1. Make sure you have chosen all of the proper takes and eliminated any audio or tracks that you do not intend to have in your mix. It is very important to only include tracks that you intend to be in the mix. Also be sure to render any MIDI parts into audio files. Check the manual on your specific software platform to find the proper way to do this or see my video. In addition be sure to render any effects such as reverbs, delays, chourses, flanges, harmonizers, etc. that you want me to include or consider using in the mix. This process is similar to rendering MIDI and basically must be internally recorded as audio. Check the manual for your software, or again, see my video on this subject.

 

2. Make sure all editing is complete and cleaned up nicely. The best way to do this is to trim all audio regions neatly at the beginning and end of the regions. Make sure to leave a little space in each region before the waveform starts and after the waveform ends. If you have done any punch-ins, make sure that the punch has not cut off the beginning of a waveform. This is especially important with drums. At each region separation in the session, it is a good idea to zoom in a good deal and look at what is happening right at the separation. If you see waveforms that are jagged, or worse a drum transient that has a punch right in the middle of it, simply trim the region forward or backward until you find a nice crossing point. Drums should always be edited as a group so you don’t accidentally change the timing of one track. When editing vocals, be sure to zoom in closely at each separation and make sure no words or breaths are cut off. Make sure to include breath noise in the track. Be sure that you have not punched in the middle of a breath and if you have, trim the region so only one breath occurs before each phrase.

 

3. Once you have cleaned up all of the regions and made sure all of your edits are clean and occur in proper places, it is time for fades. Highlight all of the audio regions in your session and process batch fades. In Pro Tools this is done by holding the command (apple) key and pressing the letter F (COMMAND+F). Other programs should have a similar option. You should select a normal crossfade of 5 to 10 milliseconds. There is generally an option that says “replace existing fades”. Make sure this is not selected as you may have built some custom fades when editing. Once you have selected the proper fade type and length hit OK or process. This process will create fade-ins and outs on all of the regions in your session eliminating any accidental pops or clicks in the audio caused by editing.

 

4. Once all of the regions have fades, highlight all audio across all tracks in the session starting at the very beginning of the timeline (0:00:00) and ending just past the very last region in the song. For example the song may be 3:59 but the first sound doesn’t enter until 6 seconds in because there were 2 bars of count-off. It is very important that your highlight all tracks all the way from zero (0:00:00) even if there is no audio that starts at zero. This will ensure that all the tracks will remain in sync when you send them to me. Also make sure you have left enough space at the end for any sounds that are fading out. Sometimes you will not be able to visually see a waveform but will still hear faint sound like a guitar or piano fading out.

 

5. Once the regions are highlighted, consolidate all of the regions into a single file on for each track. In Pro Tools, this command is called “consolidate selection” and can be found in the edit menu or by pressing SHIFT+OPTION+3. This will create one individual audio file for each track that starts at timeline zero (0:00:00) and ends just past the last sound in the song. If there are 50 tracks in your song, you should now have 50 audio files that all start at zero (0:00:00).

 

6. Now you must export each individual file into a new folder that is named as the title of your song on your hard drive. Almost every audio recording program will have an export function usually located in the File menu. In Pro Tools the easiest way is to highlight all the files in the edit window and press SHIFT+COMMAND (apple)+K. This will bring up the “export selected” dialog. It will give you the option to choose the file type, sample rate, bit depth, and location for the export. It will also let you create and name a new folder to export to. You must always select the same file type, sample rate, and bit depth that the session was recorded at. You do not want to accidentally down-sample or dither the files. Generally speaking audio is recorded as either .WAV files or .AIFF files. Either is fine. Do not send MP3’s! If you do not know the sample rate or bit depth, there is usually a window called “session setup” or something similar that will contain this information. In Pro Tools it is located in the Window menu as “session setup”. Once you have selected the appropriate export settings, hit OK and export the files. This will save all of the tracks in the song as individual files in your folder.

 

7. Repeat steps 1 thru 6 for each song you are sending. Once this is done you should have individual folders with each song name containing all of the files for each respective song.

 

8. Take all of these folders and consolidate them into a single .ZIP file. Make sure to not use any encryption or password protection on the .ZIP file.

 

9. If the total size of the .ZIP file is less than 2GB, you can simply upload it to a file sharing server such as yousendit.com and send me a link to download it. If it is larger than 2 GB it is probably best to put it onto a USB stick or hard drive and mail it to me. Do not be surprised if the file is quite large. An entire album’s worth of multi-track audio files can easily be 10 – 20 GB. The files will be even larger if they were recorded in HD (96k or 88.2k, 24 bit).