As I plan to work sequentially through the album, I thought I'd take a little time to walk through the tools I'm using and the track organization for the first song. The DAW (digital audio workstation) you use to remix doesn't matter. I mean that because with so many capable products out there, it's gotten more difficult to pick a clear-cut winner. I suppose that if you run a huge studio, you may have the luxury of using one for tracking, one for arrangement, another for mixing, etc. For most people's purposes, it's like choosing a character in Mario Kart. Each software package gets the job done, with it's own strengths and weaknesses. I happen to be a Pro Tools user. I mention this only as a point of reference when I post screenshots like this one:
This is my edit window before starting work on the first song. The tempo grid is set to 120 bpm, and I know the song is in the key of Eb. I renamed each of the supplied "stems" and added each to their own row, then created groupings for ease of use. These groupings are denoted by the colors on the left hand side. For example, guitars are red, drums green, and vocals blue. A short description of each stem is in the grey comments column, to remind me exactly what sounds can be found as I'm bouncing around. This will likely be the last time the waveforms looks so ordinary, and after things get chopped up and turned around, it gets harder to locate and work with if you don't do this kind of organization beforehand.
In addition to my DAW, there are some other tools I'm sure to use as the project progresses. I'll touch on them as I go. My goal here is to provide and document enough technical information without putting people to sleep. I'll attempt to keep these type of posts somewhat separate from the purely creative ones. Good evening for now, as I wrap up prep work and begin brainstorming ideas for the fun part of this project.
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