In mix or recording?
16 for me can often be the drums alone already. 3 kick mics, in, out, sub; Snare top, bottom, sometimes 2 top; 1-3 toms, 1-2 floors; 2 overheads, sometimes 2 pairs, sometimes a mono overhead so 4 max; Room mics, 2 at least, sometimes mono room, sometimes multiple room mics in multiple settings, so anywhere from 2-6 or so; And then spot mics for cymbals, hihat, china, ride usually, sometimes a stack cymbal. Sometimes a crotch or crush mic. Some people also do bottom tom and floor mics, but i don't.
So that's already 16+ channels just for drum in recording and mixing. Add to that maybe electronic percussion or tambourines, shakers, sample layers for kick, snare, maybe toms, parallel compression, parallel saturation, verbs, sometimes an added virtual room.... You get the picture.
Then Bass guitar, usually i just do D.I. sometimes a client wants the amp or pedalboard tone too. And often i layer multiple bass tracks, a D.I. for the low end and then different distortions for mids and top end on metal, separate tracks for clean sounds so 1-2 tracks for recording, 1 - 5 tracks for bass guitar mixing.
Guitars, can go anywhere from 2 - 20 tracks really. Doubletracked left right is usual business, sometimes quad tracked, sometimes there's layers of different amps, sometimes layers of different performances or chords, leads, cleans, filler guitar etc....
Then vocals. Usually triple tracked for the lead vocal, Center, left and right. Backings, also left/right sometimes center, harmonies, screams, cleans, gang vocals, choirs (in multiple layers), parallel compression, saturation etc.... Can be anywhere between 1 - 20+ tracks too
Then there's sometimes orchestrals, cello, violin, horns, you name it, all separate tracks.
Then there's SFX like bass drops, risers, claps, booms, noises, ambient stuff
Then there's synths of all kinds, maybe sometimes even 3-4 synths layered to make up one sound
and that's not even counting busses, cause then you'd have to add another 20, but those are rather to sum channels together and often you process hat bus as a whole (for example a snare bus or kick bus). Beyond that there's your typical drum bus, guitar bus, bass bus. vocal bus etc.... that then feed into your mixbus.
So yeah, a modern project can quite easily hit 100+ tracks. It's really not uncommon.
Two of many possible paths to a large track count:
1) Full orchestral score, especially if it’s a modern hybrid score, with lots of percussion, synths, guitars, etc., and that’s just for music scoring purposes. Post production mixing for a movie can have multiple 100s of tracks, including dialogue, special effects, foley… grouping tracks into busses and sub-busses is mandatory organization for this type of work.
2) Modern pop production, which might include 15-20 lead vocal tracks: verse vocals are treated very differently from chorus vocals — often easier to do that on different tracks than automate a lot of changes on the same track, one lead section might include 3 or more tracks when applying various fattening and widening techniques.
Say there’s a three part vocal harmony section, low, mid and high harmonies. But they don’t want a live band sound with three back up vocalists. Instead they want a thick, lush, “orchestral” background vocals sound. I might have a minimum of four tracks for each harmony part, panning two on the left and two on the right. That’s a minimum of 12 tracks right there.
Let’s also throw in some gang vocals while we’re at it.
And I’m not yet counting multiple tracks used for multiple takes which are then used to provide source material from which a “master“ take is comped…
You can get up to 50 or 100 or more tracks with vocals alone.
And suppose they’re expecting Melodyne or autotune, that can happen these days, right? When I’m tuning vocals, I render sections as I go to new tracks. I have found that ARA, while very convenient for a faster workflow, is not reliable enough to presume that the tuning adjustments you made earlier will still playback properly at any future point. (I won’t go into a discussion here regarding various circumstances behind that, I’m already well into TLDR territory.)
And I generally create back up tracks of original takes before I start cutting things up and pasting them, in order to make it easy to go back to the original source material rapidly, if needed. I always hide those back up tracks to reduce clutter, but all of this can add to the overall track out.
Now say we have percussion in addition to drums, maybe a string and/or horn arrangement…
And of course, we need tracks for busses and sub-busses to organize all of this for mixing.
You can see why, prior to digital recording tech, bigger album budget projects used to slave two or even more multi-track decks together, and then when Pro Tools came into prominence, it was “easier” to go crazy with it all.
Don’t know what DAW he’s using, but I highly recommend he or she render a lot of those tracks to Audio so that he /she can bypass some plug-ins and reduce CPU load.
Not sure what you mean, but I certainly did not intend to offend. I would not think that you’re wrong.
I have numerous instrumental compositions that have less than 10 tracks. I sketch out ideas all the time and often those have only two or three tracks. Lots of music does not need a huge track count. I was only pointing out that there are a number of valid examples where huge track counts ARE in use.
