Collaborating with Cakewalk

[grannis]

trying to figure out a workflow for collaboration. Here's why it's not super obvious...

1. there are 3 other musicians involved

2. There are 32 songs

3. The songs are already fully mixed using midi instruments. I want them to be able to replace these parts.

4. I've used some sidechaining - nearly always between lead vocal and instrument bus to help the vocal sit nicely

 

Fortunately they all have Cakewalk, but it's unlikely they'll have the plugins I've used. I can bounce tracks, obviously. but is there a way to do this, which you have sidechaining, without changing the mix too radically?  

And with 32 tracks and 3 musicians, every minute of efficiency I can build into the process will save me a ton of time.  Bouncing the tracks in 32 projects will be lengthy, but bouncing each one 3 times will be - well, 3 times worse!!

 

All ideas gratefully received!

 

 

 

[Sidney Earl Goodroe]

Kind of a down & dirty approach that we have used even on pro level is to export the song as a roughmix mp3 stereo  with all parts included for them to hear the intended recording! Then export another copy to each individual musician minus their part allowing them to record their tracks. When they are done, they can send their tracks back to you and you can fly their tracks into your project!

While this seems rather archaic, it seems to be the better fail-safe and flexible way. The reason being that you are leaving the actual mixing and mastering steps to the end of the project. You also can keep a folder of every take that was done for that project!

If replacing midi, they simply export their midi track, send it to you and you can place it in the project wherever you like. You can use your own plugin! Even replace your original!

If recording audio, as far as the plugin problem, they can use whatever plugins they have in their arsenal so they have a comfortable sound to record. When they have what they want they should switch off their plugin and export just the raw track for your use!

Of course,  if they have THE SOUND then they just send you the audio track and you put it where you want.

This way, if you have better plugins or just prefer your own, you fly in their track and apply your plug!

Written down, it looks like a pain but it really is simple once you get the flow!

One bit of advice!

Keep your original project and make a copy of that project strictly to do your collaboration!!

You don't want to be left in a position of saying to yourself, "I wish I hadn't replaced that track!!!"

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[hsmusic]

( I assume you're talking audio, not midi files using their vi's) Have the other musicians send you their tracks & mix it yourself..you don't need to worry if they have CW or any daw at all.

[grannis]

31 minutes ago, hsmusic said:

( I assume you're talking audio, not midi files using their vi's) Have the other musicians send you their tracks & mix it yourself..you don't need to worry if they have CW or any daw at all.

yes audio - but no, they are going to add their parts to the project

[grannis]

34 minutes ago, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

Kind of a down & dirty approach that we have used even on pro level is to export the song as a roughmix mp3 stereo  with all parts included for them to hear the intended recording! Then export another copy to each individual musician minus their part allowing them to record their tracks.

I've done this before... but I did the maths - it means writing out 128 mp3s by hand! That's why I'm looking for a  labour-saving workflow - or at least a workflow where the labour is divided between us rather than me doing it all!  since they all have Cakewalk, I feel I should just be able to create 32 CW projects, put them on a cloud drive and have them each add their parts. In fact I know I can do this - I'm just trying to think ahead to what happens afterwards, and any bugs we might encounter. 

 

and yes, I'm assuming their sound is the one I want - except for the drummer. I'll take his midi too just in case

[John Vere]

Seems the mistake you are making is you are starting the mixing process before you have finished tracking. When collaborating you want project you share to be bare bones. If it is just midi then use VST instruments that are free so everyone can obtain them. Or freeze those tracks. 
You should not be using effects during tracking. 
Musician don’t need glamorous sounding backing tracks. As matter of fact just the opposite is true. 
You can save any Cakewalk project as a midi type 1 file and it will open in most DAWs. Some are better than others but generally the song will open and the midi tracks will be titled with what VST you used. I’ve even collaborated with Pro Tools this way. 
 

If some of the musicians are not savvy to using a DAW you get them to install Cakewalk and help them get it working. Then back at your studio you freeze all the midi instruments and add few tracks ready to record to. and send that to them. All they need to know how to do is arm the track and set levels. 
I have a portable laptop I lend to my band mate all the time for this. 
As long as the tempo is maintained all you need back from them is the stems. I’ve never observed any time drifting on a 4 minute song. 
Then there’s the version of the project that will be used for the final mixing. But that’s not the one you pass around. Keep those simple. Best to use midi if possible to make file transfer easy. But these day even 48/24 audio files don’t choke the internet too much. 

Edited March 26 by John Vere

[msmcleod]

I'd suggest:

- Come up with a common list of plugins, and create a custom plugin layout that only uses those plugins.  Make sure you're all only using those in your projects.
- If you're using Sonar,  use the new CWZ format for sharing, otherwise zip your project folder up  - store this file in a common cloud location.

Depending on your amount of cloud storage, you could consider using a naming convention for each version of the project, e.g.:

2024-03-26_15:40_XYZ ... where XYZ are the initials of the band member.

This has a few advantages:

1.  When ordered alphabetically, they're also in date order
2.  Doing a "Save As" to this new filename will automatically "clean up" the audio files so your project zips will be smaller.
3.  You can open several versions in CbB/Sonar at once, then pick & choose which tracks you want to keep.