Create single Cubase Project for a whole Album

Cubase
1

I have a 6 tracks album composed and ready to be hard worked on. But those 6 tracks are each an individual cubase project.

I want to merge them all into a single cubase project so i can standardize and normalize stuff easily. I think it is easier to give it an album identity if i have all of the songs side by side.

The thing that i’m suffering right now is that each track has a lot of signature/tempo changes so writing everything from scratch into the album project seems like a lot of work.

My questions are:

  1. Do you guys know any technique to merge all of the tempo/signature tracks into the tempo/signature track of my whole album project without dying?
  2. What approach do you guys use when working on al album you have composed? do you think i’m overkilling it or am i in the right track?
2

The feature you (and at least two other people) are looking for is subprojects, which was feature requested in 2019 to no fanfarre.

3

I think File->Import-> Tracks From Project may do the job.
Create a new project and import.

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4

I don’t have any experience with your first question in that I’ve never seriously tried to do an entire album within one Cubase (or any other DAW) project. It feels to me like that would be a nightmare for dealing with actual songs, even if all songs will have the same tracks (though mine pretty much never do). Also, my albums have generally been a combination of singles I’ve put out since the album prior to that, new songs I’m recording for the album (but which I might put out as singles prior to the album release), and new songs that will only end up on the album, and I’m not going to e ready to make all the relevant album-level decisions at the point of being ready to release individual song singles.

As for your second question, what I have done is individual song projects, as if they were going to be singles, even if they were only going to be included on the album, where the songs can stand alone, be pitched into sync opportunities when applicable, etc., then, when I am ready to put the album (or EP) out collect the individual songs for sequencing, remastering, etc. within WaveLab Pro. WaveLab’s montages allow replacing audio files within an album if, for example, you need to remix a song for the album within Cubase, even while doing the mastering in WaveLab. There are also excellent tools for dealing with things like level balances between tracks, be that pre- or post-mastering chain.

On my most recent album, though ten of the thirteen tracks had previously been released as singles – of the other three, one was a remix, another was a new recording of a song I’d previously released as a single but with a different genre, and the other was a new song – I knew I’d need to make mastering changes from the single versions in working with the album. I could conceivably have done this in the Cubase projects (since all the single releases were mastered in those projects). However, I knew it would be easier to listen to the sequence’s flow if I did the remastering in WaveLab, so I started by going back to the Cubase projects, documenting the mastering chains, and saving lots of presets within the plugins in those mastering chains. Then I took the unmastered mix audio into WaveLab, and recreated the song-by-song mastering chains from the documented plugin order and presets to be able to use as a starting point. Any mastering-level adjustments would be made in WaveLab, but, if I had to remix a song at that stage (and I did for at least one of the songs, maybe a couple), then I’d do that in Cubase and replace the unmastered mix audio in WaveLab.

The only real downside of this approach (besides the initial setup work) was that WaveLab’s user interface is way different from Cubase, so there was a decided learning curve, even on the second project I worked on in WaveLab (the album I was describing above – I’d done a 7-song EP the previous year, but I was mostly using WaveLab for sequencing in that case as I was doing a bunch of remixes in short order in Cubase for the EP, and I could be conscious of areas like sequence and level matching while doing that).

I’m working on another album now, but it will also come out as a bunch of singles over time, and I’m not worrying about things like level matching between singles since I’ll end up remastering those when I’ve got the full album together. The only difference on this one is that I already know what the songs will be up front (except maybe for one or two I may write new to target the album), whereas the most recent album really started as a collection of unrelated songs that I figured out later how to fit into a coherent album.

5

Personally I recommend you leave each song as a seperate project, mix each one so they sound the best you can get them, leave headroom to master your album so set a goal for each song, for instance set your levels to -2db or use Lufs and set it to something appropriate depending on the type of musc like -14 Lufs for a starter. Then like rickpaul suggested use something along the lines of Wavelab(Sound Forge, Audacity, etc.) to actually master the whole thing as a group. Wavelab has montages where you can put your songs on a timeline with spaces between and set up markers for a CD release. I stick to streaming so I do each piece seperately in Wavelab. Mastering takes a good mix and makes it sound polished and finished…overall EQ, widening, limiting, etc.

