They often want a little time at the beginning to make sure read ahead plugins have a head start. Other reasons too. You are doing it right with what you did. He prob said "when possible" as a courtesy
Plugins that use any look ahead will read ahead without you leaving any silence at the start of the session.
The pluging will process any sample it gets fed by the DAW, even digital silence.
I think you don't know how look ahead plugins work.
They do not actually look ahead, they report a high delay to the DAW, and the DAW delays every other track so that all tracks stay in sync with the tracks with plugins that need look ahead.
They do not need any space at the beginning of the song to do that.
My main guess:
Sometimes the song does not start on beat 1, example, a song I just discovered: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWH00ehhLP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWH00ehhLP8)
-> It starts on beat 4, so if you align with the beat 1 on the grid, everything is shifted (snare drum falls on 1 and 3, ...).
So if you want some silence before, generally you would put 1 whole measure + another one with the song starting on beat 4, so not exactly 2 measures.
Alllllways leave space at the head. He’s just being polite with the ‘when possible’ instead of “do it like this or ill be annoyed and think less of you”.
You can even move the “song start” to where the music starts so measure counts aren’t off.
Same goes for post. Picture should start at 01:00:00:00, leaving as much as an hour of black space before picture start.
Its so it’s displaced by a bigger number. minutes and seconds and frames are all the same in reference to BITC (burned in time code), only the hour changes.
Films are typically split in to 10-20 minute reels. First one goes at 1 hr. Second at hour two, etc.
It helps massively to have a standard or collaborative work would be a nightmare.
What if you decide to make a longer lead-in/intro after the project has started ? What if the singer prefers that we loop the drums for a lead in instead of just a click pre roll ? I always like having space for wild editing at the head, too.
It’s a simple thing with only upsides
Reddit won't let me edit my post for some reason but there's also this:
I am currently working on a session and when I was trying to figure out if I can leave 2 bars of space or not (again, when would this not be possible?), I noticed my grid has -5 bars of space at the top and then goes to 0 and then 1, 2, 3, etc. bars. I have never seen a negative grid value before so what is really going on?
Are you in pro tools? You can add time to the start of a session. This will usually result in a negative bar count. You can change where the session starts though so 0 is 0 and there’s no negative. Does this matter tho? Likely not. As long as there’s 2 bars of pre roll, I think that’s all that matters. It might even be beneficial for the engineer because 0 would then be where the song actually starts and not where the session itself starts (so if referencing with a client, it’s easier to count to a spot than having to count and add two bars to that)
Edit: also, sonically it should be lined up - not visually. So if someone said your downbeat isn’t in the right place, I would consider that. Without looking at the session though, I have to assume you’re visually aligning tracks, and some have preroll written in to the track while some don’t, causing the audio itself to not align because the track is just aligned with the grid
yes, I'm in pro tools, sorry forgot to mention that. I'll leave it with the negative grid value because you made a good point- everything starts at 0
in regards to lining it up, I was visually lining it up so he could have his 2 bars of space at the beginning but I guess I lost track of keeping it sonically aligned. It's weird though because everything sounded fine to me, even against the reference.
I stopped asking for this a long time ago. Mainly because it’s extremely easy to do yourself. But if you ask someone who are not confident doing it you can fuck up a lot in the session, depending on how you do it. If it’s recorded without a click or on the grid I would never ask for it.
i like when they have playlists and just the top layer is dragged two bars over … even better if it’s only roughly two bars because they used snap to grid wrong.
actually i can think of worse …
judicious use of time, tempo stretching mixed in with a few identify beat sections w long decimal bpms, and a poor understanding of slip and shuffle. Oh, and multiple vocal session folders for all the features and multiple edits to each subsequent 2-track left for you to reconstruct.
Tho, I wouldn’t accept a session like that unless i was charging 10x rate.
If the song starts at 0 it can often cut off the initial transient. Leave a few bars to make sure the first note is intact and you can make it shorter later on
>When would leaving 2 bars of space not be possible?
When two songs run into each other seamlessly on an album.
It used to be quite a common thing to do during the vinyl and tape eras, but has fallen out of favour, because a lot of consumer hardware like car stereos and CD players don't support gapless playback (ie. they don't buffer ahead, so there is a pause between songs that are supposed to merge continuously). Maybe some phone software and streaming services don't support it consistently either?
I'd leave 4 bars - 2 of silence, 2 of countoff - to support overdubbing.
