Here's a Cool DAW Tip. Got Any Others?

[rasputin1963]

Maybe this SONAR Tempo trick is widely-known... maybe not:

 

On your song, first lay down a dummy track, say a guitar or piano, completely without metronome. Its purpose is not to sound perfect, but to provide a tempo template for the song. So play it spontaneously with all the feeling you can muster and forget about a click-track.

 

Next, record on Track 2, thumping out quarter notes in MIDI at the appropriate moments in the song. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, etc. Do this for the duration of your dummy track.

 

When done with both of these tracks, select active the quarter-note track. Select FIT TO IMPROVISATION on the SONAR menu. Voila! Your musical dummy track will now have two advantages: It will retain the freeform (rubato) tempo you initially played it with, and you will have the convenience of seeing your musical dummy track proceed with perfect alignment of measures, but WITHOUT the sterile tempo effect you'd get if you only had one tempo playing throughout the song, and/or quantized your playing to the "grid". Further MIDI and Audio editing will be easy to do, 'cause your measures are perfectly ordered.

 

Dummy track doesn't sound perfect? Delete the track with no worries, and re-record a nicer one: SONAR has already made a record of your tempo changes (which, granted, will change disorientingly on every single beat, but who cares? The feel is natural , and that's all that matters).

 

 

A further addition to this trick: Listen to your dummy track whilst gazing at the TEMPO TRACK. Yep, the TEMPO envelope will be squiggling up and down on every quarter, but chances are good that, during your song, you can isolate ONE or TWO MEASURES of tempo... that are ABSOLUTELY "sweet", or which most capture the rhythmic feeling you're most after. COPY the tempo envelope of those "sweet" measures... Then PASTE (overwrite) them to play throughout your song, beginning with Beat 1 of Measure 1. This is a quick 'n' dirty way to break decisively away from a boringly uniform metronome tempo. Record new musical tracks with this new "tweaked" Tempo Track. It will have a "juiciness" and vitality that a straight metronome setting could NEVER have.

 

Why does this work? Because when humans are counting out a 4/4 tempo based on feel alone, they NEVER accord the same amount of time to each beat (though intuitively it seems like they would). It has been my experience that humans, in any 4/4 popular beat, will "slight" the last beat (the "4" beat). That "4" beat will almost always take up fewer ticks of time than the other beats.

[electrochrisso]

Never miss the opportunty, in your rock song, to have the bassline being thumped-out on a piano's low keys... yes, even instead of an acoustic or Fender bass.

 

Or for even more effect, in unison with the bass guitar sound.

[JeffLearman]

When recording acoustic guitar, record with both mic and pickup to separate tracks. Focus on getting the mic right as though you won't be using the pickup. On mixdown, use a mid-side codec plugin (like mda-vst "image"). Use the mic as Mid, and the pickup as Side. First, though, do any time correction so that the two tracks are in sync (drag one channel to line up perfectly with the other. Do a quick mix using just the Mid (mic) channel. Then fade in a bit of pickup as an imaging effect.

 

The result is a nice stereo image on the guitar that will mix to mono with absolutely no phasing artifacts or tonal imbalance (assuming the miking job was a good one in the first place).

 

When using mid-side, especially "artificially" like this (rather than 1-point MS miking), you need to be sure to check for phasing artifacts. MS mixes to mono without artifacts, because right is the inverse of left, so they simply cancel out. But that doesn't mean it's totally without phasing artifacts, you just have to check in a different place. Listen to right and left side of the mix by itself, or just move close to each speaker.

 

If it sounds bad, you either need to use less image or line up the tracks better, or else the tonal balance of the pickup just doesn't mix well with the mic signal. In any case, try changing the track alignment (dragging one track a bit) and see if it helps. Try a few different alignments, but always within one half wavelength of the lowest fundamental (as a rough guide for how far out of whack to try). If that doesn't work, try miking differently. For example, pointing the mic where the neck joins the body, versus at the lower bout sweet spot.

