DV Forums 1st 'Blind' Track

[Tifstorey]

Maccy & Khazul, you need to turn your PM's on.

[Khazul]

Some followup thoughts on organisation.

I dont know how many of us have actually done collaborative stuff before where it involved sharing of parts between people working in different location and DAWs, so here is roughtly what I suggest to people I am working with:

You contribution will at a minimum be an audio file and a text file to provide notes to mix engineer and/or other musicians for anything non-obvious.

If your contribution includes processing that the mix engineer may want to re-work, then provide or at least securely maintain the original unprocessed audio in case it is needed later. For example any EQ and/or compression, reverb and delays may need to be re-done to enable the part to better fit into the overal mix context. If time stretching and or re-pitching is use, then definately maintain the original as the mix engineer may have higher quality tools for this.

Project format:
Format is 24 bit wav files @ 44.1Khz
Audio parts: (.wav uncompressed - 16 or 24 bit @ 44.1K).
Record at 44.1Khz 16 or 24 bit depending up your gear - 24 bit preferred.

Audio files:
These should be named as follows:
'Initials - Part name - part type'.wav
Examples, 'AG-PianoChords-Dry.Wav' 'AG-Vocal-Dry.wav' 'AG-Vocal-Processed.wav' 'AG-Vocal-BusFxReturns.wav'

Pad all audio with silence so that the start and the end of the audio file is exactly 4 bar aligned (For example, if you have a piano/guitar part that say starts half way through bar 3 and continues for say 7 bars, then you audio file should be padded with silence so that it starts at the start of bar 1 and continues to the end of bar 12). This just makes it so much easier to correctly drop it into the right place in the mix at the right places.

If you gear does not facilitate padding with silence and clean chopping of the audio, then include a short sharp sound at a point well before or well after your part that is 4 bar aligned, for example a hand clap into a mic if your recording a vocal/or accoustic can help in quick alignment. If you do this, then mention its location in the notes. Doing so simple solves alot of ambiguity and therefore time. Think of this like clapper boards used in film and TV which were used to mark a specific point in time with a precise sounds to make alignment simple - in this case an editor could both see and hear the board closing and so align the sound and vision - here we just need to align your sounds to other sounds.

As an alternative to regular tranferring of large wav files, mp3 files CBR (constant bit rate) encoded at 256Kbps are good, however the original wav files files must be securely maintained for final mixdown. Note - do not use mp3 variable bit rate (VBR) encoding as not all decoders in DAWs can handle this.

MIDI files (optional):
These should be names as per the related audio file with a .mid extension.
One part per file aligned as per audio above. These may be used just for information, for example that can help with determining clashing notes, music key, chord progression etc, however good notes are just as useful.

Text files: (.txt)
These should be named as the audio file with a .txt extension.
All audio and midi files should be accompanied by a text file.
The text file will describe (as appropriate).
Tempo of the part
Key/Scale of the part
The audio level of the part. the absolutel level will change, but it canbe a help to state what the riough intended level should be (-12dB, or 'quieter than the guitar part so its subtle in the background').
Time signature
Start point(s) in musical time. If the audio file is intended to be used in several places, then give multi start points.

Additional notes to assist a mix engineer and/or other musicans, for eg describe intension of EQ and or compression and other processing used.

If keyed or bussed effects are used to create a part - describe routings, subgroups etc. Often these will need to re-done later in the project to better fit the resulting groove and/or mix dynamics. This especially applies if heavy sidechained gating or comrpession is an essential part of the sound, for eg alot of electro house type baselines as these often need tweakin bit bit to sit right.

For odd non-obvious chords/sounds, then mention the specific chord as this can help with resolving clashing notes/sound etc. For some synth sounds that are detuned by 3rd/4th/5th etc then state this as well - again this is just to assist other contributing musicians in working out resulting key/chords - not everyone is capable of quickly and perfectly working out what they can hear

The phrase 'securely maintained' means backup all the audio from you computer and store it somewhere safe from reasonable distasters.


Finally, do provide a guide mix with your parts, even if it is very rough. This combined with you notes helps to make your intent very clear. Guide mixes can be 192Kbit mp3, CBR encoded. If you do not have an mp3 encoder, then use the Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) and the 'Lame' mp3 encoder.


While all of the above does sound like alot of extra hassle, it removes a whole load of confusion and ambiguity for other in the chain. 5 minutes spent making some notes can save hours overall for everyone else.

[Dave Boulden]

As far as lining up audio parts go, I'd advocate choosing either 4 or 8 bars of silence before the start of the track and then *every* part is supplied as a audio file starting from bar 1, that way tracks will automatically line up just by being dropped in at bar 1.

[Khazul]

Originally Posted by Dave Boulden

As far as lining up audio parts go, I'd advocate choosing either 4 or 8 bars of silence before the start of the track and then *every* part is supplied as a audio file starting from bar 1, that way tracks will automatically line up just by being dropped in at bar 1.

Yes - the reason I havnt used that before was more down to alot of the people I have worked with winging about the resulting sizes of wav file they have to send me as it meant they had to fight to obscure intenet tool they dont uinderstand (ie FTP) rather than just email

[Khazul]

Originally Posted by Tifstorey

Maccy & Khazul, you need to turn your PM's on.

Odd it is on - people were able to send me PMs before and I just check and private message is definately on and mail box is not full.


BTW - is it worth creating a private group on these forums if that feature is enabled? Modz?

[Tifstorey]

[Khazul]

Originally Posted by Tifstorey

Just noticed - I had the only from contacts and moderators switched on - oops!

[Tifstorey]

Hmm... Maybe you did something to upset Modz and he's punishing you in his own little way

*Deleted*

[Khazul]

Originally Posted by Tifstorey

Hmm... Maybe you did something to upset Modz and he's punishing you in his own little way

In either case, the password is all in lower case. The obvious abbreviation with the 4th word of this thread in.

Sorted now I think

[Khazul]

BTW - just had a thought about soundcloud - dont non-pro accounts have a limit on the number of uploads in any given time period? 5 per month or something like that?

[Tifstorey]

Originally Posted by Khazul

BTW - just had a thought about soundcloud - dont non-pro accounts have a limit on the number of uploads in any given time period? 5 per month or something like that?

Yep. But i can't see us passing each track over faster than once a week so we should be ok.

The idea of the SoundCloud is really just to show the differences from start to finish. Should be interesting to see/hear when it's finished.

[Maccy]

PM's turned on, sorry!

So who's doing what first?!

[Tifstorey]

Originally Posted by Maccy

So who's doing what first?!

Well, i'd volunteer but i'm working on a festival which starts today so i'm not able to do anything for the next 5 days.

Anybody is free to start, first one to shout can get working on it!

So long as you agree to all of the above of course,

[sphelan]

Count me in guys if there's still room! Not prepared to kick if off but if I can add something, I'm there!

[Maccy]

Hmm I only have my electric kit set up at the moment but I could put something together tonight?

How long, what sort of style?