Dubstepforum.com

By this I mean organising your tracks as you make em by colour coding, naming patterns / instruments.

Do you have templates?

Personally I'm shit when it comes to this stuff, and I find that the more my track progresses the less interest I have in finishing it, because everything becomes cluttered and disorganised and it's hard to keep track of all the different elements.

How do you work?

No templates, ever. But yes, i try to colour midi-tracks... But not as much as i should.

don't wanna talk about it :\

i use reason and i usually just label all of my combinators like Drums, and then label each part like, kick, snare, hi hats, blips, etc. same goes for all the synths and other elements...

i dont color code shit. but maybe i will start to have some basic coding like drums will always be red, bass 1 will be blue, bass 2 green, lead synth yellow, etc...

really it just comes down to what works for you.

if its not working for you then try to come up with a system that works for you...

JensMadsen wrote:No templates, ever. But yes, i try to colour midi-tracks... But not as much as i should.

this

yeah i use templates, just saves on a few clicks when i start cubase. also i use folders, for drums/bass/pads etc. thats about it. group channels and fx channels but thats mainly due to routing multiple instruments to effects. and i bounce when i run low on cpu.

When I'm working on my track in the beginning stages, creating loops, sequencing, laying shit down - my session is a complete mess... I wish I would take more time to organize and color or whatever but it stops my whole flow.

When it comes to mixing a track though I always take the time before hand to organize everything, label everything, and color code which makes mixing so much more enjoyable and easy. I think it's essential for that...

I'm pretty anally retentive about it, don't have templates, but I do have sets of samples packed together that I use often, when I'm writing a tune, everything needs to be in the right order, like I can't have a sub in channel one, because that's for pads, and a reese must always be in the channel directly to the left of the sub, kick goes before snare, hi-hats come after that,...etc and everything is color coded... I don't know if it really helps that much, I guess the aesthetics of the track you're making might have some influence on how the finished tune will sound, if you're writing a tune and it's nice to look at when it's written down you'll probably get a bit more into it when you're doing the mixing or adding new elements to it than you would if it was ugly as shit.

None at all.

Its a mess, and when the track is done I just compile the freaking thing and never look back.... unless I feel something needs changing than I have to dive back into the mess.

Yea, I use a template that I made. It consists of color coding/naming, bus's for effects, aux's for multi output with exs24, level meters and all that etc... lol sat down for an hour or two and made it!

I try to stay fairly organized and it does help with my mixdowns forsure

I am by far the worst...

I don't use templates, I don't colour code, I don't name anything(mixer, midi, audio, ect), I put stuff on different channels all the time, I do my mixdowns in the same project files, I save shit in all different places...

The track I am working on atm, has 400+ FL samplers, and none of them are labeled...

I do back up my shit, and do save multi versions of project files, but that it.

Beat that!!!

I hardly ever color stuff but usually organize my tracks and tunes pretty well. I always name my tracks and I group similar instruments and sounds together. Its good for ME but I'm sure if someone else looked at it, they'd be like

I'm actually pretty organized. I make sure to name all of my tracks, and I have them all color coded.

I don't colour-code, but I name everything, and in the mixer, I keep everything grouped and labelled.

No colour coding or naming. As I add new sounds and synths I mix and process them as I go along so I kinda hope I won't need to revisit prior channels other than for minor tweaks. I guess it is pretty unorganized but it allows me to get ideas down quickly in a way that suits my workflow. I will admit though it does get annoying at the end of a track trying to find that hi hat fader in like 60 faders.

Usually, initially - I'm very messy. It's super important to get that idea down before fucking around with organization. Usually when I have the hook of the song down, I then start clearning everything up - labelling, colouring, grouping shit together.etc. If I don't do this - if I give it a break for a week and come back, I'm lost.

amphibian wrote:If I don't do this - if I give it a break for a week and come back, I'm lost.

Depends what mood i'm in. Sometimes my project looks like a Bull on MDMA has been charging around a china shop and sometimes (when I hit writers block) I tidy it all up and colour scheme everything from, percussion, lead synths, pads, vocals you name it. Seems to be a great way to get past Writers block.

I rename, colour code and all else to keep myself organised.
Works better when it looks better for me. Usually just do it as I go along so I don't have to go back and clean up the clutter.