Dubstepforum.com

I fear I'm in danger of being flamed for this post so I have to choose my words carefully XD

I know that more isn't always better, clearly and that if you try to fill a track up too much it can become cluttered and sloppy, space is important right? But something that's always bugged me is that when people mention how many channels/tracks they used in a particular tune they never go into specifics. Does this include individual drum hits or are their drums grouped together in a single drum sampler track? Are they counting sends and stuff as seperate channels too? Most of my songs have between 17-25 channels on them, but that normally includes 2 drum samplers that open up into about 10 channels for the first and maybe 5 on the second. I also sometimes parallel EQ synths coming from reason into ableton so they take up more than one track.

Basically what I'm getting at here is i've often wondered how many different instruments people use compared to how many channels. Not counting sends etc, I'm talking about the actual instruments. What I wanna get from this information is whether people tend to make tracks with only a few melodic ideas happening but many different instances of each sound working together to create a much fuller sound or if people tend to only resample/layer really major sounds in the track and leave other things as one instance.

I dunno if I've made myself clear but I hope so...It's not something I've been able to gather just from listening to tracks, I find it very hard to analyse 3rd person so to speak. So yeah I just want people to maybe list how many channels they *tend* to use in a track of their standard style with the sends not counted and any individual drum hits treated as separate channels even if they are in a sampler as long as they are all eq'd etc differently as well as how many actual separate instruments you can hear in their tracks and whether the majority of their channels are taken up by main instruments or almost unnoticeable incidental/background noises.

If it was perhaps missed in all that nonsense I just wrote the purpose of this thread is for me (and others?) to understand how other people go about constructing a track and how they go about their mixdowns.

I'll go first XD so I use about 20-40 (average of 25 probs) channels per track with a good 10-25 of those being individual drum hits (I tend to layer my kicks and snares at the start of building a track, then add compression and resample and load them up as one hit each, to save space) I also generally have one track of 'atmosphere' so white noise or a strange recording of wind, rain etc that runs through part of the song and maybe 1 or 2 incidental tracks. The rest are all various different synths and melodies, rarely playing the same thing as each other unless a large bassline type sound which I don't do often. Have recently started doubling up my pads though to try and give them more character.

I'd say my songs often either feel empty or too cluttered. That mysterious and glorious 'space' people like Eskmo, Mala and Benga get in their tracks (in very different ways) still eludes me

[sorry for epic post]

i guess on average maybe 10...? most i ever had was 15 i think. but more time than not, 10.

the drums are generally all rendered into one track.


all other instruments and little incidentals go on their own track.

i wanna try and get something going with like 5 channels tops though. that's my next goal.

qwaycee_ wrote:i guess on average maybe 10...? most i ever had was 15 i think. but more time than not, 10.

the drums are generally all rendered into one track.


all other instruments and little incidentals go on their own track.

i wanna try and get something going with like 5 channels tops though. that's my next goal.

But how many would it be if the drums and incidental wern't grouped together like that? cos that's what confuses me cos with all my groupings taken into account I only use about 15-17 per track..

total between 20-40

synth sounds about 10

drums end up in 4 drum channels which I export out to audio 4-6 tracks

all depends really, pressure has 8 if I count the 6 elements of ambience as one (They are bussed and sound like a whole, so I am), and the kicksnare as one.

My newest one though, passing saturn... has 20 something already and is nowhere NEAR finished...

So...

yeah.

I would say maybe 20 at the most.

I think it's shaking out to generally:

1. Kick
2. Snare
3. Claps (sometimes)
4. HiHats
5. Hihats
6. Open HiHat
7. Shakers
8. Additional Percussion
9. Crashes
10. Reverse Crashes
11. Bass
12. Lead Synth
13. Lead Synth Alt
14. Pads (layered)
15. Pads (layered)
16. Atmosphere
17 - 20. Additional percussion, effects, etc.

TBH I don't use sends much, I would rather deal w/ everything as inserts.

I can't imagine having much more - I would hate to try to keep track of everything, and for how I work it seems way excessive.

Aah you see this is where I'm falling down in my production I think. Everyone automatically groups things they have layered and calls them one so I think oh I only need one synth for such and such a lead when really the other person has layered like 3 different instances together to create the lead sound and mine ends up sounding like cack because it's just one malstrom or summat.

Seriously need to address the way I write tunes I think.

Yeah usually 20

20 - 30

half of that is proberly just drums, icluding my snare which is layered and kick

the rest is just pads, bass and other random sounds.

i use sends to fill up space with delays and weird processing.

paravrais wrote:Aah you see this is where I'm falling down in my production I think. Everyone automatically groups things they have layered and calls them one so I think oh I only need one synth for such and such a lead when really the other person has layered like 3 different instances together to create the lead sound and mine ends up sounding like cack because it's just one malstrom or summat.

Seriously need to address the way I write tunes I think.

are you writing your drums in a softsampler like Battery or Guru?

group each category of drums into a channel of their own

like I'll have 4 hihats going into one channel and I do this from the drum sampler

I do a lot of tunes on 3 or 4 channels, some tunes I put all my sounds on the master, and some projects have over 64 tracks.

