Mix workflow

[Facepalm]

Sorry, trade secret. If I told you I'd have to kill you...

[ryst]

Originally Posted by BrenJWC

Howdy GS - long-time lurker, first-time poster here.

I mix primarily ITB (Pro Tools) and I find that my workflow is not very effective. I generally lay my tracks out not too dissimilar from when I'm tracking - usually drums, bass, guitars, lead vocals, backing vocals and then anything else that might be in the track (L>R). I subgroup everything and usually stick the aux track next to where its corresponding audio tracks are. Generally I will have a basic mix of stationary faders that I've built up while tracking and will start the official 'mix' stage by adding processing and from there looking at fader rides.

I'm quite sure there are better and more intuitive ways to approach ITB mixing. My sessions always end up big and messy. When I try to condense down to a small amount of subgroups, I always end up with more than I feel I should because I don't want to relinquish discreet control. Does this seem like a fairly novice methodology?

Anyway, I was keen to see if anyone here would share their approaches and/or offer any tips on effective mix session setup. Cheers!

The more unnecessary mouse clicks and key strokes you take out of the equation, the better.

So with that said, I have mix templates that I've developed over time that gets things done quickly. Plugins I normally use are loaded (some with presets I've created), tracks are labeled, colored, grouped, routed, I/O is labeled, and so forth. All those extra little steps makes things a lot easier and more efficient to get things done.

As far as subgroups go, I used to do that but now I only subgroup things like drums and bg vocals or big orchestras.

[theblue1]

My DAW allows very quick grouping of controls of all kinds (and makes it super easy to 'override' the group-link boy ctrl-dragging the fader, pan, or other control), so I frequently make use of different groups throughout my mixes. I also use track folders to group and 'hide' sets of tracks. It's easy to pop them open to make an adjustment or just look at them, so there's little downside. But being able to 'hide' a number of tracks makes it much more convenient to work in larger mixes.

[joeq]

Originally Posted by BrenJWC

When I try to condense down to a small amount of subgroups, I always end up with more than I feel I should because I don't want to relinquish discreet control.

Sending your drums to a drum group does not force you to relinquish adjusting the volume or EQ on the snare, for example. Unless you are bouncing them, any individual tracks that are being sent to a subgroup are still on your screen and still have their own faders and their own set of sends, plug-ins and i/o inserts.

They are still tweakable, but now they are tweakable in TWO places.

My sessions always end up big and messy.

mine too! Thank god for Import Session Data