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Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by avasopht
I've noticed lots of music producers bounce their midi tracks to audio once they've created them.
It's a great way to reduce CPU load, but it seems people are doing it for other reasons.
I've done it once or twice and found it helped me to mentally move forwards.
Who else does this?
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by Rising Night Wave
sorry for irrelative comment: i never did this and it looks never will. i do not find it interesting neither needed. perhaps i am uneducated about that.
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by PhillipOrdonez
I do that fairly often on some tracks. Various reasons for that. Sometimes working with audio is better. I don't do it for CPU reasons anymore since I upgraded my computer.
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by huggermugger
Except to relieve CPU pressure, which is extremely rare for me, I never convert to audio. I want the control of MIDI all the way thru the composing/mixing process.
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by selig
I only bounce to audio when exporting for external mixing. That said, when I use a hardware synth which I'm doing increasingly these days, I bounce fairly early in the process so avoid loosing something important or when I may wish to start a new idea. I come from analog four track where you would have to bounce down at least once during the process, so I'm use to "committing" early on…
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by DaveyG
I almost always bounce to audio before the final part of the mix. I say "final" because most of the parts are 90% mixed as I go along. I find it a cleaner way to work and helps me focus on going forwards rather than endlessly tweaking a synth when it already sounds good enough. I also always export the bounced audio to disk as separate files. This's so that it's easier for Calvin Harris to make a remix when I'm rich and famous. Also, it's so that I can get back to those tracks in 5, 10, 15 years when the RS server is dead and cold and Studio One has become Fender ShinyDAW(tm).
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by Loque
Here are a few reasons that came to my mind why i do this:
* Move forward
* Save CPU (mostly on kicks with heavy processing or some mad drones/pads with trillions of stuff)
* It needs to be rythmically and/or pitch adjusted, but this is only possbile as slices from a sample (Rex or Mimic is a good example)
* Keep the sound playing when its a long note
* Create unique sounds, because transposed as sample sounds different when played directly from a synth (stabs and stuff)
* Play only parts of the overall sequence/sounds
* Create loops or repeats
* Special reverse effects
* Glitchy or grainy stuff only possible through samplers
* Reverse stuff inside the loop or add reverse parts in a loop
* Create a sample for a new sound
* If it seem to be a solution for a problem, i bounce it and throw it in a sampler - thats it
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by integerpoet
avasopht wrote: ↑13 Jan 2022
I've noticed lots of music producers bounce their midi tracks to audio once they've created them.
It's a great way to reduce CPU load, but it seems people are doing it for other reasons.
I've done it once or twice and found it helped me to mentally move forwards.
I've started experimenting with this as a psychological hack to get myself to finish something.
I even normalized when bouncing as palate cleanser which (I hoped) would give me some distance by forcing me to truly start over.
I've done it on exactly one track so far, so the jury is still out, but I did like it.
But also I am clearly a hobby artist who is not hoping to become popular in any sense.
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by moneykube
Loque wrote: ↑13 Jan 2022
Here are a few reasons that came to my mind why i do this:
* Move forward
* Save CPU (mostly on kicks with heavy processing or some mad drones/pads with trillions of stuff)
* It needs to be rythmically and/or pitch adjusted, but this is only possbile as slices from a sample (Rex or Mimic is a good example)
* Keep the sound playing when its a long note
* Create unique sounds, because transposed as sample sounds different when played directly from a synth (stabs and stuff)
* Play only parts of the overall sequence/sounds
* Create loops or repeats
* Special reverse effects
* Glitchy or grainy stuff only possible through samplers
* Reverse stuff inside the loop or add reverse parts in a loop
* Create a sample for a new sound
* If it seem to be a solution for a problem, i bounce it and throw it in a sampler - thats it
yep , I do it ... for all of this^^^^^
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by raymondh
Great responses!
I really like Reason's implementation of bounce-in-place. It is so easy. And if it's a VST, you can then turn off the VST and benefit from DSP savings. I wish that was possible with Rack Extensions!
The main reason I bounce is when using DSP intensive REs / VSTs, and the second reason is for audio fade in/fade outs of the track. It's faster than automating gain, and I prefer it to also worrying about level automating associated effect chains.
Re: Who bounces midi to audio while making a track?
Posted: 13 Jan 2022
by integerpoet
raymondh wrote: ↑13 Jan 2022
I really like Reason's implementation of bounce-in-place.
That's how I did it.
The ease-of-use should not have been a big factor, but to be frank I did it for some tracks more than once. Yes! I cheated!
But I still like the process because it creates enough of a barrier that it limited the
kind of change for which I was willing to to take a step "backward" from mixing, each one of which reminded me I was moving in the "wrong" direction i.e. away from done.
I have also seen people talk about "printing" to audio as soon as possible and then switching to a clip-based workflow on the timeline. To me that just seems crazy, which probably means it's genius in some way.
