I have a track with 60 tracks that I'm willing to export individually, divided by 6 stem categories (drums, synths, etc.) and probaly another 5/6 sub-groups here and there, as well as 6 return channels.

- 1st question:

When I export, it will render all tracks + their return(s).

But will it export the stem groups and groups, on top of each individual stem, as a DUPLICATE?

I need to know this in order to avoid that groups are DUPLICATING their own content, on top of each individual stem that is part of the group? (I guess it will sound very loud in this case, since all the groups will be rendered twice with their grouped sub-tracks)

Is Ableton smart enough not to include the group duplicate and only keep the individual stem of the group?

- 2nd question:

if I applied any automation and effect plugins on a group, will it correctly apply these automation and effects onto the individual stems of the group, and not only on the group itself?

Cheers.

 

Unless you want effects that are baked into your tracks, you don't need to export the returns and groups. Doing so usually means that you're painting the engineer into a corner, and massively limiting their options.

About 60% of my daily work is mixing other people's stuff, and almost always, all I want is the following:

1) A stereo file of your rough mix, so I can drop it into my project to reference.

2) The raw audio files from the tracks, consolidated so I can just open my DAW here, drag and drop them into my project, and they all sync up perfectly (see below).

3) If you have any tracks that have very specific treatments / effects on them, that you feel should be absolutely exactly how you have them rn, then send me a version with the fx printed, and a dry version, so I can use/blend them however I feel is necessary. If you're unsure of when/if to do this, talk to the engineer!

4) Some (brief) notes on the overall sound/vibe you'd like to go for.

5) Any reference tracks you'd like me to listen to / reference against while working on the mix.

- You're not running a bunch of exports through your mixer, effects, and stereo buss. What you want to do is export the consolidated audio files direct from the arrange page.

If you don't know how to export consolidated files, there's loads of tutorials on youtube (and actually, ableton's built-in help is usually pretty great too) - it's super easy, but can be a bit confusing the first time you do it - just be careful to make sure you're selecting the right file format, and take care with mono/stereo tracks.

(I prefer Broadcast Wav files, at whatever bit depth and samplerate you tracked at - typically that's 24bit, 44.1 or 48k, but if you're one of the 96k conspiracy crowd (kidding), or pulled a Sufjan Stevens and tracked everything at 16bit, just send it at whatever it is, and don't dick around trying to convert it - it won't make it sound any better).

I don't work in Ableton that much, but it should track your automation (some DAWs will give you an option whether you want them to do that or not).

_____________________________________________

Make sure every audio file is VERY CLEARLY NAMED / LABELLED - because absolutely no-one wants to waste time sorting through 60 tracks of "audio 1", "audio 2" etc. that you haven't bothered to organise.

At a minimum, you should have names like kick, 808, snr, live bass, synth bass, etc, but the more descriptive you can be, the better, eg: Live bass DI, live bass amp 47, vrs cln gtr 1, chrs ld vox main, chrs ld vox dbl 1, and so on.

You want the engineer to be spending the max amount of time actually mixing, not sorting through stuff that's not labelled; or having to correct really basic stuff like timing / tuning issues, clicks/pops on tracks, etc.

Them having to spend an hr or two doing this stuff also means that by the time they come to start the actual mix, they've been listening to the track for 2 straight hrs, so are already losing some objectivity. The early stages of a mix are often the most important, where you're making the most instinctive moves.

Also, unless you've agreed with them in advance, don't send a whole bunch of different takes of stuff, and expect them to do the comps for you - that's not mixing, it's additional production.

With stuff like lead vox, it's often good to send the "ld vox MAIN" and then give them 1 or 2 alts, in case they want to swap a word/syllable out here and there, but don't force them to make a bunch of production decisions for you.

I don't know what genre(s) you're working in, but if it's something with real guitars/bass, then providing a folder with clean DI's of parts (if you tracked them) can be very helpful if they feel that something would benefit from reamping.

In the same vein - if you've tracked real drums, providing clean single hits, esp of kick and snr, can be super handy - even better if you have the drummer do say 3 or 4 at different velocities). You can just throw them on the end of the drum take, so they're there if needed).

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When you've done the exports, actually make sure you've done them correctly by opening an empty project, grabbing all the files, and dragging / dropping them into the project - if you drop them all at zero, they should all be synced up and play exactly as you want the track to sound.

When you're sure that they do, put all the files - along with the other stuff detailed above - in a single folder, and label it with the track title and the BPM of the song (if it's tempo mapped, export and include the tempo map, and also provide a text file detailing the tempo changes, referencing bars/beats of the consolidated files).

Zip the folder, and upload it to a file transfer service (I prefer WeTransfer / Dropbox) and send them the link. (Unless they have their own upload site/page, in which case, follow their directions).

