Great stuff, David! This is pure gold for people looking how to set things up PROPERLY. You are rapidly becoming one of the best channels on RUclips for this crazy obsession of ours. Very well, presented, clearly explained, and you are a warm and friendly guy!
This is the tutorial that I will be watching many times, for a long time I have had the bad practice of mixing everything without buses and routing, when watching the tutorial I have said several times "wow, this is magic". As Paul says, this channel is becoming one of the best channels to learn virtual orchestrations available to everyone
Thanks Luis 🙏 Just trying to inspire and hopefully get a lot of aspiring starting composers on their way enriching the world with the positive power of music 😊
Man! This is priceless!! I had just posted a discussion topic on Spitfire Audio's community forum, asking for help understanding the overly complex, but very professional orchestral template. That one has like hundreds of tracks on it, and boy is it overwhelming alright!! I spent hours trying to understand the thinking behind the routing, and I am still confused. After watching this amazing video I think I will have no problem understanding what is going on there. The only difference between your template, which I think is purposly made simple for educational purposes, and that template is that my template has track stacks for each and every instrument articulation, not only Longs and Shorts. So you get a track for Violin 1 Legato, another one for Violin 1 Long, and so on for all instruments. This allows for more control later on the stems, because now you can mix and add effects for each type of articulation, but especially automation also, for each track. I just have one questions. On both the templates, yours and Spitfire's, the same effects routing concept is followed. You get effect buses for each instrument type. However, during mixing we would normally want to have the stems dry, and apply all effects in the mixing phase. At least that is what professional mix engineers would prefer. So then what is the real use of all those effects buses in the template? Are they there so that we can try and test which effects to use, or how they will sound before the mixing phase? Are they just for the listening pleasure of the compose during composition? Also, the other difference between this template and Spitfire is that the Spitfire template routes the actual instruments tracks via "Sends" to the effects buses, not as "Output". I am not sure how that differs from your approach and how printing will be affected by it. Thanks very much, and I really hope you would look at this and help me understand this even more.. Ashraf
took me a lot to find a very articulated and clear explanation on orchestral bus routing. Really neat and elegant. Thanks so much for sharing your Skills with the world.
@@gh0stwrit3r @Gh0stwrit3r Thansk so Much this is great and inspiring material , I will take on your great lessons,:). I hope is not too much to ask you further if possible. Expanding on someone else´s good question about reverb , i was wodering about your effects routing for this so each printed stem or track includes reverb. Would that be like : each individual track sending to the reverb bus which has multiple sends to each of the print tracks ? (potential stupid question here ) . I currently use my reverb bus going to a 2 bus so i get the reverb only in the main stereo mix, which is quite limiting .
Thank you soooo much for this video!!!!!!! It made things so clear and I just completed a single library template tonight using these techniques! I couldn’t have done it without you, thank you so much!
You are so born for this Dave... knowledgeable ...patient ...you explain everything so well ...still no sign of getting technical my end... but your videos are motivating indeed and I am sure so very helpful for all who do this 😊🙏🌹
I got goose bumps when I heard the completed sound from 19:28! ! It's so magnificent, romantic and beautiful.Thank you for sharing,dear David!!😊🌹Have a great Friday and happy weekend!!~Macky:))
Thank you so much for explaining this so clearly. I was trying to work it out from the Spitfire template but your video was exactly what I needed to understand the routing.
!lol! Thanks Liam! Actually, it is quite easy once you know how it works and you put a lot of effort in it. But I guess that is with lots of things in life. I'm still figuring out the piano and how to play it well. At your side that looks so easy!
@@gh0stwrit3r it's an honour to be able to watch your brilliant videos, David, and learn from someone with as much talent and an eye for detail as you :)
Thanks so much for this video. One question: why do you need an additional bus between instrument stack and print channel? eg why do you do feed WW Bus10 into an aux and then output to Bus 1 when you could just feed Bus 10 straight into the print channel? Also your print stem seems to be receiving the full instrument stack AND the sub buses (longs, shorts etc), what's your process to avoid double audio ending up on the printed stem?
