Mix Train Help Needed

Music Discovery & Curation Mixes
1

Mix Train Help Needed

Hello ello,

Myself and a few friends back home in Blighty are doing a little mix train. It’s going to be 6 of us doing 10 minutes each. I have entirely plagiarized the model and the rules for it from Jester, Photo etc…

I am thinking we will have an equipment mix of S4, TPro, CDJ and 1210s. In terms of recording, have any guidelines been put into place or best practices shared? Also, what (if any) mastering are you guys doing to the completed train and what are you using?

Any other tips on managing the train and getting the best possible final product would be very welcome.

Once I get myself up to full operational speed I will jump on one the trains being started on here.

Cheers,
SmiTTTen

2

load whats been played so far (make sure its analyzed already) hit record, give it a moment, hit play, wait for your time to mix in.

try being the last guy on a train where its 20 minutes each. thank god i didnt fuck up when i did my part.

i think you could theoretically also record your part and just mix that part in to the end of the first.

also just a side note, grid the last track of the train if youre mixing into it. and if you do my second option, also have your first track of your part gridded

3

Whoever starts the train get them to record at quite a low volume, say -7dB.

Then everyone who follows can stick to that level.
You can always increase the volume of the final mix in any sound editor/daw.

Try to keep the quality as high as possible, wav / aiff is probably too large so think about flac or 320mp3.

I open the mix in Ableton, copy the last 2 minutes off, grid it and then export.
I then mix from that in Traktor and when finished join the mix back together in Ableton.

Beats playing the mix for an hour and half waiting for your go :wink:

4

If it’s all your friends why not do it live? Each person can practice their part separately but you all get together and record it live. To me, that’d be more fun anyway.

5

Nicky: This is EXACTLY what I was looking for - Thank you.

@Theory: Cheers for the tips. “Don’t fuck it up” will be the theme for any mix train we do :smiley:

@SirReal: I am in Cleveland, OH - the rest of these guys are in the UK.

Any advice on post mix clean up/compression/normalization etc?

6

concentrate on getting the levels between the sections as close as possible. get the transitions between sections spot on, and once its finished, do a little level tweaking in an audio editor.

7

Save often!