Hallo everyone,

Although I am working since long time with the MOX8 and the CUBASE,
I have a very basic question concerning the audio-recording.

When recording audio with one of the MOX’s build in Voices (with all the programmed Effects and Mixing of this particular Voice) into a DAW (...I use the C8) for a CD that will be mixed and mastered by a proffesional, what should I take care of, except playing the right notes ..:))

In case my question is not understood:

I will have to record a piano piece home and then sent it for mixing and mastering to an sound engineer.
I will use the “Full Concert Grand” Voice from the MOX and record it into Cubase.

So, beyound the recording levels ( to avoid clipping and get enough signal for the engineer to work with) is there something else I should be aware of, when making a simple recording?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Odyssea,

To put it simply, you should do everything possible to make sure that your music sounds as good as possible and arrives for mixing in the preferred delivery format of the engineer.  So you need to ask the engineer about their preferred delivery format if you don’t already know.

Engineers usually make that info very clear from the outset.  For example, they may accept Pro Tools sessions and if that can’t be done, then .WAV or .AIFF files may be totally fine.

If someone else is ‘mixing’ then all you need to worry about is getting the music right, getting good levels, making sure it’s clean and getting it into the right format for the engineer.

Your post does throw up a number of questions of its own which may help anyone here to better answer your question :

1 - What are you expecting from an engineer who will be mixing (presumably from what you’ve said) a single recording of a sampled piano piece played using ‘Full Concert Grand’?

2 - What kind of outcome have you been promised by that engineer?

3 - What are you expecting from mastering?

4 - What makes you think you need it mixed and mastered at all?

The reason why I’ve asked those questions is because it seems unusual for someone to have a single (presumably stereo file) piano sample piece mixed and mastered, by a professional, as you’ve put it. (Because I’m presuming, again from what you’ve written, that this is NOT going to be multiple audio tracks, which would always need a mix).

Making such a track all nice a shiny, perhaps for a release of some kind, ought to be something you can do yourself, and perhaps save some money.

Thanks for the quick answer philwoodmusic!

I’ll sent the audio files (.WAV) to the engineer.
The levels should be maximum -10 dBFS.

Vocals will be also recorded and will be mixed with the piano. The vocal recording work will not be my business though. The end product will be a cd with children songs for commercial use.

Th reason I want the tracks to be mastered by an engineer (even if I would indeed record a single piano track), is that I don’t seem to get the a full, homogenously sound out of my studio. Even if everything sounds great at home, the recordings sounds poor, cheap and weak in a different enviroment like through a hifi player.

For sure it’s possible to create a proffesional sound home, but I don’t have the know-how and the time for this. (...I still experiment with mixing, but for a project like this, I want to be sure!)

Now, saving money is of course important! So, for the theoretical case, I want to produce a single (stereo) file of a piano piece (with no vocals) at home, do you think it would be easy to get this full sound without an engineer and a prof. mastering?

Thanks for telling me a bit more about your project. It helps a lot.

I’d say, based on what you’ve said, that you are doing the right thing by getting someone else to mix it. 

I rarely advocate bedroom mixing, but considered it a possibility for you if all you were doing was a simple stereo track of a piano sample and nothing else, and that was your final piece, with no other instruments or voices. 

Since you’ve now made it clear that your piano track will be added to and mixed with voices, it makes a lot of sense to get it mixed by a professional, who presumably has a ‘treated room’ to mix in and a reputation for making good sounding mixes in it.

If you did decide to mix everything in a bedroom or other room in your house, it is very likely, as you’ve quite clearly found, that the mix balance and frequency balance will actually be off (amongst other problems), even if it sounds good and correct to you in that environment while you mix it.

You should however have no problem making a perfectly usable, good quality audio file of a piano to give to the engineer though, because there’s no mixing and balancing involved in doing so and your fine Yamaha instrument, if used well, will give you a very good quality of audio.

So, based on your situation, and if this engineer is any good, I’d recommend using him to mix and do any mastering on your project.

I’l try to get the best out of the MOX (...and me!) and wait until the engineer’s “magic” gets me this grammy...;))
Thanks for the help and advices!

Hi there

I’m stating the obvious here but since it hasn’t been mentioned…
Make sure you use a click to make it easier for the people recording the vocals and mixing.

Best of luck!

It’s a really good point zpink, playing guess the meter and tempo totally sucks.

Definitely use a click if you can and make sure to label the file with the tempo and meter. (or add a text file and zip it all up together)

my_sad_cuisine_128bpm.wav

Notes on ‘My Sad Cuisine’

Tempo = 128 bpm

Meter 4/4

Sample rate: 44.1 kHz

Bit depth: 24 bit.

Another thing people forget to do when sending audio is to make sure that the music in the file starts musically in time in any DAW set at the correct tempo and meter.  So if I load their file into my DAW, and set my tempo to the tempo they’ve indicated, the music doesn’t start somewhere between (for example) beats 2 and 3 in the 2nd measure in an arbitrary fashion.

It should start perfectly in time from the top of the file or contain a number of empty measures at the same tempo and meter before the music starts (blank audio, before the music, but in time, basically).  This will need doing anyway if the music starts with an upbeat.

There’s another note that you can add to your text file:

“There are two empty measures in the same tempo and meter before the music starts”.

The goal is to get the first down beat in the music to start perfectly on beat one of any measure in the engineers DAW.  This makes adding it to other ‘in time’ audio as well as using tempo based fx in the mix much easier and essentially much more successful.

I decided to record midi (via the MOX-VST), to be able to quantize and edit the music easier, before rendering it into audio.
About the sample-rate and bit-depth,I got the same reauest from the engineer (just forgott to mention).
The general idea about the file text, I find great! That will save me some e-mails and phone calls!

When exporting tracks, I always beginn with bar 1,with the Sysex on beat 2, and start the music earliest in bar 2.

Still, your check-lists are very helpful. Even now and then, I forgett the most basics…

Thanks to both of you!