What are your Recall Methods or Techniques?

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BradG
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What are your Recall Methods or Techniques?

Post by BradG » Wed May 04, 2011 11:15 am

Specifically for outboard and non-automated analog consoles - is anybody going "paperless" by just using a digital camera? If so, how does that work and how easy is it to do recalls from? What is your technique?

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joninc
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Post by joninc » Wed May 04, 2011 3:34 pm

i use a tape strip on the board for each song and i draw the comp settings, aux send level, pans onto the strip at each channel on the board

as well as any master buss comp/eq or effects settings. i try and leave the channels all zerod and draw automation/adjust levels in the DAW.
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Post by T-rex » Wed May 04, 2011 3:48 pm

This probably isn't going to help too much, but I only do stems. When I am done I will print the following:
Mix
Instrumental
Vocals
Bass
Drums
Guitars
Any Special or weird sound efx tracks. Something that would be really hard to replicate.

That has saved me from pretty much every time I have ever needed a recall since I have been mixing OTB. I have a 32 channel board, two reverbs, a spring reverb, three delays and about 20 channels of compression. It's a lot of gear but nothing compared to a Studio G or something. I could pull up a mix and get pretty close without spending a ton of time.

Up to this point all I have done is small volume tweaks with the stems. If I have to do a full recall it would mean that I missed the mix to the point where I probably need to start from scratch again anyway. But if it were just a single item that needed to be redone, then I would mix that one item in with the remaining stems I guess.

I did find a recall program for my ghost that is pretty cool, it has every channel as a pic on the screen and you can rotate the knobs etc and save it with the project. Its just a freebie someone made. If you did programming or knew someone who did, you could make a faceplate of all your gear like that teaboy program but I have never really used it since I stick with the stem thing.

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Post by ChrisNW » Wed May 04, 2011 4:01 pm

I'll label the channels and song name/date on a strip of gaff and snap a picture. I keep the recall photos organized in project-specific folders. Automation is almost entirely in the box. I also print stems (so the band can endlessly release dance re-mixes of their songs). So far, I'm pretty happy with this workflow.
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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Wed May 04, 2011 6:09 pm

These days I'm mixing more records where I have no involvement in the tracking. I also usually mix solo and only see the band to make revisions. So with that in mind I print stems. Usually lots of stems.
They often go something like this -

kick
snare
toms & ohs (drum room mics & hats go here, percussion too if it's not a huge part)
bass
guitars (if it's 2 guitars panned L/R, extra stems if there are lots of guitars, electric/acoustic etc)
keys (or horns or strings or what-ever else there is)
dry vocal
vocal effects
back up vocals

With the exception of the lead vocal I print all reverbs and effects together with the source (ie: snare & snare reverb go together)

I also make general notes about signal path, comps, reverbs etc. If I'm not sure of the direction I'm going I'll take pictures and make notes on routing, settings etc. 99% of the time I can make any requested changes from the stems. 1% of the time I need to pull out the notes and rebuild some part of the mix.

I do lots of volume automation ITB before anything hits the comps and the board (it's like riding the fader pre-comp so the needle never gets buried and I get a consistent tone). I also do a fair bit of fader riding on the board and if there are really big moves and I don't have enough hands I'll automate the stems. It's the best of all worlds.

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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Wed May 04, 2011 6:11 pm

P.S. I often end up meeting the band for revisions somewhere other than where I did the mix work so stems win again.

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T-rex
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Post by T-rex » Wed May 04, 2011 8:25 pm

Automating stems is pretty sweet for sweeping changes you don't have enough hands for.

How do you fit all of that on a strip of tape? I usually put the tapes from each song on the wall until the album is finished.

I would love to get into more just mixing situations. I love tracking, but I love mixing a little more.

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Post by chris harris » Wed May 04, 2011 9:54 pm

I'm just honest with them about the differences between analog and digital mixing, including the lack of recall on an analog mix. If they're going to be interested in tweaking mixes after the fact, we'll go with ITB. If someone who chooses analog mixing isn't totally happy with the mix, we'll do it again. No big deal. If you are upfront about the differences, clients won't expect that the previous mix will be the EXACT starting point for revisions.

