Denver Recording Studio

Quick Tip with Aux Busing: Good organization in your song files is essential when creating complex mixes with numerous routings. Forming consistent, repetitious habits is the key here to streamline your efficiencies in all the mixing work you do. For example, I like to leave all of my aux buses at the bottom of my session files, with the master track at the very bottom. I group the vocal, drums, instruments, etc. buses together and then all of the FX buses together below the instrument buses. In order to quickly recall their routings, I leave their inputs in their track title - e.g. “Drums Bus 2930″ or “Bright Verb 5″. Now I don’t have to stop playback or search through the I/O settings to know that the drums bus inputs are 29 and 30; it is already in the track title. This also alleviates numerous problems later of not being able to find which bus is doing what, going where, etc..

Another helpful tip, at least in ProTools, is to color code your tracks or buses into categories… Sort of like a color-coded legend in your mind, we use the same corresponding colors in every session (or written on a sheet of paper and taped to the monitor, as I do with my mixing partner). We chose colors for the audio tracks (guitars = kelly green, basses = olive green, vocals = violet, percussion = pink, etc.) and also different colors for the buses (FX buses = black, instrument or vocal buses = white). It may seem like too much effort in the front end, but trust that it will pay off when it’s crunch time and every second is precious.

These are just a couple ways to manage REALLY BIG mixes… hope it helps!
— Mike with the Mic

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