Mastering Individual Songs in a Recording Session

[jfran2]

I'm sorry if this has been posted before, but I haven't been able to find anything similar in the search.

In my workflow, I typically record entire live music sessions in a multitrack format, usually about 25 or so channels. I then take that session home and mix it. Sometimes, one or more of the songs from one session are good enough that I would like to go ahead and master them as well. This is, of course, after I've done the mix; adjusted dynamics and EQ, and added plug-ins for the entire session. Herein lies my problem - the only way I've found to send a track to the mastering part of Studio One is to set the beginning and end marks to the song I want to master. This works fine if I only want to master one song from the session. But if I want to do two songs, I can't set the beginning and end marks to two separate places in the sound file. I could, of course, do a mixdown of the songs I want to master, then send those mixes to the mastering part, but that takes away my ability to easily adjust the mix if I need to later - part of the Studio One mastering process that I really like. Ditto if I extract the stems. One way I could do it is to extract the stems from each song in the beginning, effectively cutting up the session into individual songs from the start, and doing the mix on each song. But I like the cohesiveness (and time savings) of only doing the mix once to certain instruments, like the drums, which won't really change from song to song.

So the question: Is there a way to master individual songs from the same recording session while keeping the ability to go back and change the mix while mastering, which Studio One does so well? Or is this a workflow that is just never done? If you're curious, I work for a church, and this is the live song set for the service, usually five songs. But I run into the same problem when recording live sessions from the band I play in, and mixing them after the show.

Thanks, as always, for your thoughts and opinions!

 

[SwitchBack]

Project mastering assumes a session/song per song, so my workflow for multi-song sessions is to first cut up the session files into separate files per song (by placing markers and then exporting stems between markers). That way the stem files per song are smaller, which makes processing faster too. The Project then links to multiple songs/sessions, and from the Project you can jump to the individual sessions/songs for mix adjustments.

NB. I get the point about the cohesiveness but it can also send you from pillar to post (the ballad tweaks messing with the singalong settings you did before). There are ways to copy track settings between songs so that's my preferred route. And you can set up a template per type of song.

 

[andgar]

You could set the start and end markers for the entire session, then slice up into songs in the project page (there's a "split track at cursor" function) and just master the chosen tracks. Mixdown will take longer each time you do edits in the song page as you'll be running the whole session every time. I use this workflow when recording/mixing/mastering live jazz performances, as the mix is generally quite static throughout the show, and as you say, it's much more preferable to maintain one song file in this case, rather than split into about 20 different song files where if I then wanted to EQ the bass I'd have to do so across 20 files.

 

[TimC340]

I think what you need is the album mode of the Project page, which is described in detail by Mike in this video. He specifically states that each song can be handled individually, and will have its own start and end markers. It's not a workflow I've used, but it would seem to answer your questions.

 

[Navar]

I simply do it by exporting the marker regions and than import it into the Mastering Page. Sadly I miss the feature for a very long time to just select the marker regions I want to import into a project when adding a song/session. This, stem mastering and a kind of folder structure for mix versions of the songs. So to be honest, often the mastering page is a bit useless for me and you have all the tools available as single plugins so I tend to do more complex masterings in a new song/session view.

 

[SwitchBack]

Stem mastering isn't really well covered in S1/SP. Maybe if songs could have bus master files too... (so that a song with bus master files opens as multiple 'songs' on the master page)?

However, stem mastering and 'mastering between markers' (as with multiple-song sessions) are two different subjects. No wrongs I guess, but it can become frustrating trying impose a preferred way of working on a tool that isn't designed to work that way. The master page is acknowledging that not everything can be fixed in mastering and that sometimes you have to go back to the song to get it right. To have that working as intended one song per linked session is assumed. That one song can be multiple songs stringed together, with a static or automated mix. But my experience is that it's easier to have those songs in separate sessions, especially when they are a mixed bag of styles.

 

[Navar]

The master page is acknowledging that not everything can be fixed in mastering and that sometimes you have to go back to the song to get it right. To have that working as intended one song per linked session is assumed. That one song can be multiple songs stringed together, with a static or automated mix. But my experience is that it's easier to have those songs in separate sessions, especially when they are a mixed bag of styles.

Yes, I think you are right about that, but because of those "by design" limitations I rarely use the Master Page and I only did two CD and one vinyl release last year, where DDP was requested. It's getting less and less of those.
Sometimes I have this one song per session file workflow and sometimes not because it's easier and faster to stay in one session because of the style and structure of the production. Live sessions are a very good example where you normally keep a lot of consistency in the basic sounds like the drumkit or the vocals. If you split the song into different files and than recognize that you need to change the bassdrum sound a bit... But as I said, the tools are also available everywhere else in the software, so it doesn't really make a big difference for me where I do the master.

 

[jfran2]

Thanks everyone, for your comments on this thread. You've given me much to think about!

 

[John Vere]

The feature that is missing is the Mix Recall feature found in Sonar.

Like @SwitchBack i start by splitting out each song into a different project.
I would do this by simply splitting at the start , deleting everything on the left. Separate at end and delete everything on the right. Save as and name. Song one is now its own project.
Now use UNDO and bring back everything from the Right. Now you can delete song one from the Left.
Go to end of song two and repeat.

This is surprisingly easy and quick.

Don’t save the master project when done. It will then be preserved in the original state in case you need it later.

Now here where Sonars mix recall comes to the rescue.
Start mixing song one and when happy save as a mix scene.
Move on to song 2 and drag and drop the mix recall scene from song 1 folder to the track pane of song 2. Song 2 will now have all parameters, including effects used in song 1.

Get to song 5 and decide that this is definitely the best mix! No problem save it as a mix scene and drag it to songs 1,2,3. &4.

I used to do a lot of live recordings and generally they will be pretty close if you are grabbing raw input signals for each track. Each song will be only a little bit different but important parts like bass and drums don’t usually change and drums especially are a lot of work when mixing.
Most of what changes song to song is the guitars.
Keyboards if used I always grab the midi along with the audio. Just in case.

 

[SwitchBack]

Like @SwitchBack i start by splitting out each song into a different project.
I would do this by simply splitting at the start , deleting everything on the left. Separate at end and delete everything on the right. Save as and name. Song one is now its own project...

Note that that way all separate projects still use the full session files, even though the events show only a portion. That will cause some operations (stretching, tuning, ...) take longer to complete. Bouncing creates new files with only what's visible in them.

 

[John Vere]

Sorry I missed one detail and that is that I use Save As and the project is renamed and saved in a new location which then solved that problem.
Only the audio used in that song gets copied to the new project folder location. At least that’s what happens in Sonar. Im not sure how Studio pro saves audio. I guess I better sort that out.

 

[SwitchBack]

Simple way to check: Open the first 1 song session and see if you can drag out the events to full length. If the song uses the full session files it will expose the other songs too.