Do you organize your group/bus channels together in your DAW, or do you place the group/bus channels next to the tracks that go into that group?
To clarify, do you organize the tracks in your DAW mixer like this:
Guitar 1
Guitar 2
Bus for guitars
Vocals 1
Vocals 2
Bus for vocals
Kick
Snare
Hi-hat
Bus for drums (the drummer is a minimalist)
Master bus
Or do you group them like this:
Guitar 1
Guitar 2
Vocals 1
Vocals 2
Kick
Snare
Hi-hat
Bus for vocals
Bus for guitars
Bus for drums
Master bus
Or are you using some other variation? I'm curious about what other people find easiest to navigate. Until now, I've only used the second variant, but the more tracks that are added, the harder it becomes to get an overview of the signal flow. And as you add more levels of bus tracks (guitars+bass, string instruments+drums, or whatever) it gets increasingly messy.
I mostly use my DAW to write music, so all my projects have somewhat different signal flows, and I can get forget where sends, compressors and other plugins are placed. For example, I sometimes realize that I'm EQ'ing on an individual track that goes into a bus with another EQ, so I'm not hearing the changes that I expect when I adjust the EQ on the individual channel.
I'm not a professional mixer. But at some point I want to release self-produced music, so I want to actually become better at all of this.
Posted Sep 11, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC
If you look at how designers organize their Photoshop files, some meticulously name and group everything, and others just have a stack of Layer 35 Copy Copy Untitled.
Pick the way that works best for you and when you look at other people's workflows, verify that adapting their methods actually works for you. It makes no sense to copy someone else's workflow if you're not in that scenario.
Use color coding for easier overviews, collapse everything you don't immediately need anymore, learn the necessary hotkeys - and depending on your DAW you can even search for track names.
Then - just try the different structure, and before you start opening all your old projects to change things over, use it for a while! There's no wrong way, only a way that does not work for you.
Very good points. Especially about trying out a method for a while before changing to it in every project. Thanks a lot!
It's perhaps a less than perfect example, but Jacob Collier has Logic projects that are close to the max channel count. I believe he uses method 1 and color-codes everything for the big overview.
https://www.youtube.com/live/Naxu8D0xXVU
Thanks! I'll definitely check that out!