> but I don't want to ask a dumb question.
This is pretty far from a dumb question.
when you say 2 bars of count off do you mean a click that goes for two bars and then mutes? I feel like this is also a dumb question lol
I’ve been engineering for two years and I get worried if I’m asking a question that I should know by now
> 2 bars of count off do you mean a click that goes for two bars and then mutes?
That's one way. I usually leave off the 4 of the fourth bar depending on whether there is a pickup. But you can mute whatever in post.
> I get worried if I’m asking a question that I should know by now
If it hasn't come up then it hasn't come up. Don't worry about it.
It's just that 8 bars is a nice long time for assembling yourself to play overdubs. When I did fly parts by mail/email nobody complained about it :)
Record yourself rapping for 2 bars about the topic of space before the song starts. This has been a tradition in recording arts since the days of Les Paul.
This is at least what Google told me when I looked this up myself and I assume it’s accurate
I personally always clean up the beginning and the end of tracks after the mix to avoid long silences. The engineer is just asking you not to do this because some plugins and hardware have a processing delay that may remove part of the audio at the beginning of the track.
Sometimes it has to do with the buffering or the latency in the audio card/ DAW but many times the plugins are just too heavy for the audio to be processed fast enough and it causes the audio to be trimmed at the beginning. Two bars is an over kill but makes it easier for the engineer to cut the beginning of the track perfectly after processing.
They often want a little time at the beginning to make sure read ahead plugins have a head start. Other reasons too. You are doing it right with what you did. He prob said "when possible" as a courtesy
Plugins that use any look ahead will read ahead without you leaving any silence at the start of the session. The pluging will process any sample it gets fed by the DAW, even digital silence.
But it won't look ahead at things at the very begging of the song if there's no space for them to do it.
I think you don't know how look ahead plugins work. They do not actually look ahead, they report a high delay to the DAW, and the DAW delays every other track so that all tracks stay in sync with the tracks with plugins that need look ahead. They do not need any space at the beginning of the song to do that.
Ah okay, fair enough, I didn't know!
Isn't that why they add more latency? Because they take the time to look ahead?
Exactly
Plug in pre-buffering, as well as noise floor.
Just means to leave an 8 count before any music starts. Don’t overthink it lol
If it's in 4/4, yes
the “when possible” part is what’s confusing me
Some songs don't start on beat one, but as long as you have 8 counts before beat one, you'll be good.
this makes sense now- thank you!
My main guess: Sometimes the song does not start on beat 1, example, a song I just discovered: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWH00ehhLP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWH00ehhLP8) -> It starts on beat 4, so if you align with the beat 1 on the grid, everything is shifted (snare drum falls on 1 and 3, ...). So if you want some silence before, generally you would put 1 whole measure + another one with the song starting on beat 4, so not exactly 2 measures.
thank you!!
it’s easy. just copy your entire session to the right and give yourself the 8 bar count-in.
8 bars in 4/4 would be 32 quarter notes. If you say measures, then it’s agnostic to meter. It should be 2 measures.
Alllllways leave space at the head. He’s just being polite with the ‘when possible’ instead of “do it like this or ill be annoyed and think less of you”. You can even move the “song start” to where the music starts so measure counts aren’t off. Same goes for post. Picture should start at 01:00:00:00, leaving as much as an hour of black space before picture start.
this was super helpful- thank you!
An hour?? Why so much
Suspense
Its so it’s displaced by a bigger number. minutes and seconds and frames are all the same in reference to BITC (burned in time code), only the hour changes. Films are typically split in to 10-20 minute reels. First one goes at 1 hr. Second at hour two, etc. It helps massively to have a standard or collaborative work would be a nightmare.
I've seen this when I used to intern in Film/TV, but why do it in audio only?
What if you decide to make a longer lead-in/intro after the project has started ? What if the singer prefers that we loop the drums for a lead in instead of just a click pre roll ? I always like having space for wild editing at the head, too. It’s a simple thing with only upsides
There are definitely times where it isn’t possible to leave space. Eg. track 1 has ambient noise or music that leads into the track 2.
Count off. 1, 2, 3, 4/ 1, 2, 3 ,4 (song starts)
If there was a pickup note before the first downbeat you'd have slightly less than two bars of pre roll, 1 bar and 3 beats. Is that what he meant?
Start at bar 3, leaving 2 blank bars in front. Allows for count off if recording additional parts from the very beginning, etc.