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This may seem like a lot, but once you learn how to do it properly, it'll literally take you 10 mins. Esp if you're wanting to build a good working relationship with a mixing engineer, doing all of the above will ensure you come across as professional, and like someone people will want to work with.

It'll also ensure that you get the most from your mixing budget, and the best from your engineer!

 

Last edited: Jul 25, 2022

Very accurate.
Yes, Thats a lot of homework for the musician/composer, but the final result will sound better, the price of the studio will be cheaper too (faster workflow for the sound engineer).
A note about compression: turn it off, avoid exporting it on stems, leave this process to the mixing stage (fix over compressed tracks is impossible)

 

Wow thank you so much for the very detailed and first-hand, unvaluable mixer feedback! I'm gonna take the time to read all this very carefully <3

Yes I spent 1 hour naming everything very precisely, getting the order of the tracks proper, etc. but I'm gonna give it another round with all your points.

And indeed the budget aspect is one thing I had in mind, so I'm gonna check all the points to maximize the mixer's time (and my budget) ^^

Will report back to this thread if I have any problem/questions in the process.

Cheeers

 

In the meantime I'm copy pasting this other valuable feedback I received on Reddit /ableton, it might be useful to anyone landing on this page:

 

man i have a question

i assume you're providing the sounds you want etc

but is ur mixing engineer allowed to change the sounds if needed? i mean do you expect him to also change the sounds or just mix?

thanks

 

It's a good question! To be honest just the mix, pretty happy with all the sounds (it took me a while to get there, but finally, after learning all the differents drumboxes and instruments and vsts and effects etc. + how to mix properly) so I don't expect him to change fundamentally the sound (perhaps marginally, if something feels off or is missing to his ears); now mix wise of course, since I know him and choose him precisely because he's an experienced Berlin-based electronic music mixing engineer (and producer) I know exactly that I won't have to tell him much in the email to get him started (of course I'll always provide him with a basic background, bpm, key, reference tracks, etc.)

By mixing it I assume it's gonna turn it from decent mixing to studio-level mixing, and I'm doing all I can (cf. Lube Bag's list, and many other recommended actions I've read on many places, tutorial videos, etc.) to give him the material in the 'purest' form with the source contents, clean structure, names, etc.

I'd say my weakest part is the vocal (a vocalist sung on it) because it such a complex topic that I've explored on YouTube so far with a lot of possible techniques but it can involve so many possibilities when it comes to mixing vocals that I decided to only clean the parts, mix them, gain stage the volume along the whole track to make it sound even, add a bit of vocal compression (Waves R-Vox, damn what a great plugion!), add reverb + a couple delay automations in the most important parts of the track, but very minimal to make it sit in the mix in a transparent and airy way.

It happens that the singer has already a few released tracks which sound the way I'd like it to be, so I'll forward them to the mix engineer along with a couple other tracks that caught my attention and that have a similar vibe and treatment/grain I'm looking for in the vocal.

There's so much you can do like so many layering options, effects, modulations, delay, auto-tune etc. possibilities that I prefer to not use them or I'll mess up the mix for sure xD I've even seen guys on YouTube using crazy automations and like 6 different return channels on the vocals only. For the sake of simplicity, let's not go down this road at this point haha

 

Last edited: Jul 25, 2022

Okay so I did everything by the book, now I have one remaining question it's to do with vocals:

I have 3 stems of vocals (two main + one background, and I think just one return for them 3 to keep it simple), so my question is what am I supposed to send to the engineer:

1. the very original ones submitted by the singer, before I cleaned them (removed a few bleeps and unnecessary parts) and before I did volume automation to normalize and mix them with the music
2. the original ones after I cleaned them and after I did volume automation throughout the track
3. the final ones with effects (Reverb + Delay etc.) + a bit of compression (Waves R-Vox)?
4. or 1. + 3. ?
5. or 2. + 3. ?

Thank you!

 

Last edited: Jul 27, 2022

The mix engineer you're sending it to should be specific about what he expects from you.

Most on here can offer their opinions but at the end of the day they're not the one mixing it. You really need to ask him/her. If he won't answer your questions then I'd go to a different engineer because file formats, stem arrangement, processing acceptance is all part of the job.

 

Oh he will sure answer and I will sure ask, but I'm just asking beforehand what's the standard practice.

Seems like there's none so I'll ask him directly indeed, sounds good.

 

Excellent once again thank you!

Also last thing I have noticed something, Ableton doesn't keep the number of each stem.

You have to be manually entering the number to each stem (eg. 01 - Kick), I think that's a good habit since I want it exported exactly in the same order as my DAW ordering to the engineer, for the sake of logic.

Especially with 60 stems!

So I'll do that, numbering all the stems > export incl. return channels > removing the groups (after checking if everything sounds the same in a new empty project) > writing an email to the engineering to make sure he's provided with all he wants.

