How many tracks do you use in your songs?

[cyanogen]

I'm asking because I know KVR has a pretty wide variety of musical genres. Please tell me how many tracks you use per song and what is on each track (instrument, overhead mic for drums, etc). Thanks!

[tamoore]

anywhere from 6 to 40.

[Killvehicle]

Generally around 16-20.. I record live music usually so..
9 tracks for drums
4-6 for guitars
1 for bass
2-5 vocal tracks (overdubs, FX track etc.)

THan I usually have about 4 group busses...

[dirty oscillators]

usually two. one for the left channel and one for the right.

[jackson]

For the vocal house I've been doing lately, 15 to 20 plus 3 to 5 sends

Fairly typical setup:
3 vocal tracks
2 bass
3 synths / sample mangling
2 special effects
8-10 drums

On the sends, I'll typically have a dense long reverb, a short reverb/delay combo and a couple of FSU combinations.

[ahjteam]

1 (mono), 2 (stereo) or 6 (surround)... and from the horseplay to the stuff:


Live-action music
3-12 for drums (used 12 only once, the drummer had 6 toms)
1-2 for bass
1-6 for guitars
2-6 for vocals
2-5 for keyboards
0-10 for others
3-4 for global fx : reverb, reverb, delay, (kick trigger)

Electronic music
1-2 for beat
1-3 for bass
1-5 for lead
0-6 for vocals
0-24 for others
2-6 for global fx

After that I usually divide them into 4-6 groups:
DRUMS (I might separate this to BEAT and KIT, where beat only contains kick+snare)
BASS
BACKLINE
VOCALS
FX

[dirty oscillators]

1-3 for bass

why do you need 3 tracks for the bass my friend?

[ahjteam]

1-3 for bass

why do you need 3 tracks for the bass my friend?

why not? 1 for line, 1 for mic, 1 for midi

[jackson]

1-3 for bass

why do you need 3 tracks for the bass my friend?

I'm not who you asked, but I've been doing a lot of basslines with two instruments lately. Play basically the same tune on a nice deep synth patch and a sampled bass guitar. Hi pass the bass guitar a bit to kill the mud, and you get a really thick, rich bass. It's nice to play little bits between the main notes on one or the other too for a little tonal variation.

[dirty oscillators]

1-3 for bass

why do you need 3 tracks for the bass my friend?

why not? 1 for line, 1 for mic, 1 for midi

okay, but not three tracks at once, right?

just curious, s'all. i'm still learning about multitracking and stuff.

[dirty oscillators]

1-3 for bass

why do you need 3 tracks for the bass my friend?

I'm not who you asked, but I've been doing a lot of basslines with two instruments lately. Play basically the same tune on a nice deep synth patch and a sampled bass guitar. Hi pass the bass guitar a bit to kill the mud, and you get a really thick, rich bass. It's nice to play little bits between the main notes on one or the other too for a little tonal variation.

cool, got it.

typically bass is mono, correct? so if you had two or three bass tracks, is it best to pan them center?

[jackson]

typically bass is mono, correct? so if you had two or three bass tracks, is it best to pan them center?

Oh yeah, mono for sure. Occasionally I'll have a wide chorus'd bass instrument, but I'll hipass that one and have the main bass tone in or near mono.

[The Chase]

16-50, most often 37 or so. Mostly for sound design reasons and because I'm a control freak. When I get above 40 it's usually already overkill.

In general, when I make a submix, I have a habit of sending the submixed elements to two submixes with different processing (most often dry and distorted), and then one more combining the two submix for a true submix channel.

I'll have 3-12 (more often 10 or so) tracks for bass, because I do DnB and I will often use multiple takes of parallel processing to get the sickness I need in a bassline.

Drums: 1-4 (most often 4) channels (dry, distorted, compressed, master) for each of Kick, Snare, Hat, and Ghost hits. Then I will do the same for the drums submix as I did for each of the elements - submix dry, submix distorted, submix through compressor, drums master. So drums usually take up something like 5-22 (more often 20 or so) channels in total.

Then often I like to send Drums and Bass to a submix (doing drum and bass and all) for more parallel processing...DnB submix dry, DnB submix distorted, DnB submix master.

For pads/leads I'll do the same I do with bass, layering multiple parallel channels with very different processing on all of them and lots of bussing between them, usually to something like 3-6 per pad, and I usually have 3 or so different kinds of pads, plus a submix of all of them, so 3-12 for pads and/or leads.

Also when i use something like reverb I put it on it's own track, to do processing only to the wet signal (almost always just EQ, but sometimes I like to put modulation effects before and after it). So by the end I have 2-5 tracks of just wet reverb on different elements. I don't like using global sends.

Effects like swells and noise sweeps always get their own channels. 1-6, usually like 3.

On top of that, when I'm doing something that needs to be loud, I'll bus all the tracks to psuedo master tracks in parallel - "master" mix dry, "master" mix saturated, then a channel combining them. I don't like using my actual master for the master track just in case I want to do some more bussing. When I have to limit a signal I much prefer to layer a channel of the signal very heavily limited than just putting a limiter on it...much easier for me to achive loudness without smashing it to compressed bollocks.

If I'm doing side-chaining I need to send the side-chain's modulator signal to its own muted channel, and I usually have 1-3 side-chaining setups.

If I ever do a project where I'm recording or doing a live setup I can't even imagine how many tracks I will use.

[runagate]

I usually have about 100 automation tracks just for VST instrument and fx parameters.

Then again everything I make comes out sounding like playing a malarial platypus with a weed whacker.

[dirty oscillators]

16-50, most often 37 or so.

jesus, i don't think my computer could handle all that. it's a 2.6 ghz machine but i only have one ram slot (with only 256 in it right now); if i want to upgrade to 1 gig of ram i have to buy a whole stick of ram rather than two 512's or four 256's.