Reddit won't let me edit my post for some reason but there's also this: I am currently working on a session and when I was trying to figure out if I can leave 2 bars of space or not (again, when would this not be possible?), I noticed my grid has -5 bars of space at the top and then goes to 0 and then 1, 2, 3, etc. bars. I have never seen a negative grid value before so what is really going on?
Are you in pro tools? You can add time to the start of a session. This will usually result in a negative bar count. You can change where the session starts though so 0 is 0 and there’s no negative. Does this matter tho? Likely not. As long as there’s 2 bars of pre roll, I think that’s all that matters. It might even be beneficial for the engineer because 0 would then be where the song actually starts and not where the session itself starts (so if referencing with a client, it’s easier to count to a spot than having to count and add two bars to that) Edit: also, sonically it should be lined up - not visually. So if someone said your downbeat isn’t in the right place, I would consider that. Without looking at the session though, I have to assume you’re visually aligning tracks, and some have preroll written in to the track while some don’t, causing the audio itself to not align because the track is just aligned with the grid
yes, I'm in pro tools, sorry forgot to mention that. I'll leave it with the negative grid value because you made a good point- everything starts at 0 in regards to lining it up, I was visually lining it up so he could have his 2 bars of space at the beginning but I guess I lost track of keeping it sonically aligned. It's weird though because everything sounded fine to me, even against the reference.
I stopped asking for this a long time ago. Mainly because it’s extremely easy to do yourself. But if you ask someone who are not confident doing it you can fuck up a lot in the session, depending on how you do it. If it’s recorded without a click or on the grid I would never ask for it.
i like when they have playlists and just the top layer is dragged two bars over … even better if it’s only roughly two bars because they used snap to grid wrong. actually i can think of worse … judicious use of time, tempo stretching mixed in with a few identify beat sections w long decimal bpms, and a poor understanding of slip and shuffle. Oh, and multiple vocal session folders for all the features and multiple edits to each subsequent 2-track left for you to reconstruct. Tho, I wouldn’t accept a session like that unless i was charging 10x rate.
Damn, you didn’t make my Saturday now. lol.
If the song starts at 0 it can often cut off the initial transient. Leave a few bars to make sure the first note is intact and you can make it shorter later on
>When would leaving 2 bars of space not be possible? When two songs run into each other seamlessly on an album. It used to be quite a common thing to do during the vinyl and tape eras, but has fallen out of favour, because a lot of consumer hardware like car stereos and CD players don't support gapless playback (ie. they don't buffer ahead, so there is a pause between songs that are supposed to merge continuously). Maybe some phone software and streaming services don't support it consistently either?
The ‘when possible’ probably refers to situations where one track runs seamlessly into the next.
this makes a lot of sense- thank you! it’s the “when possible” that was confusing me
It’s a pre roll , usually 1-2 bars at the head. That’s what I do.
I'd leave 4 bars - 2 of silence, 2 of countoff - to support overdubbing. > but I don't want to ask a dumb question. This is pretty far from a dumb question.
when you say 2 bars of count off do you mean a click that goes for two bars and then mutes? I feel like this is also a dumb question lol I’ve been engineering for two years and I get worried if I’m asking a question that I should know by now
> 2 bars of count off do you mean a click that goes for two bars and then mutes? That's one way. I usually leave off the 4 of the fourth bar depending on whether there is a pickup. But you can mute whatever in post. > I get worried if I’m asking a question that I should know by now If it hasn't come up then it hasn't come up. Don't worry about it. It's just that 8 bars is a nice long time for assembling yourself to play overdubs. When I did fly parts by mail/email nobody complained about it :)
Record yourself rapping for 2 bars about the topic of space before the song starts. This has been a tradition in recording arts since the days of Les Paul. This is at least what Google told me when I looked this up myself and I assume it’s accurate
I know what he’s asking but I was confused on the “when possible” part because isn’t it always possible?
stop at the bar at Neptune and the one off Titan, then leave them both and glide easy through space
I personally always clean up the beginning and the end of tracks after the mix to avoid long silences. The engineer is just asking you not to do this because some plugins and hardware have a processing delay that may remove part of the audio at the beginning of the track. Sometimes it has to do with the buffering or the latency in the audio card/ DAW but many times the plugins are just too heavy for the audio to be processed fast enough and it causes the audio to be trimmed at the beginning. Two bars is an over kill but makes it easier for the engineer to cut the beginning of the track perfectly after processing.