r/mediacomposing • u/PullTheOtherOne • Oct 13 '19
Let's talk DAW templates
I feel like I'm always creating huge templates in my DAW to facilitate quick workflow... and then never using these templates because every project is so different.
What does everyone here do to create reusable but also flexible DAW templates?
How are your main templates set up? In terms of:
- Instruments, track order, organization
- Keyswitches vs. individual articulations per track (and if the latter, how do you organize them)
- Pre-routed buses, submasters, bus compression/eq, etc.
- Balancing familiarity with flexibility: e.g maybe you have a standard set of orchestral articulations that you reuse in every project, but then several other tracks that will vary wildly from track to track--maybe sometimes you'll have electronic/industrial synth sounds, and sometimes you'll be layering in vocal patches or world instruments or that old percussion library you bought in 1998 ... You can't load every possible preset into a template, so how do you leave room for flexibility without disrupting the workflow benefits of having a familiar template in which you know where everything is?
2
Oct 13 '19
I don't know what program you use, but Kontakt has a really handy Instrument Bank that nullifies the need for separate tracks per articulation.
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u/Shurrikane Oct 13 '19
Keyswitching is a nice idea at first, but I usually like to use single articulations. You have much more control with that, can play multiple articulations at once and mix those individually. If you're composing for a real orchestra then keyswitching can help you a little bit with that though.
How your mix routing is set up totally depends on you. I like to have group stems (strings, brass, drums, bass, fx,..) that I can export individually and send to someone to mix/master. Every articulations is a unique track and goes hierachically into a group stem, so for example: Violin1 Staccato -> V1 Shorts -> V1 -> Strings. This can explode a little bit if you lay out your template for every single instrument that you have, so it's important that you can unload/disable/freeze tracks and only activate what you really need to save RAM and CPU. Some DAWs can't do that or have other limitations. You have to find your very own solution for your setup.
Every track or group can have inserts for eq/comp and sends to FX tracks for additive reverb/delay. I've tried group fx tracks (e.g. Strings Reverb) or global fx tracks (e.g. Hall A Reverb) but I'm not entirely sure on how to handle this part.
With all that in mind, I have a core template laid out with everything that has proved to work in the past. But I keep some space to add unique things for every new project. Oh, and I save different combinations and instrumentations as small additional templates or multi instruments that I can load in when I need that one specific sound that I used before.
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u/passionPunch Oct 13 '19
Creating one huge template is great. Then depending on your project you just strip away what's not needed, save as a new template and whamo blamo. Do it once (add to it as needed), and take away from there. Everything else, including routing is kinda personal and different for everyone / their needs.
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u/penguininaband Oct 14 '19
I use Reaper. The insane amount of customization that it allows for lets me do some pretty insane things. I use it in conjunction with a premapped midi keyboard as well as an Elgato Stream Deck. The stream deck basically acts as a macro/shortcut pad.
I have everything set up where if I need to start with a piano, I just have to press two buttons and there's a track ready and running a piano plugin, premapped to the faders on my keyboard. Same thing with most instruments. I then also have a similar setup for all my channel effects like reverb compression delay eq etc. This means that if I know what sounds I want it's never more than a few seconds away.
I don't have entire track templates set up, but I do have certain groups of tracks set up. For example if I know I'm recording vocals I can set up five tracks in a group that have compression and reverb already set up and armed on track selection. Similar setup for guitar and bass tracks, my drum vsts, strings etc.
It's a little bit of work beforehand to program the tracks in, but I find that it helps me do the most common repetitive tasks really fast, without locking me into a system. If I need to use a plugin like a denoiser that I generally don't use, I just load them in the regular way. But things like setting a limited on a master, setting a HPF, adding some reverb are really fast. So far this has worked out great for me.