Sure, gear talk anytime. Here comes WAY more than anybody needs to know...
Protools is my DAW and has been for years. Mostly because that's what I saw being used in most studios. And I am not much of a composer so rarely working with midi as there is better software for that. I also do all my work in headphones. AKG K702s at home and my Ultimate Ears Reference IEMs on the road.
My home rig looks like this: I run the basses at nearly line level directly from the DS-5 into a REDDI DI box. From there XLR out into a Burl Audio B2 Bomber ADC. The digital signal then travels via AES cable into an Avid Omni (along with a clocking signal from the Burl via BNC cable). The Omni is connected to an Avid HD Native Thunderbolt box and TB cable into my MacBookPro.
On the road it's DS-5 into an Apogee Duet 3 and directly into the MBPro.
I can't really say how much all these individual pieces have to do with the final result but that's my current collection. As an example of what I mean ... I have occasionally done a track for somebody on the road (road bass through Apogee converter) and then gotten home and replaced notes, bars, or complete sections using my recording bass and home rig. And nobody has ever noticed the difference.
So I have ProTools templates in 96k, 48k, and 44.1k. These consist of a click track, five bass tracks, and one "comp" track. I'll take any kind of files from the artist but prefer wav "stems", meaning separate tracks of drums, guitars, etc. if possible. That way I can listen closely to what everybody is doing.
If I get a bunch of stems at 48k I'll start a new session from my 48k template, rename it the song title, save it to and external SSD in a folder with the Artist's name, then "import" all the audio they've sent me into my session. I'll match my click to the audio and listen down while adding some markers for V, CH, bridge, solos, etc. Then I'll start playing along, usually fumble through 5 full passes while I'm kinda learning the song.
At that point I'll start picking bits and pieces of whatever happened which I like and copy those moments down to my "comp" track. I try to use my full run throughs as kind of guides to an overall shape. Once I decide which version of any particular section I prefer I will often work on just that moment until I get it the way I want it.
My method goes on for quite some time ... and often means coming back the next day to see how it all hits me listening with fresh ears. I also spend quite a bit of time shifting notes around in time, trimming levels of individual clips to even it all out, and always watching the tuner to be sure I'm in the ballpark. (I built a signal switcher so my Korg DTR-1 tuner is either seeing the REDDI's parallel input jack or the audio from my 6 ProTools tracks which is routed to one of the Omni's outputs.)
The end result of all this is a "comp" track that looks like a total patchwork of edits. I'd be embarrassed to show it to anybody because I edit the living daylights out of it! But I know how to make it all work together and sound the way I want so that's my method.
Now I solo the bass track and listen loud to be sure my edits and crossfades all work. Then I record a moment of no sound at the beginning of my comp track, duplicate the track and rename it, then "select all" clips in the newly duplicated track and "consolidate" it which turns it into one long wav file.
I upload a copy of the resulting wav file to a folder in my DropBox, "copy DropBox link" (a direct link to that folder) and email that link to the Artist.
If all goes well they download my file, import it into their session and it syncs right up. I used to kind of casually say "yeah I do some of that kind of work" but I am surprised to realize that I've done almost 400 projects this way over the past 17 years. Yikes!!
Whew, sorry about the lengthy post!
Jimmy J
