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Old 09-03-2019, 11:27 AM   #1
jon_harris7
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Default Saving mixer settings - volumes, pans, etc.

I have a situation where I have my mix exactly as I want it. Now I want to overdub another vocal part. For the overdub, the singer doesn't want to hear the full mix, just vocals and a couple of other things at lower levels. So I would like to create a different mix (changing some volumes and mutes) during the overdub and then get back to my original "golden" mix afterwards.

What's the best way to do this? Searching for this, people have suggested a "save as" as a new project. But then when after I recorded the overdub, I would need to move the audio back into the original project. Is there some sort of a preset or snapshot feature I can take advantage of?
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Old 09-03-2019, 01:39 PM   #2
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idea:

duplicate only the tracks she wants to hear
mute all the others
record her new parts
then mute or delete the dupe tracks
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Old 09-04-2019, 09:38 AM   #3
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Honestly, I’d probably just Save As a new project for the overdub session. Maybe delete any unneeded tracks and render/freeze anything using heavy resources or adding latency. Once it’s recorded there are several ways to pull the vocal track over to the mix project.
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Old 09-04-2019, 10:47 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by jon_harris7 View Post
I have a situation where I have my mix exactly as I want it. Now I want to overdub another vocal part. For the overdub, the singer doesn't want to hear the full mix, just vocals and a couple of other things at lower levels. So I would like to create a different mix (changing some volumes and mutes) during the overdub and then get back to my original "golden" mix afterwards.

What's the best way to do this? Searching for this, people have suggested a "save as" as a new project. But then when after I recorded the overdub, I would need to move the audio back into the original project. Is there some sort of a preset or snapshot feature I can take advantage of?
I would just do a 'save as' and then cut/paste the new tracks into the "working mix" project. Cut/paste the whole track with the new parts and the items will stay in the timeline.

You should do versioned saves like that along the way anyway. Good trail of bread crumbs to have.
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Old 09-04-2019, 10:57 AM   #5
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You should do versioned saves like that along the way anyway. Good trail of bread crumbs to have.
A few places people talking about “versioning” today. Maybe you ina couple places? I find that most of that is handled by automatic backups as long as I remember to save before I make major changes. It’s a little quicker than the Save As dialog, and you can set up your naming scheme in Preferences.

I do Save As for “branches”. I got in the habit back in the old days of like rendering a mix, then doing a Save As and working on just one track back in the day when you couldn’t do much heavy on too many tracks without big problems, and I still do that some, but nowadays for things exactly like what the OP needs or if I want to try something radically different but keep what I’ve got as a definitive version of its own.
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Old 09-04-2019, 11:44 AM   #6
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I'll periodically do a save as at any milestone or just when I might think about it. I increment a version number in the project name. Simple. I also have auto backup set for every 3 minutes. I pretty much never want to have to redo any work no matter what happens or how badly I might screw something up along the way.

Reaper is setup to be slick cutting/pasting between projects. It's just easy to grab something from an old project if it comes up.

I don't find myself going backwards much fortunately! Once every blue moon. There's just no reason not to have that kind of security blanket here in the computer age though.
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Old 09-04-2019, 11:54 AM   #7
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I don’t do any kind of auto save because back in the day it used to interrupt workflow sometimes, but I do have it set up to make a time stamped backup of the last saved version every time I hit Save.

Agree almost completely on all points, though. Project files are cheap. Use as many as you want.
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Old 09-04-2019, 11:58 AM   #8
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For the original question ashcat's idea is good, save as or save new version, make the adjustments, dub the vocals. Now open the original project up in a new tab, go back to the overdub project, select the vocal track then CTRL+C, pop over to the original and CTRL+V to paste the dubbed vocal track into the original project and delete the old vocal track if you no longer need it.

^It is even better to use SWS snapshots for this but it has a bug where it doesn't save sends/receives - so if you are not changing those you can probably get away with just saving a snapshot of the mix, make changes > overdub > revert to the original snapshot. Assuming you can set the snapshot up to not revert anything important from the dubbed track (which I think will be possible).

Reg Versioning:

Save as new version is really handy. I use it for snapshotting right before I do something that is going to take awhile and may need to go back quickly and/or various project milestones. I only use autobackups when there is a project corruption issue etc. (just my personal preference).
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Old 09-04-2019, 12:16 PM   #9
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i have yet to find an elegant way to deal with this either. i looked at the sws snapshot extension but couldn't set something up that was useful for my work flow.

for overdubbing vox or instruments late in a project, i would LOVE to have a simple toggle button that switches between 2 mixer states. i.e. playback and record.

-playback would be the mix.