 

I wouldn't bother with numbering them at all - just because the order of your tracks makes logical sense to you, doesn't mean that your mixing engineer will feel the same, and/or want to import them into their project/template in that same order. They'll import and arrange (and colour) them however they want, not how you tell them to ;)

Tbh, having arbitrarily-assigned numbers at the start of each name personally annoys me - it's a waste of time and screen space - if I receive tracks like that, literally the first thing I do is go through and delete the numbers, because once I've set the mix up the way I want it, I don't want to see a bunch of randomly-ordered, meaningless digits in my tracklist, because it's just visual clutter that I don't need.

I'd be willing to bet that your mixing engineer will almost certainly want to arrange at least some of the tracks in a different order to where you currently have them.

For example, when I'm mixing, my general track layout/colouring will be:

Live drums (dark purple)
Electronic drums (mid purple)
Synth bass (pinkish-purple)
Live bass (light purple)
Lead synths (bright pink)
Pads (sorta salmon-pink)
Quiet/clean gtrs (turqoise)
Loud gtrs (orange)
Ac gtrs (green or blue)
Keys/Pianos (Light green)
Strings/other orchestral (mid green)
Noises/fx/samples/random shite (whatever colour they feel like)
BVs (pale yellow-orange)
Ld Vox (yellow)
Ld Dbls (dull yellow)

Busses will usually be a brighter-coloured version of the tracks that are feeding them, and fx returns will be whatever colour helps me remember what they actually are.

How much of that order, and how many of those track colours match up with your own personal system? Prob not that many. For most people, it's personal thing that's prob developed over months/years.



Just give the tracks clear, simple, meaningful, easy-to-understand names - all you're doing is helping the engineer quickly identify what type of element each audio track contains as they're building their mix project file - they'll more than likely rename a few tracks to help them remember stuff anyways as the mix goes on (I do this pretty much every mix on at least some tracks).

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2022

Very interesting feedback thank you that will help me think less in a numbered way

I already use colours (they match the numbering, by groups) but they don't get exported as part of the audio stems obviously, hence my point with numbers.

Also of course I'm not trying to impose anything to the guy but I thought it would be more logical that he saw my ordering first, then he can rename the stems whatever he wants thereafter, right?

The absence of numbering logic frightens me lol, how can people find a logical structure if they're not stricly organised in their project, one way or the other.

 

Good!

Logical in regards to what - how you feel that things should be done? That's not logic, it's personal preference. All you're doing is assigning an arbitrary number to a track, based on the order they were in on your screen. Those numbers are entirely meaningless to anyone but you.

(I'm gonna just speak here in the 1st person because it's easier, less contrived, and I can't speak for your mixing engineer):

If I get a song in from you to mix, I couldn't care less - literally have zero interest whatsoever - in the order that you may or may not have had the tracks of that song arranged in Ableton on your screen.

Does knowing the order you arranged your tracks on your screen change how I hear the song? Does it affect my mixing decisions in any way? And if you think it does, are you also going to provide everyone who actually listens to the finished mix with a pdf screenshot of your Ableton project window, so they can see the order you arranged the tracks in, because it'll help them listen to the track better/more logically?

All I want from you is consolidated audio files that are clearly named, so I don't have to waste my time having to identify a bunch of unlabelled tracks. I don't care what order you might have arranged them in, and you telling me that information doesn't change the order I'm going to arrange them in my mix project at all. It's totally pointless information, and a waste of everyone's time.

I'm legit not trying be mean here, just wanna be as direct as I can with you: this numbering thing you're getting hung up on is totally irrelevant.

I am organised - I've been doing this for a really long time, and have very efficient working methods that help me use my time super efficiently.

It also sounds like you've got your own system too, and I'm pleased to hear that, because it def helps free up the brain to concentrate on the more important stuff.

Here's the thing - your system is your system. It's based on whatever seems "logical" and correct to you. And you should absolutely keep doing it if it's working for you.

And now here's the really important thing - I don't care what your system is. Like, at all.

So long as you can deliver me the tracks to mix in the format I prefer and request from you, the audio sounds good, and isn't full of issues that you should have already dealt with during tracking, then that's all I need (and indeed want) from you.

In much the same way that I'm not particularly interested in how you take your coffee in the morning, I'm also not interested in how you like to organise your project on your computer screen, and I have no real interest in trying to impose my system on you either.

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2022

You can do a lot of extra work that way; thinking you are doing the guy/lady doing your mixing a helping favor or whatever. Only to find out it's not an issue that concerns them. So maybe you do everything perfect, and it's a waste of time. Or more likely, every time you add more it can potentially be just another issue to unravel.

One of the most annoying things you can do however, is to send the files and disappear on a 2 week vacation where you avoid phone calls and emails. Without communication delays, they can let you know if they really need anything additional from you; and get it when they need it.

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2022

This x 10000000!