Editing

1. Combine all audio into one project file – whether that is the DAW session the multitrack was recorded into or a new session in a DAW you are proficient or comfortable in using to combine multiple sources of audio such as the zoom recorders.

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2. Line up audio to be in time. When using room recordings from the FOH desk, a natural echo will occur from the FOH mix captured, so keep this in mind when aligning audio. Whether that audio was captured on an independent recorder or in the multitrack from the FOH desk, align audio peaks to control the echo and maintain a positive phase relationship between tracks to avoid phasing and cancellation.

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3. Label each track with the source of the audio for organisation and easy recognition of what sounds you are working with. If you are working with a larger multitrack or audio sources that can be grouped together to control automation levels simultaneously, creating aux channels and bus the audio channels to them, an example of my workflow with Day We Ran's second show is shown below. I also like to bus the stereo room, crowd channels or the over head drum mics if there are 2 together tp process them simultaneously as well. 

 

4. Listen through the whole set and add markers where each song begins and ends and any notable crowd interactions that occur that could be used as intros/outros or just on their own as their short form content.

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5. When you are recording the audio from a show for social media and promotion, it will be most likely to be to capture the most popular songs of an artists, a recent release or an upcoming release. Working between the couple of songs that are most likely going to be used for content, loop these through to determine a rough mix. This step can also be incorporated with the last step while listening through and marking out each song.

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a. Gain stage audio files

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b. Independently listen to the mono left and right channels of stereo channels (if using Zoom recorders) and decide if the stereo recording needs to be separated into 2 mono channels to be processed differently depending on the quality of the stereo recording.

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c. Adjust volume faders to a starting mix level

 

d. Process channels in the multi-track with basic EQ’s, compression, reverbs with a standard effects chain for each element.

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With a basic understanding and evaluation of the sound of the recordings and the boring admin editing has been made, the mixing of each individual song will be easier and quicker, and you can be confident in the sections of the set that sound the best to use to promote yourself. Take the songs that you wish to finalise the mix of, or every song in the set, and import these into new sessions, which can be done on all DAWs either of 2 ways:

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1. Open a new session in your DAW labelled as the first song you wish to mix.

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2. File menu > Import session data

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3. Select the original session you have just edited and select all clips, playlists, groups, plug-ins and markers.

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4. The session will look identical to the original one however now you can group the channels together (so editing and mixing changes apply to each channel in the session identically) and delete all the audio around the one song you will mix independently.

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5. Delete all the markers and move the audio to the start of the session.

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6. Crop and fade the audio to a suitable start and end of the song – start with assuming the whole song will be used and needs mixing. If you have had all the audio grouped at this point any adjustments to the position and timing of one clip will be the same on all clips so your aligning at the beginning of this process won’t be lost. From here you can ungroup and begin mixing.

Or:

1. Save session As / Save session copy in (to make another copy of original recording session)

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2. Change the name to the new copy to the first song you wish to mix. If you keep these individual session files in the same folder as the original file, the audio files can be referenced from the original audio files rather than duplicating many audio files folders eating up unnecessary storage.

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3. Open this new copy and follow the steps from step.4 from the previous method.