-record (for me) would, besides having diff fader levels, disable latency causing plugins on the mixbus, have armed tracks with plugins disabled (again latency), mute any doubles of track being recorded, certain sends, etc.

that would make my life sooo much easier. (i just recorded a 27 song double CD for someone and had to do all the above manually on every punch. not fun.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by jon_harris7 View Post
I have a situation where I have my mix exactly as I want it. Now I want to overdub another vocal part. For the overdub, the singer doesn't want to hear the full mix, just vocals and a couple of other things at lower levels. So I would like to create a different mix (changing some volumes and mutes) during the overdub and then get back to my original "golden" mix afterwards.
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Old 09-04-2019, 01:14 PM   #10
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For the original question ashcat's idea is good, save as or save new version, make the adjustments, dub the vocals. Now open the original project up in a new tab, go back to the overdub project, select the vocal track then CTRL+C, pop over to the original and CTRL+V to paste the dubbed vocal track into the original project and delete the old vocal track if you no longer need it.

^It is even better to use SWS snapshots for this but it has a bug where it doesn't save sends/receives - so if you are not changing those you can probably get away with just saving a snapshot of the mix, make changes > overdub > revert to the original snapshot. Assuming you can set the snapshot up to not revert anything important from the dubbed track (which I think will be possible).
Thanks for the tip on the SWS extensions. I wasn't aware of this.

Also, it does look like bringing in overdubbed vocals from a different project is pretty painless. Easier than I was thinking if it is just a single copy/paste with everything staying in sync.

The Save As doesn't solve the general problem of wanting to get back to a known good mix. Another usage case would be working on editing a particular track and wanting to hear it in a specific context temporarily. For example, I'm editing timing on a bass track and want to hear just the kick drum and rhythm guitar, and possibly with some lead vox or other instruments at a reduced level. Probably wouldn't want to save as every time I wanted to do something like that. So maybe the snapshot extension is the way to go there if I can work around editing sends/returns. Or maybe that can be fixed at some point.
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Old 09-04-2019, 04:26 PM   #11
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Another way I just learned about to do the temporary custom mix is with sends to a separate buss. Make a buss for overdubbing with the mix and listen just to that. When finished, delete that buss and return to using the normal master outputs.
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Old 09-05-2019, 06:52 AM   #12
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The Save As doesn't solve the general problem of wanting to get back to a known good mix.
exactly.
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Old 09-05-2019, 09:00 AM   #13
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The Save As doesn't solve the general problem of wanting to get back to a known good mix.
Not if you never hit save during the period that the mix was "known good".

I'll add the project version number to the file name of my renders. "Song_m13" is mix 13. Song_Project 13.rpp created it. If I'm on version 23 and decided I've screwed the whole thing up, but I thought mix 13 was good... it's still right there. Further, I can open the mix_13 project and cut/paste some elements from the mix_23.rpp project into the mix_13 project to save any later work that WAS ok.

It's kind of hard to go wrong here or lose anything.
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Old 09-05-2019, 12:01 PM   #14
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I'll add the project version number to the file name of my renders. "Song_m13" is mix 13. Song_Project 13.rpp created it. If I'm on version 23 and decided I've screwed the whole thing up, but I thought mix 13 was good... it's still right there. Further, I can open the mix_13 project and cut/paste some elements from the mix_23.rpp project into the mix_13 project to save any later work that WAS ok.

It's kind of hard to go wrong here or lose anything.
Yes, works as long as you practice meticulous file management, keep good notes, and don't mind rolling back and forth to combine elements from different versions.
Is there a way to put free-form text notes into a .rpp?
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Old 09-05-2019, 12:05 PM   #15
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Is there a way to put free-form text notes into a .rpp?
Projects have notes and you can set it so that the notes appear when projects launch.

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Old 09-05-2019, 06:01 PM   #16
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Projects have notes and you can set it so that the notes appear when projects launch.
Thanks for the quick response complete with pretty pictures! You guys on this forum are super helpful.
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Old 09-10-2019, 10:39 PM   #17
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should mention the HeDa VIP mixer, go look in the JSFX section of the forum... it is soon to have an update that will let you save and recall various mixer setting on each tab... how extensive it will be is not yet known
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Old 09-12-2019, 04:28 PM   #18
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Another way I just learned about to do the temporary custom mix is with sends to a separate buss. Make a buss for overdubbing with the mix and listen just to that. When finished, delete that buss and return to using the normal master outputs.

Yeah, that's what I would do too. Set up a second headphone bus track fed by sends from the tracks she wants, using send gains to set the 2nd phones monitor mix. I'd also keep it for later (mute & hide) in case overdubs/retakes are needed.
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Old 09-13-2019, 04:51 PM   #19
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I deal with this all the time, lots of good advice here. I do 2 things when I have to go back into a fully mixed song for new recording takes:

1. Save as a new project/version. This way if you mess up, you can always go back to the orig and start over. And once you have the new recording, you're already in the project, no need to copy/paste/etc.

2. Toggle ALL FX. Create a toolbar button so that you can easily toggle off FX chains for all tracks. Press that button, record at low latency, then toggle it again and you're back in the mix business just like that.

sure this is a little complicated if you HAVE to record with plugins...then just enable that one track's plugins. if you have send returns (reverb, delays, paracomps), you will also need to mute those during recording, but we're talking about 1 toggle button and maybe a handful of tracks to mute and that's it.
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Old 09-14-2019, 01:22 AM   #20
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there is a SNAPSHOT feature for saving and whatever of whatever you need
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