Once upon a time, a recording session would be held where little spots of downtime were unavoidable

The tape had to wind back for another take. The tape had run out and a new one had to be threaded. The muffins were done and everybody needed a break to enjoy some lovely confections. You name it, and short of being a complete catastrophe of a known person’s making, it was accepted as the price of doing business.

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The task of finishing one song and moving to the next is one where tape was very efficient; wind fifteen or twenty seconds past the end of the song you finished and start recording. You didn’t even need to change your console labels to do this! In the Pro Tools era, we have the task of creating our new session, tracks, labels, input/output assignments, plug-ins, and all that jazz when we go to the next song. Don’t get in a twist, though; there are lots of ways to do this very efficiently.

Some folks like to use template sessions. The idea here is that you set up a session exactly how you want it; tracks are named, i/o is assigned, plug-ins are in place, track arrangement is done, mix is functional, everything is set. Then you save that session and use it as the starting point for each song by identifying it as a “read-only” (Windows) file or a “stationary pad document” (Mac), which will make it prompt you to save the new document when you use it. While this method is decent and adopted by many people, it has its drawbacks.

The method I’ve come to love is to simply set up my first song the way I want it and use it as the basis of the second song, then the second for the third, third for the fourth, etc. Each time we finish a song, I go through these steps to set up the next song:

1. Save As to the next song’s title. The trick here is to navigate to where you want the session to exist and create a folder, then save the session in that folder. (Pro Tools automatically creates session folders to contain the session, audio, and fade files on new sessions, but this isn’t a new session, so you have to create your own session folder).

2. Remove the previous song’s audio by choosing ‘select all’ from the regions menu (over the region list), then choose ‘clear selected,’ then choose REMOVE. (Warning! If you choose DELETE, you will ERASE THE PREVIOUS SESSION’S AUDIO!) A very fast way to accomplish this operation is to use this key sequence: Shift+Command-A, Shift+Command-B, Option+Return.

3. Now re-assign the disc allocation by going to the disc allocation window. Hold down the option key (alt on Windows) and click on any track to select all of them, then click and hold on any track to get the pop-up to select your audio drive. The disk allocation will automatically set itself to the audio files folder (which it will create) within the session folder you created in step 1.

4. Roll it!

The advantages of this method over the template method are these:

• You never have to go “dark” where all of your musicians lose their headphone feed from the system.

• You never have to duplicate changes to the template made in the previous song to maintain continuity for the musicians and producer. (e.g., “Hey, didn’t I have some reverb before?” –“Uh, yeah, that was something I added on the last song but isn’t in the template, hold on while I fumble around and look like an amateur.”)

• It’s very fast. It might take a couple of minutes to practice this procedure, but after you do it a time or two, it’s literally a 15-30 second task that can even be done while the band is running down the next song.

• It actually forces you to pay attention to your disc allocation and file management, which is ALWAYS a good thing (as opposed to depending on the system’s template behavior to do it for you).

It’s a fast-paced world in the studio recording a band. If you’re not mindful of where you can shave some time off your own tasks, you may find yourself being the one everybody else is staring at. This is just one of those places where the engineer has to take the time to do things right, but that doesn’t mean he has to break the flow of the session altogether. When the producer pulls the trigger and says a track is done and wants to move to the next one, you should be ready to roll before the guitar player can get tuned. The “Save As” method will allow you to be ready to go before he even gets his cape tied on.