For recording audio books, and short stories, designing templates is often less intuitive to audio engineers because the workflow is drastically different from music recording.
As some of you have noticed, our valued member by the name of @Clownpenis.fart has decided to start recording some rather exciting audio book short stories.
Here are some tips for keeping the workflow for that stuff flexible. I’ll post this so others can refer back it from time to time if need be.
For good practice, start organizing your sessions with various samples organized in the following:
Dialogue - Should be obvious what this is. If you are recording your own dialogue, I would arm and record onto the actual dialogue track, using take folders, then flattening and merging as you go along.
Music - Also obvious what this is. But if you’re not importing a pre-recorded excerpt, compose in a separate session and then import into your dub session.
Backgrounds - This is ambience that enhances a scene by giving context to the environment. So street noise, machines rumble in a factory, children chatting in the backgrounds at a public park, air conditioner rumble in a living room etc…
Sound effects - These are one-off hits that are NOT part of a background but a specific element interactive to a scene. So a window being broken, footsteps, gunshots, water being splashed, woosh from a ball being thrown etc… This differs from background noise as it defines an EVENT. Not a PLACE.
Futz - A futz track is track where you store processed dialogue. For example, a phone call, someone talking from on the other side of a wall, a voice emanating from inside of a computer…The purpose is you can process the daylights out of the sample, without cluttering up the processing chain for your natural/organic dialogue. If you have a character like Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, or Bain (from Batman), you want the processing on a dialogue track, not the dialogue on a futz track.
Storage - I keep a few tracks handy for temporary storage so I can shovel audio clips in and out of the way when I’m trying to decide where to place them.
Foley - Foley tracks are sound effects that are custom designed for a specific session. Its more necessary in film than in audio books, but if you create anything, I would keep it on a separate track, because the processing to that particular effect will likely be more intensive than a sound effect you import from a pre-made sample library.
…and I also use Soundminer Pro for tagging, editing, retrieving, and instantiating audio effects from inside my databases.
Have fun!!!