It's been a while since I've done the template setup. But I guess I did something wrong reading your comment. so thank you! The full instrument stack (WW10) and sub buses shouldn't be routed to the same print STEM. That way the audio gets doubled. So don't do that, my bad!
@@gh0stwrit3r I think I've run into an issue with this very detail, so I'd love an explanation. For the WW Prints, what should the Input and Output be on the Print Stack, and what should it be for each of the print audio tracks? Finding this last part very confusing, but otherwise this video has cleared up so many misunderstandings for me. Thanks so much!
Wonderful! Bussing and routing can be quite difficult/challenging at first. But when you've set it up, it's there with instant pleasure! If you have any further questions, feel free to ask!
@@gh0stwrit3r thank you so much! Also, do you use Isotope Neutron 3? I saw one of those mixing videos, but I saw you only using ozone 9, I'm thinking of getting the tonal balance bundle while it's still on sale, is it a good deal?
That's not a stupid question, but a good one! I guess doing it like this will give you a last chance to monitor your STEMS while they automatically get printed within the project. So they are included in the LOGIC project file. I also know that some libs are not bouncing correctly offline, mostly heavy legato orchestral patches. Doing a "live" print works just better with these kind of patches. But if it all works fine for you to bounce offline and you have found a process that works correctly and fast, stick with that. There is no one truth on this matter. Multiple ways lead to Rome.
This is excellent very clear and well-presented. However, two points. 1. This template seems to eliminate working with key switches, which I use all the time. Spitfire's BBCSO is doing the same. I wouldn't want to separate out the longs and shorts in this manner, but sometimes it would be the case, of course. 2. Where are the FX busses? There don't seem to be any. I would be wanting a hybrid template with many FX busses. Thank you for a great tutorial, though.
Dear David, thank you for this insights! I'm wondering how you're dealing with dry / wet stems? How do you handle the reverb stems, so if mixing engineers are asking for dry stems? thank you! best regards, Raffaele
This video is part of this playlist (The Polar Express Remake): ruclips.net/p/PLTv6R51wpEYgqAQVzVmwmsEeCo0ScMwJb You can download the MIDI mockup and rebuild it yourself while following along. Same as in the Masterclass series which are on the channel too :)
These are great videos. Thank you! But so many questions...why don’t you just mix with the instruments playing ‘live’, instead of bouncing them to an audio track first (which you call a ‘print’ - which really confused me for a while!)? That way you can still tweak the midi performance if you need to. And I don’t get all the short & long separations. Almost all instruments can play both short and long notes, in the same track/part, so how do you split them/route them separately? I feel like I must be missing something here! Thank you.
Hi Mark, good points you make here. I try to split the process of composing and mixing in my workflow. Those are for me two different worlds. But it helps me to work with an already balanced and cleaned-up template while composing. It just sounds great when you start doing your thing. Mixing with audio files instead of MIDI tracks is a common thing to do. Multiple arguments for that. Let's say you do a professional project. You're the composer, but someone else does the mixing and mastering. You can give that person your MIDI file, but if they don't own the libraries etc. it'll not work. That's why you create STEMS (audio files) and share them with the mixing and mastering engineers. Another argument for me (but that's my personal situation), I don't have a strong enough computer now to do any extra mixing in this template. My CPU is killing me. If I'm ready for an upgrade, I might consider to do some reverb, compression etc. too in this template. About the longs and shorts (and FX and specifically for strings Col Legno and Pizz too), it's also a common thing to do and group the instruments like this for STEMS. You might want to treat this groups in a different way during mixing. Referring to the use of reverb for example. But of course, it's up to you if that works for you. You could choose for another routing. You could also group the instruments (all flutes together, all clarinets together etc.). In my opinion that's not necessary if you work in a good balanced and already cleaned-up composing template. If that makes sense to you. Another thing ... sorry, this is quite an extensive answer :) ...you're right about the instruments being able to play longs and shorts. I eventually would split them up in individual tracks in Logic routing them to the relevant buss. Hope this clarifies one and another :)
Gh0stwrit3r BTW - this is the piece I’ve been working on, trying to apply your lessons to this realisation. Lot more work to do on the production, but if you had any suggestions...;). ruclips.net/video/E_cvB8O5bTg/видео.html
Any updates to the template? I have used something similar for a while, but now I wanna separate the different wood-libraries (bbc, abbey road1 etc) to different stacks. I still want them summed and printed together as one woods-print
This is great, but how does this work with effects being used for each channel? In this process, you'd just have the tracks printing without the corresponding fx channel sends...
