I worked in a big studio in Miami where every year or so they had one client who would book a room for months at a time. I was never involved with those sessions but I have worked extended sessions. The name of the game then was Track Sheets. I had to fill out track sheets by the hundreds writing down everything I could.

Then came recall automation which was basically a computer stored where everything on the board was set to and it could be recalled on a monitor, then you could go through channel by channel and set up the board the way it was.

tundrkys wrote: Let's say you are/were one of those old guys who used to mix on old analog consoles.

I hate being old... I *still* like mixing on analog consoles (although I rarely do anymore).

And yeah, reams of recall sheets - You didn't even print them yourself - You went to Kinko's or the local Quick Print and got them by the thousands. Unless a board had *full* automation (many were just automated/VCA volume), you were still writing down an awful lot of stuff on the board... Not to mention all the outboard gear. After you fight for an hour to get *just* the right verb, you better be able to get it back.

And it certainly did bite into time... But it made for a good break now and then - Something people forget to do currently.

POLAROIDS

INTERNS
:twisted:

stickers wrote: POLAROIDS

Oh yeah - Got one - An OLD one... Older than me...

McCheese wrote: INTERNS

Eh, the no good S.O.B. spends all his time at school learning about acoustical engineering... :shock:

Like that'll ever come in handy... :lol: :lol:

Hey, I'm 19 and I do everything except my reverbs in analog (yes, I use good ol' 2 inch tape, too). (I do have 2 spring reverbs and am building a plate, though.) Anyway, like John said, recall sheets. I make so many changes throughout some of my songs that I basically have a recall score (like a music score) where I mark the changes measure by measure. That only works if your outboard gear is laid out logically, though.

One of the best tricks was to devise a personalized track sheet that had its layouts that you could easily input info and read it after a 10 hour session, which for those not having done this were mostly done in a very darkened room...(the reasons for this were several)......(think 'vampires'!)

Its at this point,if you were doing serious sessions that PENMANSHIP or a lack thereof became a priority.

tundrkys wrote: Let's say you are/were one of those old guys who used to mix on old analog consoles.

1)How did you mix a project that spanned months?? I mean surely you didn't have sole use of the studio for the whole month right?? Surely someone moved a fader or an EQ or something??
2) If your desk had automation, how many different mixes was it able to save?? How did that affect those long sessions??

Mixing on one tune for months? I don't think that was normal. If anyone mixes on a song for a month, then they should quit. Some of today's most in-demand engineers that mix only average about three songs a day. Atleast that is the goal. Kevin Shirley once said that he likes to mix quickly, one album in two days tops.

Automation and recall are two different things. When I was in LA, when SSL was first coming into the automated console biz (there were others before them), people would track on one console, like a Neve, Trident, etc, etc, and then go to a mixing room, with a mixing engineer and mix on an SSL, because of the automation. Total recall came later, and still took 1.5-2 hours to get it all right. That was the hip thing to do. So the concept of one engineer and one console from start to finish was not the norm. Tracking on an SSL wasn't even an option, due to it's sound quality back then.

sheet wrote: Some of today's most in-demand engineers that mix only average about three songs a day. Atleast that is the goal. Kevin Shirley once said that he likes to mix quickly, one album in two days tops.

average is a song a day..you usually redo (re-call) the first couple at the end, because after mixing a few tracks you really get the room dialed in. On a budget, then 2 a day is common. Extremes in both directions are not unheard of. two weeks ia/was common to mix a typical album. Recall sheet's over the last 12 to 13 years (once the VR caught up with SSL for the recall of the board..in addition to the fader automation) Deal mostly with the outboard gear. One thing that Bob Clearmountain did @ A&M and was copped by manny (and I'm not saying he invented it..just the chain to me) was to use 1K to zero the in's and outs of the outbaord FX so that recalls could be more accurate and faster. Soemthing i became very very good at was doing recalls...but then you had to then and still do in an large format analog mix.
In Jack Joseph Puig's room at Oceanway..he has (or had..) sooo much outboard gear that there were four full size patchbay's with virtually all points filled. A Bible of the patches...and an extra assistant just to document under the first assistant.

The situation your thinking of is really more typical of a long album tracking/overdub session, where you'd spend weeks, months and in the rare case years (John Fogerty's mid nineties record comes to mind...five years - though with breaks every few weeks and actually pretty nine to five and five days a week). In those cases..yes it's a lock out and heaven help the fool that touches anything.