I do not make beats in a conventional way though and its probably best to ignore my advice unless you make WEEDCORE like I do.

paravrais wrote:Aah you see this is where I'm falling down in my production I think. Everyone automatically groups things they have layered and calls them one so I think oh I only need one synth for such and such a lead when really the other person has layered like 3 different instances together to create the lead sound and mine ends up sounding like cack because it's just one malstrom or summat.

Seriously need to address the way I write tunes I think.

I have to say, I generally think layering is overrated.

Everyone once in a while I will layer a kick or a snare, but probably less than 20% of the time.

I generally will use 1-4 hihat sounds, but I usually do them on 1 or 2 channels.

As for leads and such, I try to use just one patch. Bass is generally sub + audible bass.

I feel like I would rather focus on getting the "perfect" patch or drum sound than combining 1-3 "pretty good" ones. To me I think that reduces "blur" and if the sounds are right, you can mix them to take up as much or as little space as you want.

FSTZ wrote:

paravrais wrote:Aah you see this is where I'm falling down in my production I think. Everyone automatically groups things they have layered and calls them one so I think oh I only need one synth for such and such a lead when really the other person has layered like 3 different instances together to create the lead sound and mine ends up sounding like cack because it's just one malstrom or summat.

Seriously need to address the way I write tunes I think.

are you writing your drums in a softsampler like Battery or Guru?

group each category of drums into a channel of their own

like I'll have 4 hihats going into one channel and I do this from the drum sampler

I think you misunderstand me, I already group my drums so they come out of the same drum sampler channel, I don't have messy projects. I was worried that when someone said they had 40+ channels in a tune they had their drums grouped and that only counted as 1 channel which would make my tunes extremely empty. On the flipside of that I also worry people count everything that's grouped as one channel so they might say the have 10 tracks in a song but actually one of them is all their hi hats, one is several layer to a bass etc and I wanna know how many layers people *actually* have in their songs.

EDIT: At the dude right above me, I guess that's true, definitely for drums, I barely layer my drums at all compared to a lot of people. At the most I'll use 2 for a kick and 2 for a snare then resample them into 1 hit. But I think for ambience etc you really need to have more layers to get a full effect. Different sounds panned in different directions is very hard to achieve with one synth patch and a lot of great ambient songs you can hear that there's more going on than could possibly be coming out of one synth.

Around 50

Usually around 100 lol

paravrais wrote:

qwaycee_ wrote:i guess on average maybe 10...? most i ever had was 15 i think. but more time than not, 10.

the drums are generally all rendered into one track.


all other instruments and little incidentals go on their own track.

i wanna try and get something going with like 5 channels tops though. that's my next goal.

But how many would it be if the drums and incidental wern't grouped together like that? cos that's what confuses me cos with all my groupings taken into account I only use about 15-17 per track..

well...

see, my drums are generally chopped breaks, and unlike a fair few, when i start chopping a break i dont separate the individual hits at all. so when i reprogram/rearrange the drums, i put it all in one track. this is done mostly in renoise. so i just tap out a new pattern out of my chops on track 1. then i say i decide i want a kick pattern as well (which usually doesnt happen), then i might do so on track 2. maybe some other percs if it sounds like its working - track 3. so that could total a max of 3 tracks for drums.

tracks 4, 5, 6, 7 might be dedicated to other samples - like whatever...sax, singing, piano whatever it may be. tracks, 8,9, and maybe 10 might be synths. the remainder are incidentals. random noises that have been mangled to shit.

this is just the straight audio channels. obviously when including fx busses and all that it may be more, but as you said in the original post, you're not talking about anything except straight audio channels.

No, I get you, I am saying - I use like 20 channels.

For drums on an average song for example:

1 Kick (2 max, but rarely)
1 Snare (2 max, but rarely)
1 Clap (only sometimes)
1-3 hihats, sometimes on 1 or 2 channels
1 Open HiHat
1-2 other percussion sounds (shakers, etc)
1-2 Crashes (usually 1 channel)
1 Reverse Crash

So, drums generally 8-13 channels

For VSTs on an average song for example:
1 bass sound
1 sub bass
1 lead
1 other melody
1-2 layers of pads

So, synths 4-5 channels

Effects - maybe 1-3 channels

TBH, I can't comprehend the need for 50 channels, much less 100 (based on what I do).

What are you guys doing w/ 50 and 100 channels?

i'll usually have between 5 and 10 for drums/precussion
2 for pads
1 sub bass
2 or 3 for a main lead (unless its resampled in which case it becomes 1)
2 or 3 random noises

sooo 11-19

and theyre not exactly organised.

and if youre counting automation clips, then i usually have about 10 of those

£10 Bag wrote:I do a lot of tunes on 3 or 4 channels, some tunes I put all my sounds on the master, and some projects have over 64 tracks.

I do not make beats in a conventional way though and its probably best to ignore my advice unless you make WEEDCORE like I do.

hahhhahaha!

your hard drive is full of badman tunes thou!

plus your original.

my last solo song had like 10 tracks maybe?
but the nsync remix i did w/ BB had 40... so go figure