Hi David, quick question about should I add reverb to individual instruments within a stack? I want to add varying amounts of reverb to each instrument but obviously don't want to add a reverb instance to each instrument. I usually use reverb sends for that kind of thing... same thing goes for adding effects like delay etc.
Usually I have two reverb busses. One with a convolution reverb and one with an algorithmic reverb. The first I use to get the instruments in the same space/room. The second one I use for various reverb tales to add some realism and small variation. Both reverb busses work with a send and are connected with the instrument busses (for instance, "strings long", "strings short", "strings fx", etc.). I hope this makes sense. In some special cases I do use reverb plugins on the actual individual tracks. Most of the time that's because I link Precedence (a spatial plugin) with Breeze (a reverb plugin). Linking them together on an individual track gives you the option to fully exploit both plugins.
Hi Aarohan, when working in Logic you can activate the Freeze icon through the Track Header Components (right click an individual track). The tracks with the freeze icon in it can be frozen. That are single VST tracks and multi timbral ones (almost know that for sure). Aux tracks (busses) can't be frozen if I'm correct. I also don't see the meaning of doing that. But maybe I'm wrong ... I will give it a go this weekend when I'm at home.
Hello, great video. Just a question, after you route the individual tracks to the corresponding auxiliary tracks, why do you have to route the auxiliary tracks back to the Stack? I'm just curious, is that like a necessary step in order for the Prints to work? Thanks a lot!
I do that cause I also want to print a STEM of the entire STACK. So the STACK bus is routed to the STEM bus in the PRINT section called [instruments name] STACK. Hope that this makes sense 😀
David this is really helpful in understand the routing for an orchestral template. Have you thought about doing a video on the routing for a mixing template in logic? taking those print stems - and pretending you are now the mixer and setting up a different template to mix the track and then send those STEMS to the "client" - That would be AMAZING for me... :-)
Thanks Darin! Spread the word :) I'm planning to do such a video based on STEMS out of StaffPad. Importing them into Logic and do a mix and master version in a template. Will take some though, cause I'm currently spending almost all of my spare time to finish a new composition. Hope to have it up before the end of the year.
Great stuff, David! This is pure gold for people looking how to set things up PROPERLY. You are rapidly becoming one of the best channels on RUclips for this crazy obsession of ours. Very well, presented, clearly explained, and you are a warm and friendly guy!
Hearing that from you Paul means a lot! Much appreciated 🙏
Enjoy the weekend!
Thank you so much for making this video. Very helpful!
This is the tutorial that I will be watching many times, for a long time I have had the bad practice of mixing everything without buses and routing, when watching the tutorial I have said several times "wow, this is magic". As Paul says, this channel is becoming one of the best channels to learn virtual orchestrations available to everyone
Thanks Luis 🙏 Just trying to inspire and hopefully get a lot of aspiring starting composers on their way enriching the world with the positive power of music 😊
Genius! I have too many templates and spent hours and hours setting it up and changing it. Thank you!
Man! This is priceless!! I had just posted a discussion topic on Spitfire Audio's community forum, asking for help understanding the overly complex, but very professional orchestral template. That one has like hundreds of tracks on it, and boy is it overwhelming alright!! I spent hours trying to understand the thinking behind the routing, and I am still confused. After watching this amazing video I think I will have no problem understanding what is going on there.
