i'm into computer music since maybe 16 years and i began using DAW templates just in last couple of years, after i realized i had several libraries (well, not too much, indeed) and setting up orchestral /cinematic songs took much more time than actually "play" or compose them
i realized that adding for example brass or percussion when i decided that the song needed them required "a lot" of time to open the VSTi, find/load the patch, setup the output, naming the track, etc.
so I made a big step...
and organized all my libraries in a single DAW template with nearly 400 tracks.
let's start from the beginning. I make music for my amusement, it's not my primary occupation and i do it during my spare time. so i want to spend time making music, not setting up tracks!
I still have sonar 8.5, i don't make any definite genre of music, but mostly "cinematic", trailer-like, epic, romantic... in any case i could define my music as "soundtrack-like".
i have these libraries:
garritan personal orchestra
garritan instant orchestra
miroslav (Ik-multimedia - still the old one)
kirk hunter solo strings
komplete 10U (with also some VSL patches for orchestra)
Quantum Leap rare instruments (quite old, indeed)
(these are the biggest, anyway)
I made a big template with everything you can think of:
almost all the strings patches, with articulations, solo instruments and ensambles
almost all the brass patches, with articulations, solo instruments and ensambles
almost all the woodwind patches, with articulations, solo instruments and ensambles
almost all the percussion patches
all the choirs from miroslav
i used all almost all the presets from garritan personal orchestral (like it a lot), most of the patches from instant orchestra for the ensambles, a lot of ensables from VLS, almost all the articulations from miroslav for strings (just violins and celli, although) woodwinds and brass (no percussion here).
also, i have a lot of percussions ready to use, from orchestral to cinematic to standard.
I set up a whole instance of kontakt for the piano libraries, i have all the different pianos loaded and ready to be used.
i set up a kontakt instance for the drums, with the separate outputs (kick, snare, hats, etc...) already defined and routed to different outs in sonar. these are already connected to jamstix.
I have a kontakt instance for "cinematic" instruments, such as damage, action strings and action strikes
I have a kontakt instance dedicated to NI "rise and hits": i found it a must for cinematic music, and i often loaded different patches for different sounds. so 10 MIDI tracks are ready to be filled with different midi channels with different patches of rise and hits.
I loaded all the "session strings" patches and the "sessions horns" pro instruments.
I also set up an instance of sampletank (10 tracks) because sometime i need some bread and butter sound. useful fo have it ready to use.
... and maybe i'm forgetting something...
but I know the big question is: what about memory and loading time!??!
well... the trick is that each VST/kontakt instance in sonar 8.5 is NOT loaded, the VSTi is simply switched off! everything is disabled so actually, when i load the template, nothing is loaded in memory!
also, for most of the memory-consuming instruments (e.g. the piano collection or for session strings/horns) I have loaded the patch with the "purge option" activated, so even if i load kontakt instance, the patch is not loaded in memory.
in this way, template load time is very fast.
add also the fact that i stored all the most "big" patches on 2 SDD drives (300 GB in total).
in this way, when i need an instruments, i just activate kontakt instance and go to the relative midi track.
The other option could have been to create single tracks template: i tried it but I found it was not so effective. having all the things already set up and available let me see what *really* I have and what really i can use. I can try different sounds in seconds without loading different track templates from scratch and then delete them if i don't need them.
believe me, it is the MOST TIME-SAVING TRICK that I ever did in my whole computer music life!
it took me some time to set up everything but now i can set up a track in a fraction of the time i would need to make it from scratch.
need a timpani? load the percussion kontakt instance and go to the track. that's it!
The only drawback is when i have to "clean up" the project to organize all the tracks that i effectively used and get rid of everthing NOT used!
oh, maybe this approach is more effective with "orchestral" music.
any more experience/comment/suggesion??