A How to.. to do

I've decided I want to move the demo project I started in Ableton Live over to Cakewalk Sonar to develop further before things get too complex.  I've noticed Ableton doesn't support OMF, and while I enjoyed being able to easily compose with Ableton, there's a few things I like to start iteratively touching on with mixing and automation that will get lost in translation if I move too late from Ableton to any other DAW.

Before I start, let me say that I have a certain workflow I like to follow.  Most daws will have the capability of saving and loading universal .FXP and .FXB patches, but I like to save patches from within the plugin software so that I can load them individually.  I try to stay pretty organized, so any project I start immediately gets it's own folder sorted by date, archived in the year I started it.  In this case, the project resides on my Projects drive under the Audio section, and I keep things divided by client projects and personal projects, remix projects, etc...

The main project folder Ableton created resides in this root folder, and I have 2 folders that branch from here.  Once I create the Sonar project file, this root folder will become the primary project folder.

 

• Resources: houses several directories to keep track of various project data
• Renders: houses the rendered material, final stereo mix pre-master, mastered versions, wav, mp3 etc...

Resources Folder is where I keep 3 folders:

• Audio: recordings, stems, edits, processed audio, bounces, etc...
• Settings: saved patches for virtual instruments, effects, plugin data, External hardware patches, etc.
• Midi: any midi material used in the project

So, with the folders in place, time to open Ableton:

 Now, take a look at the track list:

•  Big T Drums is the primary drum instrument I use for the main beat.
• Nexus Arp is the first mid-range synth that rolls from the intro throughout.
• Nexus Bass is the 2nd synth that comes in the first bass pass in the arrangement.
• DrumFX is the 2nd layer drums I use once the beat comes in to establish a thicker sonic signature for the first verse or motif.
• 8-bit flutter is the 3rd synth in the list that comes in for the change-up: the 8-bit sound in the breakdown.
• Tron Synth comes in way later in the song that I ended on the last time I shared the demo.  
• Katakis Bassline is the buzzy bass synth that I used for the chorus.
• 8 Vanguard is a synth I loaded up and haven't even written anything for but plan on using the patch I made at some point.  While I don't have any midi material for this one i want to keep it in mind as I'll be saving and loading the instance in Sonar as well.
• 18 Violins is an EWQL Symphonic Orchestra patch I used for the chorus, a staccato patch that I will have to save out as well because I tweaked the settings for the mix from within the 3 layers (C, F, and S mixes for close mic to far ambient mic).  This one I may play with a bit in Sonar once I get it in there, but for now I'm not worried about the mix as I'm just going to extract midi and patch data, no audio necessary.
•  10 Violas is also an EWQL Symphonic Orchestra patch I used for a supporting line under the Violins during the chorus.  This one also has a custom set of paramters I used in the patch that I will save out for import into Sonar to keep the mix sounding similar.
• 11 Geist is exactly that...  I haven't shown anyone this part yet, but it's some drumwork I'm starting that goes well with that Tron synth mentioned above. Geist is an awesome tool once you get used to the interface.  It feels (at least to me) more akin to the drum sequencing ability of Reason, albeit more more complex and rich.
• 12 Geist is another instance I brought in to load a completely different set of complementary samples for a layered drum sound.  I think the change up will be nice once I get it going.  Geist has several features that I've already started playing with and programming material to.  

I'll get back to these later though.  For now, it's  time to start exporting everything.
Naturally I'll start with the first in the list.  Ableton's module section has a neat little interface that makes it very easy to save the patches and banks:

Right where it says New Multi, to the left of it the diskette icon will let you easily save the current preset or bank as a universal FXP / FXB file.  So, I saved the FXP file out, and labelled it appropriately.  Now, I like to take things one step further and have all my options covered.  I opened up the instrument:

 

 And I save out the instrument's proprietary patch preset:

The intakt engine saves out the patch as a Native Instruments .NKI file.  So, using a simliar naming convention I end up with both the FXP file and the NKI files respectively.

I repeated this process for every instrument patch. There are a couple of instruments I have a small effect chain going on.  The Nexus Arp track has an instance of Nexus going into an instance of Sony Oxford EQ for it's filter pass.  Nexus is interestingly simple in that it's native to the FXP and has no direct patch saving options.  