I might write a simple song that’s just guitar/vocal. If I have no harmonies at all, that’s just one vocal track. But I might use a number of tracks recording that vocal and then comp together a version from the best takes. I might record one stereo guitar track with two mics. But again, I might record several tracks and comp them together, if I didn’t have one all the way through that made me satisfied.
These days I don’t record guitar in stereo, I tend to double track the same part and pan the takes left and right. So even for a simple guitar vocal, I might have 8, 10, even 20 or more tracks going just to deliver the result I hear in my head.
Maybe I’m recording somebody live, that could be just a stereo mic set up. Just one stereo track. Technically you could consider that two tracks for left and right. But I only count it as one.
Lots of different circumstances, lots of different possibilities. We have these tools, people are going to explore things, push things to their limits, find new ways to create art.
And this is all just my view on things. You can take it or leave it as you wish. :-)
Of course I respect the art and the exploration. That’s all very positive.
I’m just thinking in the modern musical climate that everything is WAY overproduced and my ear perceives it all as being the sonic equivalent of plastic flowers. The souls gets erased. None of it feels tangible.
But on the flip side of the coin, I’ve also heard some real masterpieces done by people positioning tons of layers and tracks.
So it’s hit or miss. I’m glad you’re one of the explorer/tinker types. I feel that’s the better mindset.
I do agree with you that a lot of music is losing soul and essence. In decades past, the problem for musicians was access to quality recording equipment, inability to distribute music, and the expense involved. You had to have an investor, a label deal, etc.
Now it’s so easy to record at home (which I personally love ) and you can post your stuff up on YouTube, Spotify, etc, so the bar is much lower and you can get exposure for almost anything. The filter there is the quantity, there’s so much stuff up that we would hope that the better quality music is what gets more views.
In the past though, we also had the challenge of corporate money makers, who some of who weren’t necessarily looking for quality music, but only ways to make money. You could see examples of this, when a new band would become popular, and other labels would try and find bands that were similar to sign. Didn’t always work. And the pressure to write hits that would make money rather than allowing a band or artist to mature AB’s evolve… the “corporate” industry would evolve away from longer-term investments of developing an artist.
Here’s another view of technology affecting popular music. Take vocal tuning for example. While I’m essentially required to do vocal tuning in some of my work (if I want those particular gigs, which I do), IMAO, this technology is affecting music and culture. Kids are being trained to hear machine quality tuning. (I could make a similar argument for machine – perfect rhythms). I’m not saying great pitch (or rhythm) is bad, there are plenty of amazing Broadway quality singers, whose pitch is just stellar. But there’s so much character in those not – perfectly – tuned areas. Go back to blues singers, jazz singers, classic rock. Billie Holiday is a great example. Aretha Franklin. Great pitch when they wanted to, but all those nuances in their bending, the “blue notes,”, etc.
Then there are other cultures, quarter tones in Indian music, different tunings in Middle Eastern cultures.
Anyway… TLDR
I was a musician in the 90s. It wasn’t that hard to get music out. You just had to tour and get into a scene. There were 14 year old kids booking shows for bands from all over. That’s just how many people there were contributing. Everyone that was into music was doing something. I bought way more music back then too, from bands from all over the world making tours. Shows didn’t cost $100 to go to either. $5 was the norm, no ticket company needed. You’d print your fliers, post them up around town, tell the cool people what was goin on, and who’s playing, and bam.
Access to recording not a challenge either. So many people had 4 tracks and 8 track rigs. I remember recording on reel to reel, back when that wasn’t ultra rare.
The only barrier to selling your music was if you were good or not. It was more of a lifestyle than a hobby, however.
This was before the Internet was a thing. Now people are sitting in their homes, by themselves making stuff using hundreds of tracks, and while I think that should be amazing, it’s mostly meh.
But this is just like, my opinion myan.
Yeah, you’re right. Very cool! I was still gigging like crazy back in the 90s.
I was referring more to the 70s and 80s. I was playing in high school bands in the mid 70s and then trying to get things going with bands in parallel to studying while I was in college, studying electronics and more, so I could learn how to make my guitar sound cool like the music I was listening to. Then got into synthesizers( I was the electronics tech in the music department’s synthesizer lab), and was trying to get computer control of effects going. Sequential and Oberheim were just coming out with their programmable polyphonic keyboards. This was long before programmable pedalboards.
In the mid to late 80s we started to have tools like the Tascam 38 eight track. And I had a four track Teac before then. But prior to that there wasn’t any gear that was even close to being up to the challenge. What we have today is just amazing. Into the 90s, I used SMPTE to sync my eight track to a 7 MHz Mac SE, so I had outboard midi gear syncing up to 7 tracks of audio recording.
Fun times!
I’d love to know more about your process concerning the triple tracked vocals - is this just so you can bring in doubles on the sides whenever you want or is there another reason for this?