6

This feature would be awesome for the sound design for games. Where I have hundreds of sfx in a project, each has from a few to several layers.

Folders are saving me for the project maintenance but not for the CPU usage. Being able to split it into many sub-projects would give Cubase god-mode.

7

Standardize and normalize what exactly? Putting six disparate tracks into one project won’t make it easier to “work hard” on the individual unfinished tracks. You can use a common template and user-presets to standardize the things you want to be the same across all of the tracks, without dealing with the complexity of a multi-project project.

Clarity is nice to have when you’re working on a particular track. Sequencing multiple tracks is best done after you have tracks that are already able to stand alone. Having separate projects for individual tracks isn’t actually a problem.

What happens when you decide to experiment with a different track-order, or make tempo changes to a particular track? Of course you can do it–but you have to be extremely cautious.

What if you want to adjust a group bus effect or fader that’s used by all of the tracks?

For example–imagine what will happen if you have six unfinished tracks in one project, and you decide to save an alternate mix of track one–then of track three–then of track four. You can end-up branching in multiple directions, with the “good” versions spread across multiple copies of the same master project. Then you’ll have to re-merge them into a new master project, and possibly repeat that process multiple times.

The real problems will come after you’ve done that–when you want to make fine adjustments to just one track. Every time you touch anything in the project, you’ll have to consider whether or not it’s going to impact the parts you aren’t working on. If you do inadvertently make a change with global implications, you may not realize it until it’s too late. For me, that’s the biggest downside of merging unfinished projects.

You’ll save yourself a lot of pain if you just finish each track first in its own project, and only combine mixdowns in a “master” project–or as @rickpaul suggested–put them together in something like WaveLab.

  • Finish composition of each track
  • Finish recording of each track
  • Finish editing each track (“finalize” audio, routing, effects, and automation)
  • Mix each track
  • Export mixdowns
  • Add mixdowns to a new project where you can sequence and plan transitions
  • Iterate as needed
8

I record, and mix within the same project but only because my audio interface has what are known as “Computer channels”, that is i/o without a physical interface (MOTU 8A) but I would never contemplate multiple songs within the same project.

Cubase and Nuendo are highly structured applications, and with a solid template, you can use Import Tracks, as previously noted so that you have consistency across individual projects, which you can continually update, the template that is and re-import, and parts will appear on the correct tracks by using the same names and track types for each track and associated parameters.

9

Personally, I rarely use a template when I’m in creative mode, except for orchestral music which immerses us in a more particular writing mode. I dislike feeling limited or constrained by what a template offers; every track should be created without restrictions, allowing its own personality and character to shine through.

However, at the mixing stage, I do use a template where certain groups—including the mix bus—feature a signal chain that gives the tracks a degree of sonic consistency. True cohesion across multiple tracks is achieved during mastering, which can be done in Cubase or—even better—in WaveLab, a program better suited to that specific task.

I don’t really see the point of keeping an entire album’s worth of tracks in a single Cubase project. Creating, mixing, and mastering six tracks within one Cubase file strikes me as inefficient, though everyone is free to choose their own workflow. Good luck!

10

I start every project with the same template. It doesn’t include any presets, MIDI, track instruments, or audio tracks–so it doesn’t limit creativity at all.

It just has some “standard” group tracks, a few empty Rack Instruments, SuperVision on the Stereo Out, a Signature track, a Tempo track, one FX track, a disabled Chord Track, and two empty Markers tracks. With all that, I can just get started with recording, without thinking about basic setup. And when I open any project, I already know how the layout and routing are configured.

11

Hey @XLColdJ I really appreciate your words, you are very kind to provide such a complete and thoughtful answer.

I guess the thing that i forgot to mention was that the tracks are already finished, composition is done and i’m standardizing stuff rn.

I use a lot of orchestral VSTs, those have tons of settings to tweak, if a built-in reverb has different settings than another one it will feel weird. At least in my style, i’m not saying it is the same for everyone, but trust me. If the richness of the my music would benefit from having so many differences across songs, i wouldn’t be here asking this.

The album and songs are mature enough, there will be no additional experimentation and no other creativity stuff. The phase i’m in right now is to make everything make sense and send the tracks to my mix/master engineer.

Once again. Thanks for your time all of you guys definitively made me realize a bunch of stuff that can be done