Mixing down one track

n-Track Studio Discussion Forum
#1

Combing smaller parts into a big one

#2

Hey everyone

I am trying to mixdown one vocal track consisting of many different spliced takes into one cohesive part, and then have that part replace its constituents in the same track.

I don’t want effects or volumes to be applied: the effects should remain effective through the track’s effects list.

I hope I am not being overly complicated in my description - it’s really very simple. I just basically want to merge the parts together so that I can open the whole shebang easily and without confusion in my wave editor.

Thanks a lot.

#3

when you select mixdown there is a box, “more option”. Allows you to select which tracks to mixdown. If you don’t want effects on the mixdown, just select them and bypass them for mixdown, or delete them.

Once mixed down, you can mute all the bits you don’t want in the original track, and let the mixdown track take over. Its easier to have duplicate tracks and then silence the bits you don’t want, than to get into cutting/pasting sections into one track. If you want the same effect on different tracks, don’t forget you can output to a group and then apply the effects to the group.

Maaszy

#4

I am aware that I could bypass my effects, set the volume fader to 0, do a mixdown, restore my effects, reset the volume, then delete all the old parts, drag the new part up to the track and finally delete the new actual track that n-Track had created… but surely theres a simpler way? There’s no way I’m going through this ritual every time I need to mixdown a track; I’d rather just leave all the separate parts.

There HAS to be a simple way of doing this simple function in n-Track. I’ve seen other programs do this with a minimum of fuss, i.e. Logic.

#5

You are wanting to splice your tracks together into a new vocals track, right? Best parts of each take put together? What I would do is first, resave the song as a new file. Name it “filename old” or something the like. This way you won’t lose where your files are in the tracks you are going to lose in this combining process. Now resave it again as “filename combined vocals”. This will be the file of your combined vocal parts that you will keep as blocks. That way you can go back and recombine them if you want. The original file will be where we insert the new file we will create when we are done. (BTW, there is a good section on editing in David Franz’s book on “recording and producing in the home studio”) You then split all the tracks up into sections of song (individual lines, etc.) using the splice tool (edit->non-destructive->splice). It is usuall helpful to splice at the same place on each track. That makes the combining process easier, as there is less aligning, etc. This can be done by zooming in pretty close, where all you see is about a line’s worth of the song on the horizontal and just those three tracks on the vertical. That way it should be pretty easy to see in the wavform where the lines end, etc. Remember, always split on silence if you can. That eliminates need for crossfading in the combining process. Then go through and find out the best take for each line, etc. If you have split on silence at the ends of lines, then all you need to do is zoom out to about where you were before, except you can seen one more track below. This will be the new track you create (Track->Insert Blank Track->Audio). Then simply place the play cursor at the begining of each split where you are going to move. Change the cursor to the crossarrows (on the toolbar at the top). Move the “block” to the new track. reselect the next block and repeat. (BTW, if you have anything not split at silence, you will need to crossfade between the two parts. The best way I know to do this is to just use 2 tracks. Use the draw fades to create your crossfade. Then mix both tracks down to one file). When you have your song combined, you can either compile a second track of audio the same way (if you want a doubled vocal part) or, if you are done, simply delete the old tracks. Remember to select "don’t delete in the box. You have the old tracks saved in the old file. Now save this file. Mix the file(s) down as indicated in maaszy’s post (or you can solo the tracks needed to mix down and do it that way). Now you close this and reopen the original file “filename”. This should be your original file. Currently this will be the same as “filename old”. But the reason we resaved that as “filename old” is because now we will be altering this file. Now delete all of the tracks you have created for vocals except one. This one should have all of your effects on it and your vocal draws, etc. Delete all of the blocks on this track (be sure not to delete the files). Now select “import wav track.” Import the file you created and insert onto this track. You should now have what you wanted.

hth,
fish

#6

There’s no Hard-and-Fast way, Hammered-in-Stone, on doing that task… Some guys use other editors to work on tracks that need that type of work… It’s not how you do it… It’s what you get used to useing that’s important when you need to do that to a track…

Editing now, is still better than Cutting-and-Splicing… on plastic…

Some guys say if you have to get Down and Dirty to do that to a track… They’d sooner re-record the track again… Well…

Bill…

#7
I'd rather just leave all the separate parts.


why not indeed? if you want the same effect on lots of different parts, output them all to a group and put effects on the group. If you do replace bits with a single mixdown, you dont have to get everything on the same track, just select the bits and hit silence, and let the replacement mixdown play in another track. Why set volume to 0 for mixdown? don't get that bit.

Maaszy
#8

What’s so hard about this?

1)Clone the track
-uncheck the wav. box
2)In the first track:
-Bypass the effects
3)Click the Mixdown button
-Select the bit settings you want
-select the 1 track you want to mixdown
-Check “Substitute tracks with mixed down wave file”
-Hit OK
4)drag the new wav file into the old cloned track.

THERE!
one wav file, all the effects/volume evolution etc with only a few clicks of the mouse.

you’re done.

:D

#9

Git69, don’t forget: flatten your volume envelopes. But I always do any consolidation before doing any envelopes.

To consolidate, I click the little green “fx” button in the upper left corner of the timeline to turn off all FX, set fader to zero (or set the master fader to the inverse, e.g., +4 if the track fader’s at -4). Solo the track, mixdown, & import the track like Git69 says.

One thing that makes the process simpler is that when comping (that’s the term for selecting the best phrase in multiple tracks), I have all the tracks sent to a group, and apply the FX on the group. That way I don’t have to bother cloning the original track.

But yeah, it would be handy to have a “Consolidate wave files” button, which creates a single wave file for the track (or selected region in the track), without applying any FX, evolutions, or faders. Note, however, you’d have to drag all the parts into a single track to do this, and I often don’t bother – I sometimes keep them in their original tracks and then consolidate in one swell foop when I’m ready. Or not consolidate at all. Usually, the only reason to consolidate is to reduce the clutter on screen and in the directory. (The other reason is when posting a track for a collaboration.)