Noisemaking 101 - Track Templates
Lets say you are an up and coming song writer who does many demo tracks using piano and voice. You have your own studio and your own equipment, but lack the budget to hire a full time engineer. Of course being the star you are you have tight deadlines to meet. How can you improve your efficiency and get those tracks out the door to the band?
By using templates you can quickly start a recording session using the same settings from another session that used the same instruments. This will vastly improve the consistency between your tracks and speed up your production time.
Step 1 - Start a new session
Although this step isn't required it's always a good idea to be thinking towards the future. To start a new session go to the File menu and select new session. If you haven't created any templates before you should name your folder templates. Once you have named your folder click OK and your new session will be built.
Step 2 - Set up your tracks
Since in our example you are a songwriter let's set up our tracks in a similar way. Go to the Track menu and select New. In this dialogue box let's create four different tracks, 1 stereo audio track, 1 mono audio track, 1 aux track and one master fader. To add extra tracks in this dialogue box just press the '+' symbol on the right side of the dialogue box.
Once you have selected the four tracks click OK and your tracks will now be added to your session. Remember to name your tracks. In this case let's call the stereo audio track Piano, the mono audio track vocal, the aux track vocal inserts and the master fader can be left as it is.
Step 3 - Save the template
Go to the File menu and select Save as. Give the session a good name that will clue you in as to what the template is. A descriptive name and a date are usually good. Once you have name the file click Save.
Take your templates to the next level
You can save any session as a template by using the Save as function and saving the file in the template folder you have created. The advantage to this is that any mixer settings or plug-in settings will also be saved in the template. This offers huge timesaving's when you are multi-tracking a band over several recording sessions and for different tracks. Once you have a great sounding mix in one track you can use the template feature to create a similar sound in other tracks that use the same instruments and mic positions.
Using the template
Step 1 - Import your template
With any session open go to the file menu and select import > Session data. The import session data dialogue box will appear.
Step 2 - Select tracks to import
Near the bottom of the import session data dialogue box you will find a listing of the tracks that can be found in your template file. Select each track that you want to import into the session. The drop down menu in each track can be left alone if there is only one option, but it should say "New Track". All of the other settings in the dialogue box can be left alone. Once you have selected all of the tracks you want to import click OK and you're done.
Your session should now look like this.
Conclusion
As you can see there are many possibilities for track templates. Give them a try for yourself and if you find that you have lots of recording sessions that start the same then create a template for that so that your can get right down to what's important - making music.
Looking for more advanced tips and tricks? Take a trial music lesson.
Share