The only difference between your template, which I think is purposly made simple for educational purposes, and that template is that my template has track stacks for each and every instrument articulation, not only Longs and Shorts. So you get a track for Violin 1 Legato, another one for Violin 1 Long, and so on for all instruments. This allows for more control later on the stems, because now you can mix and add effects for each type of articulation, but especially automation also, for each track.
I just have one questions. On both the templates, yours and Spitfire's, the same effects routing concept is followed. You get effect buses for each instrument type. However, during mixing we would normally want to have the stems dry, and apply all effects in the mixing phase. At least that is what professional mix engineers would prefer. So then what is the real use of all those effects buses in the template? Are they there so that we can try and test which effects to use, or how they will sound before the mixing phase? Are they just for the listening pleasure of the compose during composition?
Also, the other difference between this template and Spitfire is that the Spitfire template routes the actual instruments tracks via "Sends" to the effects buses, not as "Output". I am not sure how that differs from your approach and how printing will be affected by it.
Thanks very much, and I really hope you would look at this and help me understand this even more..
Ashraf
took me a lot to find a very articulated and clear explanation on orchestral bus routing. Really neat and elegant. Thanks so much for sharing your Skills with the world.
My pleasure Sergio! Thanks for stepping by and taking the time to write a message. Much appreciated!
@@gh0stwrit3r @Gh0stwrit3r Thansk so Much this is great and inspiring material , I will take on your great lessons,:).
I hope is not too much to ask you further if possible. Expanding on someone else´s good question about reverb , i was wodering about your effects routing for this so each printed stem or track includes reverb. Would that be like : each individual track sending to the reverb bus which has multiple sends to each of the print tracks ? (potential stupid question here ) . I currently use my reverb bus going to a 2 bus so i get the reverb only in the main stereo mix, which is quite limiting .
Thank you soooo much for this video!!!!!!! It made things so clear and I just completed a single library template tonight using these techniques! I couldn’t have done it without you, thank you so much!
You are so born for this Dave... knowledgeable ...patient ...you explain everything so well ...still no sign of getting technical my end... but your videos are motivating indeed and I am sure so very helpful for all who do this 😊🙏🌹
"still no sign of getting technical my end" 😄
I send you an email yesterday for the collab. Looking forward to that Therese. Enjoy the weekend 🤗
@@gh0stwrit3r ...saw it ...looking forward already ...will write back soon 🤗🌹 ....haha...me & software are strangers 🙈
A masterclass. Brilliant!
These prints are so awesome
I got goose bumps when I heard the completed sound from 19:28! ! It's so magnificent, romantic and beautiful.Thank you for sharing,dear David!!😊🌹Have a great Friday and happy weekend!!~Macky:))
Thanks Macky! I wish you a great weekend too my dear 😊
Thank you so much for explaining this so clearly. I was trying to work it out from the Spitfire template but your video was exactly what I needed to understand the routing.
Thanks Julian 🙏
Nice tutorial on how to optimise your orchestral templates and looking at busses and routings
Thanks 😀
This looks all so easy when you show this David. Thank you for sharing this interesting stuff. Many greetings Liam
!lol! Thanks Liam! Actually, it is quite easy once you know how it works and you put a lot of effort in it. But I guess that is with lots of things in life. I'm still figuring out the piano and how to play it well. At your side that looks so easy!
This is great info David and I'm booking your wonderful video for future reference. Thanks so much for such a clear explanation!
I've been booked by John, a great honour my friend 🙏
@@gh0stwrit3r it's an honour to be able to watch your brilliant videos, David, and learn from someone with as much talent and an eye for detail as you :)
Very nice explanation!
It would have been very helpful for me one year ago when I created my 1st template ^^
Thanks Florent! I hope it is helpful for all starting composers or the ones struggling with the busses and routings 😀
Thanks a lot for the informative and clear explanation!