So, for nexus I just have the FXP file to save out my custom patch.  and the Sony Oxford EQ I loaded the Type 3 Classic Soft preset, but then tweaked it for the band-pass effect.  This one I can save out two ways as well.  Before I do this I go into my resources / Settings folder, and create 2 more directories; one for instruments and one for effects.

This allows me to keep things more organized and easier to find when I start importing into Sonar.  Sonnox EQ has it's own proprietary file type:

Saving as a new preset reveals the home directory where the program keeps its preset files.  I won't be saving this there as I only plan on using this EQ setting for this particular project.  However, if I find this setting to be pretty commonplace in my mixes I can easily just copy it back to the root folder and name it appropriately for future reference.

 The same thing applies to the Addictive Drums kit modules: it too saves out proprietary files.

My custom Thumpy Tunnel Kit gets an FXP and ADPreset file.  Again, the program reveals the home location for storing user and factory preset files, which show up in the drop menu within the VST if you save or change the presets in any way.  I will still just be saving this preset out to my project directory:

The instance of Nexus I use for the buzzy bassline during the chorus has an effect after it.

When it comes to the two strings sections, I have a Linear EQ I dialed in on one, copied over to the other as well, so I only need one preset saved out for the EQ:

Even with the custom kontakt engines, they use the standard Kontakt Multi format for saving out the presets.  I saved out the multis and while they reveal their home directories for the multis I don't need to save them for reference later..  Off to the project folder they go.

Now, remember I mentioned I would get back to Geist?  Here's why.  Geist is pretty complex, it pretty much has it's own sequencer and can be a full-fledged DAW in it's own right especially when it comes to live performance.  It's a very unique tool.  The first thing I'll do is the usual: FXP

 

I noticed there are numerous saving options within Geist.  I saved the Preset out to the .geist file respectively.  While it has a lot of options I'm just concerned with it loading the proper samples for the midi to trigger.  but since I also used Geist to program the drum patterns and created several scenes within 2 of the instances I opened.  I also want those drum patterns saved out to their own midi files with appropriate naming conventions.  Later on, i'll come back to Geist and go through the various patterns and save them out as individual midi files.  Speaking of which...

Ableton lets you bounce out any midi track on the timeline as it's own midi file.  Which is pretty useful especially for moving projects on the fly, but if you're further along into a project than I am above, and say 40+ midi tracks, it can get pretty unwieldy as well as time consuming.

Before I open up Sonar, I'm going to go double check all the material I have and make sure it's all in order.

To re-iterate: I have 2 folders inside the Resources folder which resides inside the project root folder.  Midi and Settings folders now house all the preset patches I just exported.

Notice there is one additional folder.  While I was working with the first Geist on creating patterns I went ahead and saved out each of the various patterns to their own midi files, but I also used those to import back into geist's track within Ableton to play with their arrangement from within.  Therefore that is why I also have a midi file for the Geist track as well.

I don't have too many presets to work with, but if I were working on a bigger project I'd just create folders for each instrument, name them after their corresponding track name, and save their presets inside those folders.  Stormbreakz actually saves out the samples when you save the multi file so it created the folder up there.  Not bad in case one might need to transport the module somewhere else for use inside a different DAW on another machine

All the Kontakt and intakt based instruments have the ability to save out multi files as patches only, patches with a sub-folder that saves all the associated samples, and a monolith file which packes the samples into the preset file itself.  Very useful for many reasons, however when it comes to copy-protected patches they may disallow the ability to save samples out or save monolith files.

The Effects presets aren't numerous, but they're easy enough to understand.  Again, I only have 1 LP64 EQ preset for both of the string patches because I copied the same preset to both.

Now, there's one more effect i'm missing but it's not necessary to save as it was just a factory patch that comes with T-Racks 3 Deluxe.  I put the effect on the master bus just to give me some idea of the final product (roughly).  Since I don't plan on using that exact same patch it's not necessary to save it out.

Sonar finally gets to load up.  While I wait for it to load my plugins let's talk about project versions.  While I may have started in Ableton, I try not to delete anything.  If the project in Ableton contained audio or a lot of information I'd probably just pack it up into a zip or rar file.

