Lessons

Lesson Info

Consolidating Tracks and Markers

Why am I bringing up consolidating? I'm bringing it up because uh, lots of people don't even know what it means. So when you consolidate a track hearing and give you guys a quick little example let's just say that you have yeah, that that in that and it can get kind of annoying the reason can get kind of a noise because if you have a bunch of little fragments all throughout the entire song, I mean like this these air all consolidated except for this one little punch right there, but if you have a bunch of little fragments all throughout the song it's going toe again it's going to be hard and navigate through this song because, uh brandis isn't going to respond as quickly you're going to kind of looking around for things a little more plus your audio files folder is not going to be your friend and also if you're prepping, if you have what you have to send this teo people who use a different d a w you got to be consolidating stuff to zero so basically the act of consolidating is taking t...

hese fragments entering them until one file and so all you do is you grab put your cursor there you go all the way to zero see what I mean but go all the way to zero and the shift option three boom I wonder how many people have taken screenshots by accident trying to do this because it is in a screenshot shift command three yeah yeah that's what I'm going to see yeah so uh shift option three and you want to consolidate just about everything all right so uh the only time to make an exception is if the mix air asks you to like there's one guy that I uh you know that have done a lot of work for who doesn't like his vocals consolidated for whatever reason because he doesn't know until he's at the end of the mix if he likes to keep all the breaths and whatever noises and you know what not so uh you need to make sure now however if you recorded this and pro tools and your mixture is going to be working in logic you have to consolidate this there's no way around it so the those exceptions can only be made of you in the same d a w so when you are when you consolidate something everything that's there is basically you know burned in or baked in so if there's any better at its any clicks and pops bad fades any of that that's permanently a part of the track so like we said before us of that checklist before make sure that there's no problems with the track than you name it then you consolidated the orders very, very different uh, kind of like the meaning of saying the man ate the horse means something completely different than the horse ate the man. Uh, think about it the same way if you ah, consolidate before your name, the track you end up with or, uh, fixture at its you end up with one completely horrible result has supposed to have you do it in the right order. Everything changes, um and also let's talk about alternate playlists, lots of musicians I get really, uh, you know what the word is? Get really, uh, death trying to think of a good word for somebody that likes to hoard things that they don't really need. Can you be a packrat about audio files? I guess so. Oh, and a lot of musicians like to pack rat other takes like, you know, they did ah seven takes of a vocal and maybe if they had it till the end of time or maybe four weeks into the mix, they're going to realize that takes six point five uh, some syllable of six point five was better than what was already chosen. Dumb stuff like that that's you're never going to actually use all that stuff get rid of the only time in my opinion, that you should be keeping alternate playlist this say, for instance, you have uh, vocals and say you have tuned and un tuned you might want to keep theon tuned once in case you ruined it with melody line or something uh it's always good to keep the originals when you do something as drastic is tuning because who knows? Maybe maybe your pitches and as good as you think it is um playlists by the way in pro tools or this little arrow right here you can see it and ah, what that allows you to do is you see this tracker it here when you play list just it new well, actually I'll duplicated something remains on there so there and I'm gonna name it all right? So this is the new playlist and as you can see in a cut it up whatever and here is shipped back to the old one boom says you can see you can have edited and unedited versions. A lot of people will do this like, for instance, when they have their unedited drums they'll keep on one play list, then they'll make a bread. They'll duplicate things onto new playlist, edit their drums and end up sending you that when you going to make some what do you need the unedited drums for um unless if there's bad edits so uh once you've gone through to make sure that the edits are good um again this all has to do with the order of things once you know that all the edits air good everything's worth keeping its all right get rid of all the alternate playlists you're not going to use just see later with that stuff all right, any questions about that good for the moment let's keep going for a little bit more then we'll jump back and sure all right stuck about markers um you know, I don't really have any markers here but you know assuming um we're going to drop some they're basically the map to your song now this is really really important because uh say you have a song that's got three courses and you want the same guitar bump the you know, the same automation move in all three courses you want the same reverb to change on the snare of you whatever the change in balance, whatever happens you don't want to have to go and re do that every single time you get to the to the next chorus so with markers you can choose yeah, you know exactly where the course stars where it ends you can copy paste the settings to the next one there's a bunch of reasons to do that also you know where you are in the song so for instance, just drop some markers it may seem basic, but if you're sending material to a mixer who doesn't know your music I'm just saying it could be fart won fruity part two amazing part come in chorus three now like we were talking about with josh if someone says well look snares not loud enough in poopie part two and making myself laugh sorry I need to make this stuff funny to myself uh you know then I know exactly what it means here the snares in this part uh it can get through the song really really fast and ah in case uh you guys don't know this there is a very quick way tio jump around with your markers you hit period than the number of the marker than period again so like I say I want to go to a movie part one c o r I want to go to amazing part which would be the third marker so period three periods see um did any of you guys know about that shortcut because I just learned it not too long ago and uh it blew my mind I think it's great so again here all you guys watching screen shot this this is going to make your life way way better write it down jumping through markers fantastic. Um also there is another thing about them but I was a I was being funny just because I feel like this kind of material needs to be funny sometimes but label everything slim simply and clearly uh try to keep it to like one word in all reality a chorus one course two or two words that you have two acoustic break dumb solo whatever um just just enough so that you know exactly where you are in the song that's all it is it's a map um and also you drop a marker for any section that requires special attention like say that for instance you have two courses and there's a different ending on the second course will you drop of marker for that so you know, second second ending or if there's an acoustic