When receiving sessions from other people to mix, it is important to establish a workflow that is efficient and organized so that you can be creative faster and remove the distractions of session management.
In this pureMix.net Exclusive, Grammy Award Winning Engineer, John Paterno explains his mixing template and workflow for organizing sessions that he receives for mixing. Learn how John sets up his sessions when he receives a folder full of audio files when exported from another DAW, as well as how he imports session data from Pro Tools sessions into his template to fit his workflow.
Learn how to set up your sessions for an efficient mix from John Paterno, only on puremix.net
00:00:00 Ciao amici, John Paterno here.
I wanted to talk to you today about
setting up sessions that
I get from other people.
00:00:07 I get asked this a
lot and I thought
maybe I'd give you a couple
of insights into what I do
and what I think is practical.
00:00:21 I get two types of sessions, basically.
The first one being a set of audio files
that have all been consolidated
and sent down usually from Logic users
or people who want to
send me whole files
and then I also get Pro Tools
sessions from people.
00:00:36 So I want to talk about
each one individually,
what some of the challenges are
and what some of the pitfalls are.
00:00:43 The first situation I want to deal with
is a session where somebody gives me
just a complete
set of audio files.
00:00:48 Here's a Roger Manning
song that I've mixed recently
called 'I'm not your cowboy'.
We know the tempo is 120 bpm.
00:00:56 Thank you Roger.
And here are all the audio tracks.
00:01:00 Everything is all the same length.
00:01:02 Some are stereo files, some are mono,
but this is basically our song.
00:01:07 What I'm going to do is I'm going to
set up a new session in Pro Tools
and I'm going to create this from my
mixing template and I'm going to confirm
everything that I want, my mixing I-O,
sample rate, Bit Depth,
Interleaved audio files,
stereo files and wave type.
00:01:31 It's going to prompt me for a location
and I'm going to put it in
this current folder which is
my Puremix 2018 sessions folder
and I'm going to call it:
"I'm not your cowboy - JP mix".
00:01:51 And I'm going to make it all pretty.
00:01:56 So this opens up my basic session.
00:01:59 It's not a crazy template obviously
but it has some things
that I definitely know
I'm going to need.
00:02:04 My master fader, which has
two types of meters that I've been using,
the Blue Cat meter
and the Izotope meter.
00:02:12 'bus trim', this trims the
level going into my stereo bus.
00:02:17 The only thing I start
with is my stereo bus limiter
which has recently been Ozone 8.
And then I have
a couple of Aux tracks that I know
I'm going to end up wanting
and I have them set up
on buses 7 through 11.
00:02:31 My session tempo is 120,
and in this case it's already defaulted
at 120 otherwise what I would do
is I would double click on this and
I would enter in my tempo value.
00:02:43 The other thing I like to do is I like
to start all my sessions at bar 9.
00:02:47 I know I could start at zero but every
once in a while you run into something
where you might feel creative and you
might want to do something
at the beginning of the song as a build up
into the downbeat of the song,
and if your session is
starting all the way at the top
and then you've done
all this work,
you've got to slide everything down.
I'd rather just start at bar 9
and then have the flexibility.
00:03:10 It's almost like recording
on tape used to be
where you put the tape machine in record.
You'd have a few seconds go by
and then the song would start
and it just feels better
for me visually as well.
00:03:22 So that's what I do.
00:03:23 At this point I am going to
save this session and close it.
00:03:32 So now I have,
"I'm not your cowboy - JP mix".
So there are two things I can do here,
I can reopen the session,
I can open the 'import audio'
session dialog box,
locate my source audio...
00:03:54 Select all of it.
00:03:56 And I can either add it or copy it,
if I do it this method
I choose to copy it
because I want to make sure all
the audio ends up in my session
and in the audio files folder
this way there are no
dangling participles stuff
ending up on different drives or
later on you end up with missing files
because you've accidentally
deleted the folder.
00:04:18 What I would do at this point is
just copy everything. What this will do
is it will take all those
files and then copy them in
and because they are
at my same sample rate
they're going to copy
them in directly,
48 kHz to 48 kHz.
00:04:31 If my source audio files were
44.1 kHz, I would definitely
want to do this this way because it
will also sample rate convert for me
and then it's at the
sample rate I want, 48 kHz.
00:04:43 So I'm going to go
ahead and hit 'Done'
and I'm going to let that happen.
