Tidying up and taking a project file

This week we started to arrange the project so it was ready for mixing. We started by making sure everything was ordered and named correctly, such as putting mic names in the track titles, (e.g. Guitar Condenser, Guitar DI etc.) this was so it was easier to see which guitar sound we were looking at and to make it easier to see the tracks when it comes to the actual mix. We colour coded groups of tracks so they were clear and easy to see, we could see where drums ended and bass started. We took all creative fades off, like for the end of the song, or track parts. We made sure that all of the crossfades for the preroll takes were added so we wouldn’t have to concentrate on little things like that later, and then we started to take out any dead space between tracks, such as a long space between lead guitar bits or anything like that. All of this was good practise so when it comes to the mixing stage, absolutely nothing got in the way of the creative thinking of mixing. The final thing we did before saving the project was create a very rough level for each track, just so when we opened up the project at home we could hear everything before starting our own work. then we saved the file, and each took a copy of the entire project on a memory stick to go and start our own mixes.