build up that happens before the bridge don't call that the bridge call that the acoustic build up and then drop another marker for the bridge uh you wanna lay out as much of the map as you can so that getting around the song is really, really, really easy basically if if you are handing this over to a mixer um they just think about what kind of feedback the guy's going to get like what kinds of things with the musicians be asking for it will be stuff like the balance is wrong in the acoustic part oh can you make the phil louder and the second ending you know of the chorus of the second chorus my dumb solo was not loud enough stuff like that is so it's not just about chorus verse chorus verse bridge it's also about all the little things um so yeah so make sense to you guys I would hope so um and again the short cut to get across markers is great and also you hit enter on the numerical keypad to drop a marker quickly sure you want them absolutely one. Is there any way to make markers transfer when you're sending to a mixer that uses a different date earlier unfortunately I don't know of one okay sucks. Yeah, ok there's that one but I will say I will say this um the best thing you can possibly do for that is to at the very least make a print out with measure numbers and where you want the markers like you know so if this was going to somebody in logic you know it's since everything could consolidated zero and the tempo is the tempo so let's see so I was say all right, drop him well, I would actually move I would put on the grid put poopy part one right right there on the grid so you would tell him drop a marker for it's just funny you drop a marker measure twelve bar three and then you just make that list for the whole song and uh you know it's a little bit more work but at least they'll have the markers it's it's really, really helpful for them to know where everything is in the song say you can communicate because related question that I had which was in your mix prep how do you relate a session info or instructions to someone else if they're mixing so track notes etcetera stuff like this um like can they elaborate a little um let's see I'll find out but basically like if you have any notes about something that you noticed while you're doing your prep that you want the mixer to know assuming you're not doing it yourself okay well there's a few different ways to do it like for instance in mark double click on the marker this little window pops up you have comments right here. I want you to win me a million dollars. Okay uh so that's one way another way is comments uh right here you have this little option for comments and uh you know, it could just be like I am the greatest and make me sound like that, you know, um and then however I will say this I know a lot of guys who just ignore a lot of mixers it's not that they mean to is kind of like the same thing is people driving cars not seeing bicyclists for some reason uh it's maybe it's the color of the of the text or something it's easy to overlook these types of comments sometimes I don't and I don't know why uh so included in an email and I highly recommend using google docks or something like that where it can be edited in real time and everyone could be in on the document that way you don't have a chain of emails that's seventy seventy long and some people hit reply and some people have reply all and it just becomes a complete mess like yeah like um yeah use google docks and give all you give all the info you need and if that's not enough get on skype or get on the phone just communicate yes sir, I was just going to say if you're gonna put comments like in the session like that just try to be really sparse with it cause if I opened up the session and every track had like a paragraph I would just roll my eyes yeah, well in reality it would be something like say on the sample down on blast more exactly more like that that would be acceptable and I was going to mention too, because we talked about consolidating midi too. So just make a point of that real quick yeah, let me ah tell us something about many many is it pain when transferring it between w's uh, so thank you for bringing that up um, I don't know how many of you guys have tried tio transfer a temple map from pro tools logic, for instance, but yeah it's tough but there's a there's a way around it um I'll make a mini track right now so now mind you this is not the middie track on an instrument like this is not the middle lane on instrument track this is a standalone midi tracked this will not work uh if, uh if you're writing this into the middie on an instrument track why I don't know but this has to be an actual mini track so uh make sure make sure that used I have a mini track and then ah good notes you know yeah, whatever whatever is going on there's your wonderful song but uh first of all, in order to get the tempo map into logic for instance you need to have a mini track so but if you were to just say say okay this is going to call it tempo for logic if you just did this it would import this much and it wouldn't help you with the temple. What you need to do is you need to put a note at zero there you go it's at the beginning of the file some people say that you should also put one at the very end I haven't found that to make a difference of someone that in the chat room has found that to make a difference cool but I mean if you just wanna be safe about it put it at the end of everything and then there you go you've done that's all it takes you don't need to bother consolidating the region or anything because that's this is a pro tools thing a cz long as you have the first note at zero everything else will follow suit the tempo will be embedded into it and everything so yeah that is how you guys go about getting your midi to transfer works nine times out of ten but I warn you though that middie between programs and temple mass between programs can be kind of funky so uh try this but don't I don't yell at me it doesn't work every time you know in the next update of logic what did not work anymore um have you noticed anything different have you tried not really on top of my head um I don't really do a lot of many between work stations. I mean, people send me many and yeah it's it's fine. Sometimes I have to make my own temple map anyway just be if they're coming from a different uh different piece of software you know? So yeah, I I find that I actually find that pro tools opens unless it's coming from guitar pro uh yeah yeah, that gets really wonky. Yeah like one thirty two point eight a lot of a lot of decimal points um the time the way that a different vw's interpret time is slightly off so and different the way different programs interpret time is slightly off, so you'll notice that, like some people who write and guitar pro well, then print out, you know, will export a middie for you to use for pre pro. You bring it in with the tempo and you have all these weird tempos and and then you do you need you just need to go in and fix them so you don't have one thirty two, forty eight, one, forty five point seven. I think sometimes they even have, like, three decimal points. Yeah, really odd, yeah, it's very, very strange that there are they're definitely not worried about their compatibility with stuff that the whole world uses to make records, but, yeah, going back. Unfortunate logic and pro tools, though is is pretty common worthy of mentioning, too, because a lot of people will do their sense and logic. You know, they'll record their audio and pro tools and then go do their sense and logic and then print them them bring them back or whatever. So you got to make sure that your tempos are exactly the same.