You're welcome Yolo! Happy to share :)
Thanks so much for this video. One question: why do you need an additional bus between instrument stack and print channel? eg why do you do feed WW Bus10 into an aux and then output to Bus 1 when you could just feed Bus 10 straight into the print channel? Also your print stem seems to be receiving the full instrument stack AND the sub buses (longs, shorts etc), what's your process to avoid double audio ending up on the printed stem?
good question, I have no idea why he did that either!
It's been a while since I've done the template setup. But I guess I did something wrong reading your comment. so thank you!
The full instrument stack (WW10) and sub buses shouldn't be routed to the same print STEM. That way the audio gets doubled. So don't do that, my bad!
@@gh0stwrit3r I think I've run into an issue with this very detail, so I'd love an explanation. For the WW Prints, what should the Input and Output be on the Print Stack, and what should it be for each of the print audio tracks? Finding this last part very confusing, but otherwise this video has cleared up so many misunderstandings for me. Thanks so much!
Thabks for sharing!! Nice information my friend!! Keep going 👏👏👏😁😁
Thanks Rodrigo. Much appreciated!
Thank you so much for this, I kept messing up this exact template and now I know how to route them :)
Wonderful! Bussing and routing can be quite difficult/challenging at first. But when you've set it up, it's there with instant pleasure!
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask!
@@gh0stwrit3r thank you so much! Also, do you use Isotope Neutron 3? I saw one of those mixing videos, but I saw you only using ozone 9, I'm thinking of getting the tonal balance bundle while it's still on sale, is it a good deal?
Sorry I’m stupid, what the benefit of doing all of this instead of exporting stems offline?
That's not a stupid question, but a good one! I guess doing it like this will give you a last chance to monitor your STEMS while they automatically get printed within the project. So they are included in the LOGIC project file. I also know that some libs are not bouncing correctly offline, mostly heavy legato orchestral patches. Doing a "live" print works just better with these kind of patches. But if it all works fine for you to bounce offline and you have found a process that works correctly and fast, stick with that. There is no one truth on this matter. Multiple ways lead to Rome.
This is excellent very clear and well-presented. However, two points.
1. This template seems to eliminate working with key switches, which I use all the time. Spitfire's BBCSO is doing the same. I wouldn't want to separate out the longs and shorts in this manner, but sometimes it would be the case, of course.
2. Where are the FX busses? There don't seem to be any.
I would be wanting a hybrid template with many FX busses.
Thank you for a great tutorial, though.
Dear David, thank you for this insights! I'm wondering how you're dealing with dry / wet stems? How do you handle the reverb stems, so if mixing engineers are asking for dry stems? thank you! best regards, Raffaele
Thanks man this has been very useful!
You’re welcome Dave 👍
may I know where is episode 1? Its just too great!
This video is part of this playlist (The Polar Express Remake): ruclips.net/p/PLTv6R51wpEYgqAQVzVmwmsEeCo0ScMwJb
You can download the MIDI mockup and rebuild it yourself while following along. Same as in the Masterclass series which are on the channel too :)
These are great videos. Thank you! But so many questions...why don’t you just mix with the instruments playing ‘live’, instead of bouncing them to an audio track first (which you call a ‘print’ - which really confused me for a while!)? That way you can still tweak the midi performance if you need to. And I don’t get all the short & long separations. Almost all instruments can play both short and long notes, in the same track/part, so how do you split them/route them separately? I feel like I must be missing something here! Thank you.
Hi Mark, good points you make here. I try to split the process of composing and mixing in my workflow. Those are for me two different worlds. But it helps me to work with an already balanced and cleaned-up template while composing. It just sounds great when you start doing your thing.
Mixing with audio files instead of MIDI tracks is a common thing to do. Multiple arguments for that. Let's say you do a professional project. You're the composer, but someone else does the mixing and mastering. You can give that person your MIDI file, but if they don't own the libraries etc. it'll not work. That's why you create STEMS (audio files) and share them with the mixing and mastering engineers. Another argument for me (but that's my personal situation), I don't have a strong enough computer now to do any extra mixing in this template. My CPU is killing me. If I'm ready for an upgrade, I might consider to do some reverb, compression etc. too in this template.