00:04:47 It's gonna ask me to
choose a destination folder
I choose it,
it's going to import the audio.
00:04:54 Now that my audio is imported I have
two options, I can either do a new track
or I can send it to the clip list.
00:05:00 So I'm going to select new track
and I'm going to go selection,
which is my bar 9 and note one other thing,
it's going to put
all these tracks
underneath my highlighted
track here on the left.
00:05:12 So these tracks are going
to start underneath the stereo bus track.
00:05:16 Here we go.
00:05:18 We have all of our tracks...
00:05:23 Now the first thing I'm going to do,
because everything imported to zero,
is I'm going to group all
of these tracks together
and I'm going to call it 'tracks',
and then I'm going to drag them from
zero all the way down to -infinity
so that they are totally off.
00:05:38 The next thing I'm gonna do
is organize my tracks
and you can always do
these however you want.
00:05:43 I like to do them with bass and drums
so it'll start with the bass,
vocals end up toward the bottom.
00:05:50 One thing I do
want to point out,
if there is a rough mix,
which hopefully there is,
I want to separate that out.
00:05:57 If you notice, all of my tracks are
already assigned to the stereo bus.
00:06:02 If I want to listen to the rough mix,
I don't want it in the stereo bus
because I don't want it to go
through my stereo bus processing
so I have this rough mix right here
and I'm going to move
this out separately
stick it all the way at
the top of the session
and assign it to output 1 and 2,
this way it goes
to my monitor path
and then I'll mute it.
00:06:22 And then it's there
and then I'm also going to stick
this particular track back to zero
so it's a unity gain
and it will be there for reference
and I know where it is up
at the top of the session
and it is also not
going to go through
any of my stereo bus processing.
00:06:42 So I've organized my session in
a fashion that I like to work,
I usually put the bass right up top
and then the drums afterwards
and any percussion stuff.
00:06:51 I'd like to start with buses 7 and 8
as my drum effects buses
so usually reverbs will end up on those,
sometimes a delay in a reverb,
sometimes two reverbs
as a starting point
and then all my other
instruments go below that.
00:07:05 So we've got some keyboards,
here we have a guitar harmonic,
we have a bunch of piano tracks,
a bunch of synth tracks as well,
lead vocal, background vocals
and then horns.
00:07:15 One thing I like to do if I see
stereo tracks like this,
like the lead vocal
master and it's stereo,
the odds are very good
that it's not stereo.
00:07:24 So I'm going to hit play and I'm just
gonna take a look at the meters.
00:07:27 Even with the volume down...
00:07:36 notice it's looking
pretty darn mono.
00:07:40 So in this case what I'm going to
do is I'm going to split this track,
right away
into mono...
00:07:49 And am going to use
the left side...
00:07:54 and then I'm going to select the next
two of them which are the original
and the right side
and I'm going to hide and
make inactive.
00:08:04 And then I'm going to put
this pan to the center.
00:08:07 I'm going to process
everything in Mono anyway
and I know for sure it's a
mono track all the way through
and then this way all
my inserts are mono,
all my plugins are mono, unless I want
to put some stereo in it at some point.
00:08:20 I like to do this because I want to
be able to control the panning.
00:08:24 On the lead vocal it
might not be as critical.
00:08:27 But sometimes you have the mono
source but it's on a stereo track.
00:08:30 Then if you want to pan
it one way or another
it just becomes a pain in the
neck because you have two actual,
the pan left and the
pan right to deal with.
00:08:38 So this way it's just a mono track
and I can pan it anywhere I want.
00:08:42 Looking down toward the bottom I have
these other Aux Sends that I've already
just kind of predetermined. These usually
end up on vocals or vocal related,
and because my vocal is
normally toward the bottom,
I usually just leave them there.
00:08:55 I usually set up my Auxes as mono in
and then this gives me the option
for having mono plug-ins or
mono in - stereo out plug-ins.
00:09:04 For reverbs and things like that
most likely it'll be mono in - stereo out,
for a tight delay or something
that I want to tuck under a vocal
then that would just be a mono delay.
00:09:14 This gives me the best of both worlds.
If for some reason I need to have
a stereo input to the effect then obviously
I will set up a stereo aux for that.
00:09:22 Seventy percent of the time maybe
I start with my normal thing
but that other 30 percent can
sometimes make a difference.
00:09:29 Let me save this
and then let me move
on to another example.
00:09:32 Let's take a look
at what happens
when I get a Pro Tools
session to import.
