekly and I’m sure you’ll find something useful. Most importantly, this should be a collaborative effort. I’m just a fellow engineer working in the trenches. Everything I know comes from either finding things out the hard way or advice from friends in the business, so please write in with any useful information or commentary you may have on a particular topic. The first few articles are going to be about session organization with respect to using esession.com. Hopefully they will help you all save time, hassle and maybe even money when working through the site. Once I get through some of the basics with esession.com I’ll get more into tricks of the trade type stuff. That said... here we go!
Let’s talk first about how to format your files when you are using esession.com to send them to a musician for an overdub. The simpler you make things, the easier it will be for the musician you hire to download the files and get moving with your overdubs. That will save the musician time and hassle, and save you money in the future because the musician will know on future projects that you have your act together and they won’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you sent them.
When sending files to a musician through esession.com, make some submixes so that the musician has a little bit of control over what they hear yet they don’t have to doanload and import every one of your tracks. Not all of us may have a blazing fast internet connection and we don’t want to be uploading and downloading things for an hour.
Note: Make sure you read and understand all of this clearly or you may accidentally erase your files!
1)The first thing you should do is save your session under a new name like- “Song Name” for John Doe ODs. That way you won’t mess up your session and lose all of your hard work. I can’t overstate how important this step is!! Don’t follow the rest of these instructions until you have done this!
2) Set up a rough mix as you like it, then create new stereo audio tracks and label them Drum Stem, Bass Stem, Guitar Stem, Keys Stem, Vocal Stem etc. Obviously the Bass could be mono. Make it as few stems as you can while leaving the musician a little room to tweak things as they want to hear them. Also, ask the musician if they have a preference as to how you set up the stems. For example, I work with a percussionist here in Nashville that likes to have the acoustic guitar printed separately from everything else.
3) Bus the drums to the drum stem track, guitars to the guitar stem track, etc.
4) Print the tracks. By making your stems this way, all the musician will have to do is place every tracks’ volume at zero and they will get your mix, yet they can adjust things if need be.
5) Select every track in your session that is not a stem track or the click and delete them from this new session that you created. You will be getting rid of all of your original tracks, leaving just the stems and click.
6) Delete all unused playlists from the session. In the playlist menu next to one of your track’s name select delete unused to clear out all unused playlists.
7) Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
Note: You should now be left with only your stems and click within this new session.
8) Cut and paste the first click from the click track to every stem. On a few occasions I have found this useful when for some reason the audio time stamp gets messed up. As a last resort your musician can use the click at the top of each track to line up all of the tracks in their DAW.
9) Consolidate all of your stems with the click at the front, making sure you do so from the same start point on every track. To do this, in the edit window, highlight every track from the same start position to the end of the song and choose Consolidate under the Edit menu. It may also be helpful to do so in grid mode if you are using a grid.
10) Remove all unused audio again from the session. In the Regions menu choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove, not “delete”!
11) Create a new folder on you drive entitled Esession Stems for Musician, or something like that.
12) Save a copy of your stem session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. If you don’t check that box, your audio files won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Note: When the musician sends you back the tracks they recorded for you, have them place the same click at the front of their overdub tracks to ensure you have a fail-safe incase the time stamp is off. I’m sure we all have forgotten to spot a track at least once in our careers.
You should now have a very neat and orderly session with only the audio that you intend to send to the musician. If they are using Pro Tools, you can send them the entire session folder and they are good to go. If they are on another DAW, you can send them the audio files in the audio files folder and all they will have to do is import them into a session, spot them to the correct time stamp location and start overdubbing. No Hassles! No irate phone calls or e-mails!
I hope this is helpful to everyone. Please write in if you have any other comments on this subject.
Take care,
Jed Hackett
etalent engineer (editing) esession.com/jedhackett
Let’s talk first about how to format your files when you are using esession.com to send them to a musician for an overdub. The simpler you make things, the easier it will be for the musician you hire to download the files and get moving with your overdubs. That will save the musician time and hassle, and save you money in the future because the musician will know on future projects that you have your act together and they won’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you sent them.
When sending files to a musician through esession.com, make some submixes so that the musician has a little bit of control over what they hear yet they don’t have to doanload and import every one of your tracks. Not all of us may have a blazing fast internet connection and we don’t want to be uploading and downloading things for an hour.