 

Normally, when mixing a pickup with a mic, we'd also try inverting. That won't help here: it'll just switch the problem side from left to right or vice versa.

[JeffLearman]

BTW you can use the Mid/Side technique for a number of effects when you're using them only for stereo imaging. If you're using an effect only for imaging, it's nice when it simply disappears when summed to mono.

 

For example, a bit of reverb with mostly early reflections and minimal tails is a nice way of adding image. Typically we'd use different early reflection times on R and L sides of a stereo effect to do this. However, when mixed to mono, the reverb can muddy things up a bit.

 

The trick to using M/S on an effect is finding a way to route it so that the unaffected signal winds up on the left, and ONLY the effect on the right, before feeding to the Mid/Side plugin.

 

That's actually pretty easy. Just start with a mono track, but do whatever you need to do on your DAW so that you can apply stereo plugins. Some DAWS may require you to manually convert the track to stereo (hopefully, not these days). Others might have a checkbox to convert mono to stereo. And still others would be smart enough that if you slap on an stereo plugin, it internally converts to stereo. In other words, do whatever you normally do to apply a stereo effect on a mono track, and apply a stereo reverb.

 

On the left side, set it 100% dry. On the right side, set it 100% wet. Then apply the MS plugin, in the mode to convert MS to LR. Listening to the whole mix, adjust the reverb settings to taste. However, leave it in 100% wet, and adjust the amount of effect using the MS plugin's "width" or "side" control (whatever it calls the control to fade the S channel).

 

This also works well with mild pitch-shift doubling or chorusing (when you're using it just for image and not for the coloration), and probably other effects. Note that it works best with "additive" effects; ones that can be added back to the original, as opposed to effects that replace the original.

[Lee Knight]

We all know and love panned, strumming, double tracked guitars. but how about: Mono strumming guitar up the middle. Along with two additional panned, doubled, muted string strumming guitars. It's cool. You hear the single guitar but somehow the strumming, the pick to string contact of the muted panned L & R, just sort of spreads into a very natural sound yet hyper natural sound without the overly thick sound of panned doubles.

[mister natural]

I've produced 14 songs thus far in this modest hobby of mine - & on each one, I've fussed & fretted(hour after hour tweaking) over the master track before publishing. I've used 14 different settings of EQ, dynamics, tube/tape "warmth", etc. Time spent when I could have working-up a better bassline

 

screw that : bought Ozone5 & going forward, I'll pick a preset & forget about the "polish"

[Beck]

 

well, anything can be done in a more complicated and time consuming way then what todays technic permits

 

 

Everything mentioned so far is Today's technique.

[rsadasiv]

We all know and love panned, strumming, double tracked guitars . but how about: Mono strumming guitar up the middle. Along with two additional panned, doubled, muted string strumming guitars. It's cool. You hear the single guitar but somehow the strumming, the pick to string contact of the muted panned L & R, just sort of spreads into a very natural sound yet hyper natural sound without the overly thick sound of panned doubles.

 

Johnny Cash left, Johnny Cash right, and me straight down the middle.

[A. Einstein]

 

Everything mentioned so far is Today's technique.

 

 

Okay.

[A. Einstein]

I tell you one trick. I run Nuendo, Cubase on PC & Logic and Final Cut Pro on Mac all at once in sync with one controller.

[BlueGreene]

oldy...

 

I can't seem to chase down really small latency problems, so When recording, briefly send the headphone mix (on the AH zed used, it's one push of a button) of said take to it's respective recording (the metronome), then continue the take as intended. Sync it after the fact. It's a step needed on every take but works good in this case.

 

Not a solution, a dial-able cheat/fall back.

[Ernest Buckley]

This isn`t a trick but when I`m recording lots of BKG vocals (16 tracks or more), I hi pass all the tracks. It definitely cleans up a lot.