About the longs and shorts (and FX and specifically for strings Col Legno and Pizz too), it's also a common thing to do and group the instruments like this for STEMS. You might want to treat this groups in a different way during mixing. Referring to the use of reverb for example. But of course, it's up to you if that works for you. You could choose for another routing. You could also group the instruments (all flutes together, all clarinets together etc.). In my opinion that's not necessary if you work in a good balanced and already cleaned-up composing template. If that makes sense to you.
Another thing ... sorry, this is quite an extensive answer :) ...you're right about the instruments being able to play longs and shorts. I eventually would split them up in individual tracks in Logic routing them to the relevant buss.
Hope this clarifies one and another :)
Gh0stwrit3r thanks so much for the full answer! Very helpful.
Gh0stwrit3r BTW - this is the piece I’ve been working on, trying to apply your lessons to this realisation. Lot more work to do on the production, but if you had any suggestions...;). ruclips.net/video/E_cvB8O5bTg/видео.html
Any updates to the template? I have used something similar for a while, but now I wanna separate the different wood-libraries (bbc, abbey road1 etc) to different stacks. I still want them summed and printed together as one woods-print
It's an ongoing process sir 😬
You are great!
Just having fun with what I love to do ;)
This is great, but how does this work with effects being used for each channel? In this process, you'd just have the tracks printing without the corresponding fx channel sends...
The way he sets it up, the tracks print with effects plugins he uses on the original midi tracks. I don't quite understand your question
Hi David, quick question about should I add reverb to individual instruments within a stack? I want to add varying amounts of reverb to each instrument but obviously don't want to add a reverb instance to each instrument. I usually use reverb sends for that kind of thing... same thing goes for adding effects like delay etc.
Usually I have two reverb busses. One with a convolution reverb and one with an algorithmic reverb. The first I use to get the instruments in the same space/room. The second one I use for various reverb tales to add some realism and small variation. Both reverb busses work with a send and are connected with the instrument busses (for instance, "strings long", "strings short", "strings fx", etc.). I hope this makes sense.
In some special cases I do use reverb plugins on the actual individual tracks. Most of the time that's because I link Precedence (a spatial plugin) with Breeze (a reverb plugin). Linking them together on an individual track gives you the option to fully exploit both plugins.
Hey, Thankyou, it really helped me a lot ! Is there any way to freeze multi timbral or Aux tracks in order to save cpu memory while recording!?
Hi Aarohan, when working in Logic you can activate the Freeze icon through the Track Header Components (right click an individual track). The tracks with the freeze icon in it can be frozen. That are single VST tracks and multi timbral ones (almost know that for sure). Aux tracks (busses) can't be frozen if I'm correct. I also don't see the meaning of doing that. But maybe I'm wrong ... I will give it a go this weekend when I'm at home.
Hello, great video. Just a question, after you route the individual tracks to the corresponding auxiliary tracks, why do you have to route the auxiliary tracks back to the Stack? I'm just curious, is that like a necessary step in order for the Prints to work?
Thanks a lot!
I do that cause I also want to print a STEM of the entire STACK. So the STACK bus is routed to the STEM bus in the PRINT section called [instruments name] STACK. Hope that this makes sense 😀
Is this template available...?? If so, where can I download it...? thx
David this is really helpful in understand the routing for an orchestral template. Have you thought about doing a video on the routing for a mixing template in logic? taking those print stems - and pretending you are now the mixer and setting up a different template to mix the track and then send those STEMS to the "client" - That would be AMAZING for me... :-)
Thanks Darin! Spread the word :)
I'm planning to do such a video based on STEMS out of StaffPad. Importing them into Logic and do a mix and master version in a template. Will take some though, cause I'm currently spending almost all of my spare time to finish a new composition. Hope to have it up before the end of the year.
I think there's a faster way to make all the tracks record rather than having to listen to them in real time.
That's true, you can bounce offline if your computer can handle the load.