00:09:36 I have here another
track by this
project called 'Blondeultra
featuring Sam Saint'.
00:09:41 This one is a Pro Tools session.
00:09:43 When I get these,
the first thing I usually
do is just open it up
and I take a look to
see what I'm in for.
00:09:49 Odds are they have plugins that
I don't have, which is fine.
00:09:56 And this is what this
particular session looks like.
00:09:59 I just want to make sure
there isn't anything
that's a real curveball
right off the bat
but it looks like it's pretty organized.
It looks like it's pretty together.
00:10:07 It's not exactly where I would put
things but this is why I'm going to
import these things
into my other session.
00:10:14 On the surface everything looks good
but one thing you always
have to look out for
is you have to see if
there are hidden tracks
and in this case there are.
00:10:25 When I go to import the session data
into my new Pro Tool
session that I'm going to create
all of these hidden tracks
will come in as well.
00:10:35 Since they're hidden and
they're not in the edit window
I'm making the assumption that
they're not used in the session.
00:10:43 How do I avoid importing this stuff I don't
want and keep the stuff I do want?
So there's a few ways to do this.
00:10:52 The Luddite way would
be to just highlight these things
and hold down the Cmd key...
00:10:59 Since there aren't that many of them,
and I can drag them all to a place where
it's not going to matter,
like down to the bottom of the session
underneath the master fader.
00:11:08 Now, the other way to
do it is to look for,
'show only inactive tracks'...
00:11:15 And then this will bring up
all of the inactive tracks.
00:11:19 I can highlight then,
I can select all of this group
and then I can drag
them down to a place
where I'm not going to import from.
00:11:27 So everything below the Master
I'm not going to import,
I'm going to show
all the tracks again.
00:11:34 And then now these ones that
I've highlighted I'm going to hide again
because I don't
need to see them.
00:11:40 So now when I go to import it
will only be the active tracks.
00:11:45 I have done this. Now I'm going
to do a 'Save As' for mix,
I'm going to call this 'prep' because
I've moved these files around
and I want to keep the original session
just in case I've
missed something.
00:11:59 I'm going to save this
and then I'm going to close the window.
00:12:04 And then now I'm going to
open a new session.
00:12:11 I'm gonna do the same thing as
I did before, it's my mixing template,
I-O setting is going to be
my mixing I-O setup
and everything else is going
to be the way it was earlier.
00:12:22 I'm going to call it 'Crash...
00:12:25 Little girl - JP mix'.
00:12:30 And then for my location
I'm going to put it...
00:12:34 inside the 'Blondeultra' folder.
00:12:41 So my session is loaded up
and immediately I'm gonna save it
and I'm gonna exit it.
00:12:48 I have a new session folder right here
that says 'Crash Little Girl - JP mix'.
00:12:54 If I continue on this path and if
I import the audio files
it's going to put the audio files
in two different places.
00:13:02 It's gonna keep the source
files where they are
but any new files it's going to create
a new audio file in this folder.
They're going to end up
in a few different places but I don't
want to do that. I just want to keep
the one audio file just
for convenience sake.
00:13:16 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna remove
my new Pro Tools session
and I'm going to put it into the
main layer of the folder.
00:13:24 And then I'm going to delete the
session folder that was just created.
00:13:29 So now what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna open
up my new session...
00:13:34 I am going to do the
same thing I did earlier.
00:13:37 I want this tracks to come
in underneath my stereo bus,
in this case I'm going to do
Shift + Option + I
to import session data.
00:13:51 So I'm gonna go to...
00:13:54 the session, Blondeultra,
and I'm going to do my mix prep,
which is right here,
I'm going to open that up
and I'm going to select what I'm
going to import for the session data.
00:14:08 I'm going to link to
source media where possible
because I wanted to stay
in the audio files folder.
00:14:15 I'm going to select the
tracks that I want to use.
00:14:19 I'm going to just highlight the first one
and then scroll down to
everything above the Master Fader
and I'm going to select those all.
00:14:27 And they're all going to
come up as new track.
00:14:29 I'm going to import the tempo,
I'm going to import the markers,
and then I'm going to import a few
other things but not everything else.
00:14:38 The default for Pro Tools is going
to be to import all of these things,
and I don't want to
import all of these things.
00:14:46 I don't want the automation.
I don't want the plug-ins.
