Post Mixing for Live Recordings - One Session or Each Song Individually?

[NorthEnlight]

First, sorry for my ignorance on this topic but I'm a studio cat and new to live music recordings.

When recording a live show, I would assume most peeps just record everything into one DAW session. After you take it back to the studio to mix, do you mix it as one session or do you break each song into a separate session? Then compile it later?

I keep going back and forth on this but I think it would be easier to keep it as one session so you can just roll with your settings, plugs ins, general levels etc, and then just tweak each song based on the performance. I also think it would help keep a consistent tone or feel, since you don't want each song to have it's own sound like you would in a typical studio session. Anyway, just wondering what is "standard."

[LX3]

I create one long project, because as you say, you need to work on the sound for the whole gig - doing one song at a time will cause immense problems because every tweak you make to one session then needs to be duplicated in all the others.

My workflow is:

1) Import audio to separate tracks
2) Decide on anything that would be better bounced to a stereo track
3) Get a basic sound happening...
4) ...while you're also bussing and grouping tracks for more control, setting up FX, etc.
5) Then I get in there and edit tracks to remove audio that I won't need. Eliminates spill and saves me writing endless mutes. By this stage, if the band is good it almost mixes itself.
6) More mix tweaking, experiments, critical listening. A few rough mixes checked on other systems.
7) Then start doing automation passes. Not all tracks necessarily need automating - some you can hopefully just leave... which also makes them easy to tweak down the line. I try not to snapshot every track. Just mind which faders you move! Hide the channels you're not working on to avoid disturbing things.

8) When happy, export a 24-bit mix of entire show
9) Sample-rate-convert if necessary
10) "Mastering mode" - new session, apply eq, compression, limiting, fades, word-length reduction, dither etc.
11) Cut final mix into individual tracks and burn CD(s).

Others may work differently of course. This is just me.

Sorry, that ended up a longer post than it was meant to be. Hope it helps.

Paul

[NorthEnlight]

Thanks Paul, I really appreciate the great information!

The one session approach definitely seems easier and more efficient.

Cheers!
Jim aka NorthEnlight

[wyndrock]

do one session. make markers and note times. have whoever authors the master copy make tracks out of the songs so it will have a seamless playback.

that's what we do.

www.redroomva.com
wwwwindrockaudiopro.com

[marty lester]

i did a live concert that was also shot on video for a DVD release.
i know you're not talking about that kind of thing here, but keeping
it all in one session was pretty manditory for that kind of thing.

when the editor gave me the cut back, i just matched the window
burn times of his edits to my TC locations of each song and slid
them around as big blocks of audio...easy.

yeah, i could have pre-mixed each song and then moved
the full mixes around even easier, but hey, aren't we
all a bunch of control freaks out here?

good luck,
marty.

[The Listener]

I mixed quite a few live albums. For audio (not DVD of the complete concert) I do the whole session mix and then start skipping to different parts of the concert and check general sound and balance of the whole thing, then I concentrate on separate songs and do the submixes for those parts. So at the end - you will end up with one general backup mix... and several submixes that you export/mixdown for the end product. Then take care about editing the applauses, speeches, etc. to make a nice concert atmosphere - I like to cut the applauses when possible and leave them when it is neccesery - long decays of music into applause or a need to show the life feeling... Mixing live performances is an art of itself.
Have fun with it.

best