Thanks for your comments. I think Batsbrew has a good point about getting the editing done first...that would make life a lot easier. I don't really want 300 nodes per track Hahaha.
  Danny, I agree with the Kashmir thing...It sends chills. I do like to keep things pretty simple when it comes to a mix. I guess I'm still a bit old school. I will very seldom even punch in a solo. I prefer to play it all the way through as a complete performance. Life would get a lot easier and I would get more productive if I would get over that!
  I have barely been scratching the surface with all of the tools in Sonar, So I very much appreciate you guys taking the time to talk about your ideas. On my next mix I'm going to dig a little deeper into automation and really just mixing in general. I hate the damage a compressor and limiter can do when trying to over compensate for a sub par mix. I think I'm getting better, but I can still hear my many short comings.
 

Oh Clint, we soo gotta get you into the punch-in world brother. LOL! I'm old school too...but even in my old days of tape, I was still a punch in prostitute. THEN I'd learn the stuff I played after if I had to perform it live.

See that's the key...if you're like me, you probably never want to punch in or manufacture a part that you can't physically play live, right? At least that's how I feel. So I don't ever try to create something from punches or do comps....I play the part as best as I can, set up my punch points and fix my mistakes. It really does cut a lot of time out. When I used my tape machines, they were pro machines that didn't have punch inserts. You literally had to press play and record at the same time during a pass. It was brutal man!

Imagine having to find just the right point to sustain a note on with your left hand while pressing play and record at the same time....I soo hated that! One of my myachines had a punch insert, but the big one didn't. So I was stuck really doing things the hard way. But yeah, you definitely should get into that....you'll be happy you did once you get the hang of it.

It's ok to keep things simple in your mix. The good thing about automation though, you can set your compressor to just work and tighten things up. Then you automate so that things are more natural. The problem with compression is just like you said. That damage is brutal, but that's only due to 2 things most times.

1. The person may not have performed as cleanly as they could have...or they may not have used "mic distancing" on a vocal track. Stuff like that can dictate how much compression needs to be used.

2. When the above happens....people over use compression and rely on the compressor way more than they should. The same principal applies to people trying to master a song really hot. They rely so much on the limiter instead of getting the mix right, that they totally miss the boat.

BUT...when you have a good instrument delivery, have the right compression setting that just keeps you consistent while keeping things dynamic, light automation is the icing on the cake and allows you to totally be heard without the damage a compressor alone may cause. So it's great to use both. The better you perform the tracks, the less "in moderation" you can use these techniques. But in larger mixes with lots going on, it's going to be just about impossible to not have nodes running all over the screen. LOL!!! That's just the nature of this beast sometimes. :) Good luck Clint...keep us posted. :)

-Danny

I agree with Danny regarding feel and ear. There is an art to automation that requires as much critical listening as when EQ'ing. Kind of like learning to hear compression requires a lot of listening, it takes awhile to recogonize when a fader move will benefit.

My best tracks, both instrumental and vocal, are usually the ones I recorded in real time, the whole song front to back, with minimal edits afterward. I'm not good enough to always pull it off, but it's what I shoot for. Practice, practice, practice, then record.

I have no such self-imposed limitations when it comes to automation, though. My tracks often look like a plate of multi-colored spaghetti, with volume, pan, effect and EQ automation galore.

Another great thread!  This site is so full of great information.
 
I've only used automation to knock down or bring up a track that was too loud or quite at at specific point in a song.  Usually it's because I recorded a section of lead guitar on multiple days and my settings were altered between takes.
 
I am the punch-in/comp king.   That's not by choice.  A few years ago I had surgery on my upper spine (neck area) to fix a ruptured disc that was pressing on the nerves that control the left hand and fingers.  I have never fully recovered from that injury so my hand is still weaker and with less dexterity than it used to have.  I'd guess the hand is at about 75% of what it used to be.  I have to play and record a short section of lead over and over and over and over again.  I may record it as many as thirty times.  Then I'll go back and pick the take that sounds the best to me both artistically and performance wise.  Thank God for modern DAW's.

I've only really ever done basic fade ins and outs, so I'm inspired to explore the possibilities. Thanks for everyone's feedback!

Some genres require more automation than others. If you're doing a lot of electronica and EDM that's creative with effects, it's not uncommon to have between 10 and 20 automation lanes on a track, turning effects on and off and manipulating synth parameters in time with the music etc. I find Sonar sadly lacking for managing heavy effect automation. It doesn't even label your lanes properly, and I'd like to be able to constrain nodes to the snap grid. But once you get the hang of it you can do some pretty cool things with effect automation, like applying heavy reverb to select snare hits, for example, or implementing a "stutter" effect with volume. 

bitflipper


 My local bookstore where I used to buy SoS has closed and I can't bring myself to pay for reading it online, so I have to wait until it's posted as a free read.

I subscribe to the "dead tree" version, which in the UK is cheaper than buying at a newsagent, this gets me the eSub free. However it looks like if you want the iPad Apps version you do have to pay extra.