00:14:48 So what I'm going to do first is select
none and then I'm going to set it up
so that I can import
the audio files,
the other playlists,
and the panning.
00:14:59 And I do the panning because I
find clients most of the time
are so used to the way
the panning is sitting
that I want to at least give
that a listen as the first shot.
00:15:08 I'm going to import, main playlist option,
replace existing playlist or
just import the main playlist.
00:15:18 I'm going to do alternate playlists.
00:15:21 As soon as I select import,
the main playlist options,
it automatically
gives me clips and media
and then I'm going to import
pan automation and setting.
00:15:31 And then I'm going to
see if there's anything else
that I feel like I need to import.
00:15:35 They went to the trouble
of color coding their tracks,
which I appreciate,
but I don't follow their color scheme.
00:15:43 So I'm not going to do that
because it's just going to be a
whole layer of me doing and undoing.
00:15:48 So I've decided what I'm going to import
and then I'm gonna hit OK.
00:15:53 Now when I hit OK,
again I've selected stereo bus here.
00:15:57 So it's going to bring
these tracks in underneath stereo bus.
00:16:02 Here we go!
One of my main reasons for doing it
this way is so that I don't get stuck
with too much debris from the
previous sessions I-O setup
because as we all know
that stuff adds up and it
can cause a lot of grief
and a lot of weird assignments.
00:16:21 If I can form their session
to my I-O setup
usually there's only
one or two things if any
that I'm going to need to change
or I'm going to
need to worry about.
00:16:31 If I go the other way.
Then I have to conform my whole thing
to their whole existing thing
and it's just time consuming.
00:16:38 So now it's brought all the tracks in,
as you can see there's a rough mix.
00:16:42 So the first thing I'm going to do
is do what I did last time
and bring it all the
way up to the top.
00:16:48 In this case,
when I'm receiving a Pro Tools session
from a client as opposed to
just audio files
I import their session data
and that includes all their
location information as well.
00:16:58 So I don't like to, right off the bat,
slide the files around in
case they have other details
that I need to sort out, if for some reason
I need to import something back in again
then at least it's all sitting in the
same reference point.
00:17:12 So I've moved my rough mix
to the top of the session
where I like to keep
it, I'm going to mute it
and I'm going to
leave it at zero.
00:17:18 I'm going to take all
of my new tracks though
and I'm gonna
slide down to the bottom,
I'm going gonna
group them together
and I'm going to call them 'tracks'.
00:17:29 I'm going to do
as I did last time
I'm going to take all the faders
and put them down to zero.
00:17:34 Then I'm going to
take the group off.
00:17:35 The other thing I'm going to do
is while these are
all highlighted
I'm going to set them up to the
stereo bus output of my choice
which is ironically
named 'stereo bus'.
00:17:46 So I'm going to hit Shift + Opt,
I'm going to go to my stereo bus
and I'm going to assign all the outputs
to the stereo bus.
00:17:54 So now my signal path is complete and
all my audio files are imported.
00:18:00 Now the only other thing I want to
check is I want to make sure
there isn't any automation
that got passed.
00:18:06 I'm going to select
all the tracks
and then I'm going
to hit the minus key
and I'm in keyboard
focus in the edit window.
00:18:13 So by hitting that key
anything I have selected it will
show me the volume automation lanes,
I'm checking them all
and there's no automation
so I'm good to go.
00:18:22 I hit that same key
and it toggles me back
to the waveform view.
00:18:28 So there are two pretty quick
and efficient methods for you
to get sessions from people,
get audio from people,
get them into your format
and to get working.
00:18:37 Ciao!
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John moved to Los Angeles two weeks after graduation from the University of Miami MUE [Music Engineering] program. A short period of freelance assisting concluded with a staff position at Sunset Sound/Sound Factory in Hollywood, where for five years he was exposed to many great engineers, producers, and artists.
After breaking out of assisting, John worked with a wide range of producers including Mitchell Froom, Joe Chiccarelli, Byron Gallimore, Celso Valli, and Stephen Duffy. He won a Latin Grammy for his work with artist/producer Soraya.
In addition, John has produced or co-produced projects for The Black Mollys, Mitchell Froom, Lustra, Robbie Williams, The Lilac Time, and many other artists. He as also co-written songs with artists and has written pieces for TV and film.
John is also known to be an outstanding guitar player, and has mastered the craft of recording this instrument.
Check out his videos on PureMix to see how his meticulous approach makes for detailed and punchy mixes.
