Mixing down the best of 40 tracks for Blue Christmas was a three day affair made better and worse by the DAW software

Sonar Sonar X1 ProChannel, easy to use, powerful track and channel processing

Part seven of the Blue Christmas Diaries.

They say pioneers get all the arrows, in the back.  The last three days of mixing down our rough recorded tracks of Blue Christmas has been like that but we’re still alive.

Update – Sonar X1b now ready for prime time

Since drums and bass are the foundation, I started sifting through bass player Tom LeClair’s takes for the best one on Sunday.

They say don’t sweat the details which would be good advice to take. Actually most of what Tom recorded could have been THE take so I obsessed over the little stuff.

Studio Economik sent me a K+H O800 sub-woofer that arrived on Friday so that was part of Sunday- hooking it up and balancing the room. What a difference that made. I tried some of my older mixes and could spot the bass weakness in the mix right away. I’ll miss that when it goes back in a few weeks.

Most of Sunday was spent playing with the bass track and the two track rhythm section, Bunnie’s hi-hat and snare.  Timing seemed to be off a notch which turned out to be the internal latency when you play backing tracks and then record live. It’s about a beat and a bit off.

Using the Nudge feature in Sonar X1, Ronnie MacLean and I agreed on where the beat should land Monday afternoon.  Continue reading →