Note: Make sure you read and understand all of this clearly or you may accidentally erase your files!
1)The first thing you should do is save your session under a new name like- “Song Name” for John Doe ODs. That way you won’t mess up your session and lose all of your hard work. I can’t overstate how important this step is!! Don’t follow the rest of these instructions until you have done this!
2) Set up a rough mix as you like it, then create new stereo audio tracks and label them Drum Stem, Bass Stem, Guitar Stem, Keys Stem, Vocal Stem etc. Obviously the Bass could be mono. Make it as few stems as you can while leaving the musician a little room to tweak things as they want to hear them. Also, ask the musician if they have a preference as to how you set up the stems. For example, I work with a percussionist here in Nashville that likes to have the acoustic guitar printed separately from everything else.
3) Bus the drums to the drum stem track, guitars to the guitar stem track, etc.
4) Print the tracks. By making your stems this way, all the musician will have to do is place every tracks’ volume at zero and they will get your mix, yet they can adjust things if need be.
5) Select every track in your session that is not a stem track or the click and delete them from this new session that you created. You will be getting rid of all of your original tracks, leaving just the stems and click.
6) Delete all unused playlists from the session. In the playlist menu next to one of your track’s name select delete unused to clear out all unused playlists.
7) Remove all unused audio from the session. In the Regions menu within the Edit window choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove. If you choose “delete” instead, all of your files will go into the intergalactic bit bucket, never to be heard again.
Note: You should now be left with only your stems and click within this new session.
8) Cut and paste the first click from the click track to every stem. On a few occasions I have found this useful when for some reason the audio time stamp gets messed up. As a last resort your musician can use the click at the top of each track to line up all of the tracks in their DAW.
9) Consolidate all of your stems with the click at the front, making sure you do so from the same start point on every track. To do this, in the edit window, highlight every track from the same start position to the end of the song and choose Consolidate under the Edit menu. It may also be helpful to do so in grid mode if you are using a grid.
10) Remove all unused audio again from the session. In the Regions menu choose Select> Unused. Then choose Clear. This next part is very important! When prompted, choose Remove, not “delete”!
11) Create a new folder on you drive entitled Esession Stems for Musician, or something like that.
12) Save a copy of your stem session, with the audio, into that new folder you just created. In the Pro Tools menu, under File, choose Save Copy In. When the copy window opens up, next to “Where:”, find the folder you just created, check the box under Items to Copy labeled All Audio files. If you don’t check that box, your audio files won’t be copied along with the session. Click Save.
Note: When the musician sends you back the tracks they recorded for you, have them place the same click at the front of their overdub tracks to ensure you have a fail-safe incase the time stamp is off. I’m sure we all have forgotten to spot a track at least once in our careers.
You should now have a very neat and orderly session with only the audio that you intend to send to the musician. If they are using Pro Tools, you can send them the entire session folder and they are good to go. If they are on another DAW, you can send them the audio files in the audio files folder and all they will have to do is import them into a session, spot them to the correct time stamp location and start overdubbing. No Hassles! No irate phone calls or e-mails!
I hope this is helpful to everyone. Please write in if you have any other comments on this subject.
Take care,
Jed Hackett
etalent engineer (editing) esession.com/jedhackett
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
boob toob
did you know we have an eSession youtube channel - well, i guess who doesn't these days?
there are plenty of videos showing our amazing eTalent members doing what they do best!
the eSession youtube channel.
so, with that - check out our man pete lockett rockin it.
esession.com/petelockett
peace!
there are plenty of videos showing our amazing eTalent members doing what they do best!
the eSession youtube channel.
so, with that - check out our man pete lockett rockin it.
esession.com/petelockett
peace!
Monday, November 5, 2007
welcome!
welcome to the eSession ROCKS! blog. make sure to add us to your RSS reading list, as new content will always be going up - interviews, photos and videos from some of the world's best session players as well as insight into the everchanging music industry are just some of the examples of what we'll be posting.
if you want to know more about the site, make sure you sign up for one of our real time tours, they are a great way to get to know the site!
sign up here!
peace!
if you want to know more about the site, make sure you sign up for one of our real time tours, they are a great way to get to know the site!
sign up here!
peace!
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