This has just honestly never been a problem for me. I think that if you're confident in your work, and the client knows this, and you give them a chance to approve a mix, knowing that there is no automatic recall, then there won't be much demand for a recall...

I'd guess that for every 50 songs I mix, I'm asked to do another mix maybe once. The revision never starts from exactly the same place as the previous mix. And, there's hardly ever a request for a third mix.

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Post by roscoenyc » Thu May 05, 2011 9:25 am

I find the photo method to work exceptionally well.
Better and faster than any notes we used to make.

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Post by cjogo » Thu May 05, 2011 9:58 am

With my memory -- I could not operate without the automation:lol: ...

we do take photos of the inputs knobs and a written tab of the outboard effects ...
whatever happened to ~ just push record......

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No Wave Casio Kitsch
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Post by No Wave Casio Kitsch » Thu May 05, 2011 3:05 pm

To everyone that said they print stems: do you generally mix with any stereo buss processing? How do you deal with this when printing your stems?

Note the 2 buss processors and then print the stems with all that out of the signal chain?

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T-rex
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Post by T-rex » Thu May 05, 2011 3:30 pm

No Wave Casio Kitsch wrote:To everyone that said they print stems: do you generally mix with any stereo buss processing? How do you deal with this when printing your stems?

Note the 2 buss processors and then print the stems with all that out of the signal chain?
That's actually a great question because I usually always have my 1968 on the mix buss and sometimes have ended up printing stems with it still on the stems before I noticed. However I don't hit it very hard, just enough to give that gluing effect so even if I leave it on for individual stems, it is barely compressing at all since individually they aren't pushing the voltage the whole mix is.

However generally speaking I do the stems without the buss comp, so that when I combine all of the stems through the buss comp they sound exactly like the mix I just did on an a/b comparison. Plus I could change compression on a remix to be more or less aggressive/punchy/explodier (I am totally getting that word in the dictionary) without being locked in to having all the stems already compressed to hell.

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A.David.MacKinnon
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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Thu May 05, 2011 6:37 pm

T-rex wrote:
No Wave Casio Kitsch wrote:To everyone that said they print stems: do you generally mix with any stereo buss processing? How do you deal with this when printing your stems?

Note the 2 buss processors and then print the stems with all that out of the signal chain?
That's actually a great question because I usually always have my 1968 on the mix buss and sometimes have ended up printing stems with it still on the stems before I noticed. However I don't hit it very hard, just enough to give that gluing effect so even if I leave it on for individual stems, it is barely compressing at all since individually they aren't pushing the voltage the whole mix is.

However generally speaking I do the stems without the buss comp, so that when I combine all of the stems through the buss comp they sound exactly like the mix I just did on an a/b comparison. Plus I could change compression on a remix to be more or less aggressive/punchy/explodier (I am totally getting that word in the dictionary) without being locked in to having all the stems already compressed to hell.
Yep. I rarely use anything in the master bus but if I do I'll get the mix together with the comp inserted on the master, bypass it to make stems and then combine the stems back through the comp to print the final 2 mix.

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Re: What are your Recall Methods or Techniques?

Post by @?,*???&? » Fri May 06, 2011 9:59 am

BradG wrote:Specifically for outboard and non-automated analog consoles - is anybody going "paperless" by just using a digital camera? If so, how does that work and how easy is it to do recalls from? What is your technique?
Years ago, those lazy assistants used to use polaroid cameras...not me, everything gets written down, unless I'm doing an SSL mix, then the Total Recall feature at least takes care of the console recall.

Recall sheets are available online if you're too lazy to make your own and often times the manufacturer will have some semblance of one in the manual for the gear they produce.

And with something like www.scribd.com I'm sure you'll start seeing more pop up.

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Post by knobtwirler » Fri May 06, 2011 1:55 pm

Digital cameras were good for some gear, since some assistants didn't really document the setting correctly when they had to draw a line in a knob graphic. But, the different parameters still have to be recalled in case they need to be manually dialed in.

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