Big long piece file and project management

[jkoseattle]

I am starting on a big piece for full orchestra, plus two pianos, made of all EastWest synths, plus hopefully a live soloist or possibly two. The piece will probably be more than half an hour. As it is currently planned, there will be no musical breaks. There will be separate movements, but the plan is to bridge these movements with interludes and vamps and sound effects and such, so no silence at any time, and no natural breaks. Also, this project will be the final product, and will be published in CD form and be on Spotify and all those places exactly how it is exported from Cakewalk. I'm the whole show. Which means I am also going to need to EQ every track at the minimum, make volume and expression envelopes everywhere, all that. So more processing.

So, while I'm starting to plan this thing musically, I'm starting to think about how I should organize it in Cakewalk. I know that if I decide to make the whole piece one single project, that it will get really sluggish before long, weighed down by stuff I'm not currently even working on. However, if I split it up into logical musical movements, (the way it will ultimately divided into tracks on the CD no doubt), then it will be a major PITA to ensure the transitions are seamless.

Lastly, much of the music for this piece already exists in old CW projects from years ago, so there will likely be a desire for cutting and pasting entire chunks right into this new thing from the old projects.

How do people handle this typically? I've been a CW user since 1989, but my pieces have always been either easily breakupable into separate projects because they had natural breaks, or if not they were small ensembles. But even at that, occasionally I've started getting sluggish, and so now I'm thinking that's just going to be a huge problem if I don't plan this out now before I embark on this thing.  I have Audacity and Audition also, but the way Adobe changed Audition a while back confuses me and I hate it, and I haven't needed to use Audacity for much anyway, so instead just do almost everything in CW now, so there's that little snag too.

[Glenn Stanton]

you will have "movement" projects. then you export those as audio. you will have a "master" project where you align each movement into a track. blend as needed by adding some additional audio or MIDI. then export the entire thing to your stereo / multi-channel output.

you're likely composing this a movement at a time, so do the same for the performance and add the blending bits where there is a need.

 

[jkoseattle]

That makes sense. So as far as making sure the transitions are seamless, I just have to be ready to finesse the details, yeah? Make sure all the same effects are in every instrument across movements, for example, and that the volume & expression envelopes match up. Sounds like an enormous hassle, but maybe that won't be so bad.

I'm worried that halfway into the thing I'm going to realize I need to adjust an effect on some instrument, or even adjust some knob in the instrument itself, which will mean opening up every other movement that uses that instrument and matching the change. Is that really how people manage it? Or is it more that I need to make sure I'm totally satisfied with every instrument's settings before laying down notes?

[Glenn Stanton]

depends. for effects - create presets for each use. and if you need the same effect across all movements, then this should solve that. presumably volume and expression would be different for each movement? i mean volume and other envelopes can be copied but is that the intent? 

maybe save the effects (unless you're doing sound designs...) until after you have the movements orchestrated..

worst case, if making the master audio isn't the right way for you, then maybe just export the MIDI from each movement and construct the master from there (like you originally intended), and the connecting bits and then apply you effects across the VI.

[John Vere]

This is definitely a job for mix recall . 
 

I use all the time for live recordings. It works perfectly if each project has the identical track layout. So a live recording is just that. But they can be 1 hour to 3 hours of material. 
So you might have 3 45 minute projects.  Each has 12 songs. 
 

Get song 1 sounding good and save as a mix recall scene. 
Now you can apply that scene to the other projects or songs . All your settings and effects will be superimposed on the other projects. 
 

I think it’s covered in this video 

https://youtu.be/o18_HZgfGp0?si=hYnnp8Z6vJlc2qtk

 

Edited March 22 by John Vere

[jkoseattle]

Hmm, that sounds promising. But each song having the identical track layout means I can't halfway through this project decide I need a solo flugelhorn and add that track to a certain project, right? Cuz then that will mess up my identical track layout, yes?

[Glenn Stanton]

as John said and perhaps make yourself a template with everything you need on it first. then use that to create the individual projects. then removed extraneous tracks and synths etc later (or never). maybe start with a bunch frozen then as you expand you work, unfreeze it.

regardless, composition and performance (except Jazz) are usually two distinct processes. so consider getting your composition mainly right first using something like Musescore etc, then implement the performances.

[jkoseattle]

Yeah, I can see that. The way I work though, composition and performance are too tightly bound for that. This IS the performance!

 

[John Vere]

As I say in the video, You  are using the Mix recall from song 1 but all of a sudden at song 6 you get a better mix happening, you save song 6 as a mix recall and go back and apply that to mix 1.  I'm not dead sure what happens if a track is missing. Would be easy to test. Tracks can be empty and hidden. The new Sonar has enhanced the Track manager to allow recalling track layouts based on custom pre sets. This will be a huge timesaver for people like you. Hide every thing but the strings!  Then toggle back to the whole show with one click. 

Say what you will about Cakewalk ? Sonar. If you dig in deep it can do some pretty cool stuff.