The new project dialog appears and I enter in the information, I also gave the project a name: Code Black... seems appropriate.  I point the project to the right location, and then the audio path I moved to reside inside the resources folder as well, so it would look like Resources / audio.

The project comes in as a blank template, and I add in the tempo information.

My projects in Sonar always work in 96k, 24 bit (just out of habbit).  I learned a valuable sampling lesson long ago when dealing with time stretching and sound design with audio that's pretty much become my adopted rule for pretty much everything I do.

However, there are always exceptions to that rule, for example the orchestral projects I'm working on for a band right now are in 44.1k 24 bit as no time stretching or sound design manipulation will be done to the orchestra, and the engineer the band is working with has the projects in that format so that's what I'll be bouncing all the multitrack stems as.

Back to my project.  I'll start by importing all the drum and percussion stuff.  I create the Stormbreakz instrument.

It creates 2 tracks in a folder, but i'm going to use the folder a different way.

I'm going to use that folder to house all the percussion tracks together, and label them based on their instrument name.  I haven't worked with Geist much yet, but there are 15 stereo sub outs beyond the master stereo output from it, which could come in handy if i start using geist for more than just drum programming.  Also, Sonar can split up the stereo into individual mono tracks so if I use the outputs as individual channels of audio to route the various sample pads through I could essentially have a multitrack drum section.  The same goes for Addictive Drums as it too supports multi-out.  But for these tracks I don't need to do any in-depth mixing of the drums (at least i don't believe so at this moment).  For now, i'm just going to use the stereo master outputs from these.

Up next, Bass.  I only have 2 bass synths I used so this should be quick:

Not bad, all my synths are up next:

Now here's where I'm going to change things up and this is why I saved both the FXP preset and the multis separately.  I'm going to load up Kontakt 4 instead of the East West individual plugins, and i'm going to have 3 stereo outputs for each because of the different mic positions each output provides, thus allowing me to better control the sound when it comes time to mix.

I do the same for the Violins. 

What i like about the fact that I saved the multi this way is that my edits to the individual volumes of the 3 mic positions is saved from what I did in Ableton to get it to sit in the mix a little better, and thus saving me time trying to get the strings to sound the same in Sonar.

Now that I've got all my patches and tracks set up, time to import midi.  Simply dragging and dropping the midi files over the very beginning of the timeline window in the row for the midi channel allows sonar to automatically place the midi at the right starting point for where those drums come in.

I simply repeat the process for all the instruments.  However, because of the way I saved the midi info in Ableton, when I drop the midi onto the track, everything starts at the same time, instead of the measures where they should start.

So, let's go back into ableton and make some notes about what measures each instrument starts at.  The stormbreakz material comes in at measure 9, the first bassline synth at 13, the 8 bit flutter effect at 25, etc..  I got all the midi material lined up.

The last phase is to add in the effects on the appropriate channels and then the project is completely imported!

I added the Sonnox EQ to the intro synth, and loaded it's preset.

The 2nd to last thing I would have to do is re-do the automation I did in the Ableton project for the buzzy bassline.  The Ableton project had a volume change during the breakdown fill, as well as the mix level of the Filter Freak plugin.

The volume automation is a 4dB drop from -6 dB to -10 dB.

The Filter Freak Automation looks like this in Ableton:

Simply hovering your mouse over the automation nodes will reveal their attributes, in Ableton it shows the first node at .10, and the 2nd node at .18 but opening up FilterFreak1 and moving the timeline playback bar to the node shows the FilterFreak Mix knob at 10% for the first node, and 18.2% for the second.  I match this automation in Sonar:

Now, I can just recall the same levels I had roughly mixed in Ableton for all the instruments, and instead of dropping 2 instances of the LP64 EQ, I'm going to create group buses for the various instruments and then put 1 instance of the LP64 EQ on the Strings bus.  The busing is pretty simple for this song so far:

I route each of the mic positions on the strings to their own group buses and then those buses to a Symphony stem bus.  Everything else is pretty simple.

I'll add an update on soundcloud once I get further along with where I want to go with the new section.