Over the past two years, I've found that my track count has gradually increased which is somewhat new to me. I typically average somewhere in the 8 to 16 track range for most tunes, but as of late I've been pushing towards the 30 to 40 range, not counting drums which I normally bounce to one track once they're mixed. It's not something I do consciously, I just find it easier now to build and arrange a tune once I have a fairly dense mix. The downside to this is it can be a bit of a nightmare when mixing everything down, at least for me.

I'm curious to hear about other's approach to multi-tracking. I feel like the 30 to 40 range is hitting a manageability threshold for me personally, but I have friends that say anything under 40 tracks is nothing to them and they usually average between 50 to 100 on most sessions.

Do you have a preference for larger multi-track sessions or do you prefer to keep it relatively manageable?

 

I'd like to keep it manageable... but I'm often a failure in that regard.

 

Around 100.

 

i like to keep things separate.
my latest song had about 40 tracks

 

4 but I am a count. Is that count?

 

it's mostly because they are taking advantage of computers with more and more resources. (cpu, ram, ssd space). So instead of bouncing lots of small things which would have been considered a waste of a channel, they do not commit it to a bounce of that subgroup. they just leave it unmerged. this has been a very common way of working to make composite tracks of vocals for pretty long time. Instead of sticking 1 effect on a vocal, they will create "moments" and "throws" and other tricks. It is just easier to do them on another channel. It's still the same amount of waveform data, but on 2 tracks instead of the one.

Example, a project may have 8 real instrument groups. 1) drums 2) bass 3) pads 4) leads 5) midrange synths 6) vocalist #1 7) vocalist #2. And so on. Those 10 parts could be achieved in 10 tracks. But because we have so much cpu "overhead" or "headroom", they just leave it all separate until they begin mixing it down in those groups. It's an easy way to manage many different plugins instead of putting them all on the same channel. And a way to avoid committing things to a reduced channel count before they are forced to.

This habit follows them from doing this with audio composite tracking, to midi tracks as well. Everything is easier to go back and fix if they have to. And they will end up with the same song either way.

if you want to see an exaggerated example of this, watch the Mix With The Masters with Jaycen Joshua and Dave Pensado. The number of tiny little pieces of stuff he puts into new channels in Protools is crazy.

It is very easy to manage because the main groups have all the tracks inside that group hitting a summing mixer for that group.In Logic they are called Summing Stacks. The entire group can be minimized into 1 top level channel fader.

 

I'd say 50 to 100 sounds about right, maybe a bit more. But that's a very iffy number for me, with lots of that being stuff like buses, folders, VCAs, etc. Also audio tracks that have like 2 secconds of audio, or tons of layers that might as well be merged with the main thing, double tracks, things like that.

In terms of management it's not as crazy as it sounds, once you figure out what each instrument is doing you can mentally or literally group stuff, going into individual tracks only when something specific needs attention, and that reduces a lot the number of things you need to worry about. Then there's stuff like folders, colours, spacers, which simplify things visually, and templates that take care of some time consuming tasks. So even if i'm working with 100+ tracks, i'm actually dealing with a lot less most of the time.

 

Last edited: Mar 28, 2024

It isn't more stuff. It is more places to add plugins, and also helps keep automation separated as well.

Multiple Individual Channels are summed. Collapsed Track Stack (Summing) in Logic, shows as 1 track:




Channels feeding into an Expanded Track Stack (Summing) in Logic:

 

id say around 20.

 

1800+ in the template, 50-100+ used in the end sounds about right.

 

100-140 I guess depends on the how I get it. Just finished a 136 track mix. It's a 48track standard job, routing, busses, VCAs, FXs and parallel, all those stems print bus + 3 stereo prints, push it up to 136. Can't help it. They want everything. That's for mixing.

Production job less than 48 if it's a band or some Pop tunes, singer songwriter, acoustic, rap trap beats etc not more than 20.

for my own band and other personal stuff I sent out to mix with 48 track or less. It's the standard number I believe, following the old large format console track count.

 

The number of tracks used in my project depends on how detailed I want to go into the mix. Let's take the rhythm part for example: an easy solution is to throw a drumkit on a stereo channel and apply an eq/compressor to it, a different option is to divide everything into 20 different tracks to then treat the parts individually. Another example are synths: I often use the bass or a supersaw lead in multilayer with 3 different VSTs playing the same part. Also when talking about lead singer and choir: it's very easy for me to get to 40ch just for the vocals.
What increases the number of tracks is the obsession for the perfect sound, sometimes it makes sense and other times it's just the dark side of perfectionism. Ok: opening a new track on the DAW is free, maybe the sound engineer should ask himself if this is really useful or not.

 

it really depends on genre. For example take something like Phoebe Bridgers or any indie/alt singer songwritery type stuff. You can easily get away with 10-20 tracks. Maybe a few more if there are significant vocal stacks.

Now, if you are making hybrid cinematic dubstep trailers, you can very easily cross the 100 track threshold. The most ive had in one session was well over 200 tracks, but it was a 6 minute long hybrid metal cyber punk dubstep trailer type thing.

Id say on average, regardless of sub genre, when making "pop" music, (EDM, trap, indie, pop pop etc) i have 60-75, but half of those are vocal stacks.

There is no right or wrong, just dont get lost in the sauce and keep adding unnecessary tracks!

 

You can get something similar to Aphex Twin or Venetian Snares (in complexity level) using less than 10 tracks, hell you can get hardcore using only 1 track (extreme example):

Track count isn't necessarily linked to complexity or depth, especially due to the fact that people can be quite economical and efficient with their mixing/editing workflow. I'd probably have around 40 tracks or something every project if I had a specific track for every single detail that I usually add. Of course, this is a matter of personal preference but I just wanted to highlight this.

 

Last edited: Mar 28, 2024

My computer is old,so I cannot really get beyond 10 - 12 tracks (I mostly work with VST instruments, that put more strain on the CPU and RAM than just audio).

 

definitely! theres a million ways to do it. I find when doing the hybrid trailer stuff, its difficult to pull off without a ton of tracks. I need braaams, electronic perc, real percussion, orchestral percussion, found sound layers, many different basses, synths, vocals, fx etc etc.

 

Most people do not like to do selection-based processing either. So every track with some audio they want to add processing to; they make another channel and add their plugins as insert FX. Rather than just using a selection tool to highlight the small portion of audio they want to render with whatever fx, they end up with another channel. Many people just do not like to commit to their mix until the very last possible steps. People even do this with Plugin Synths now, working nearly entirely in Midi as far into their production as possible.

If sending the project to someone else to do the mix, they leave it all separate so someone else can deal with it; and it can reduce having to request more files to be sent. That is a chance to screw with someone else's time and money.

 

No more than four.

I make improvised experimental synth music. After I'm done recording a take it's very hard to get in the same flow, so unless I already have an idea of where I wanna go, I just mess with post production, which is where the extra tracks come in.

 

I agree with your statement 100%, but the example you gave does not really apply IMO. He's using a tracker, which is.. a bit different than a DAW.

If I record a track that has four voices, but those four voices come from two walls of Eurorack that do stuff so complex it would take 200 tracks on a DAW, how do you count?

 

amount of instruments - x2 or x3 roughly (folders/busses included)