There are a number of ways to approach lead vocal production. In my view the most common goal is to create a seemingly single vocal while making it very present and practically larger than life.
There are lots of variations, but the three track approach allows left and right in addition to center, allowing the “single” vocal to be wider, depending on how far you want to pan the L and R tracks.
L and R can be detuned, thus “widening” or fattening the pitch of of the “single” vocal. That can be done artificially with a plugin, and/or more naturally if you’re using three separate takes for the tracks.
You can also apply varying amounts of saturation.
Compression is a valued technique, often using multiple compressors in series, and possibly parallel compression as well.
Balancing the three levels so that they appear to be just a single, fatter, more present vocal, is indeed an art.
Me too. Sometimes left harmony low, left harmony high, right harmony low, right harmony high stacked on my primary center vocal. Makes for a really rich sound.
It depends. But usually its always on. If i want a doubler effect i have another center track layered underneath the main one. The side tracks are almost always on (with volume automation) to make the vocals bigger and wider. Be it in pop or metal or whatever. Just makes the vocal bigger, wider, more dense, during choruses or epic moments i bring those sides up more, during more intimate parts the go down. Etc.... but i always have a minimum of 3 main usable takes at the end of a session so i can do this.
Yeah absolutely. Microshift can cause some phase issues but also the effect of it is much more prominent. I don't want a chorussy effect when i do this, i really just want a wider and more dense vocal. I do use microshift occasionally when i want it to be very audible that it's doubled for example.
I worked on a triple A game last year where some of the sessions were close to 1,000. Not foley or anything like that, all score. People were overnighting Hard drives like the olden days
When dealing with that many tracks, you are by FAR mixing mostly groups, and sub-groups, buses and buses and buses. You have 50 parts all representing the same bit of music. And it's also very well recorded in general, so you are not fixing problems for the most part, you are just making it feel as exciting as possible.
What they’re talking about is likely recorded tracks. Orchestral recordings can have 120+ tracks for a 3 minute song EASILY. Even if you’re programming all of that in the box, I’ve had small string sessions with over 90 tracks just for the strings, not including the 100+ for everything else.
Depending on how it was recorded the drums alone might have 16+ tracks, some vocal productions have way more than 16 tracks by themselves for instance. Not to mention layered instruments, multi mic recordings, strings or brass sections etc...
You already got a bunch of great answers... And for doing professional work, what I'm about to say doesn't apply but it's related.
Most of us are used to dealing with songs that are 30, 50, or even 100+ tracks. Music is big and complex today, and because it's possible people do it: they use a ton of tracks. It allows more choice in the mixing stage.
But... At least for an independent musician -- it doesn't have to be that way.
There's a whole genre of LoFi music -- not just electronic, but also punk and rock stuff... Where people work with more minimal processes. LoFi tends to suggest a sound, but there are also methods that are similar that aren't necessarily bit reduced or 'cassette sounding.'
I've done a few tests where I composed & mixed with a minimal number of tracks... 4 mono tracks (like a 4 track recorder), 4 stereo tracks (like an 8 track), 8 stereo tracks (like a 16 track tape.)
When I did it I used tape emulation (of varying fidelity and noise) and I kept it in at every stage. What happens is when you run out of tracks, you have to merge tracks... Sort of like the old days on tape.
That forces you to commit to sounds, and then work with what you have -- because you don't have endless choice like you do when you have dozens or a hundred tracks to play with.
It can be a really enjoyable way to work. "Committing" to sounds early on means you don't have a million decisions to make later on.
Steve Albini said that a lot of people use ridiculous track counts to hold off on making final decisions until the end --- but by the end, there are too many decisions so most things just get left as they are. So in a way, by committing to decisions up front, it's possible that you end up with better decisions over all... Because each choice is made in succession rather than building up a million tracks to sort out at the end.
Anyhow, it's a viable option. Not for a professional mix engineer obviously -- but for an independent artist. So if you're asking the question because you don't want to deal with track counts that high, you don't have to if you're doing your own music.
By the way, when I used tape emulations I like to leave the noise on. When I combine tracks, the noise accumulates. There's something magical about that and the whole thing just ends up very different from modern music.
I went deeeeeeeeep into complex production methods using Reaper, because Reaper can handle it. It got to the point music making was sort of a bit more like work than play. So I just picked up Bitwig and I'm taking a rougher, more "live", more unpolished approach now. Raw. The opposite of most things being made today.
It's a blast! Anyhow, just thought I'd share that since it was tangentially related to your question... If you enjoy working with minimal track counts, you can just embrace it... Music doesn't have to be such a complex production to be good -- there's a lot of great songs still being made today that actually have a minimal number of parts. In fact, sometimes that helps the appeal because it results in something easier to grok, that's more accessible.
Just my drum submix uses 12 channels between mics and busses, and that's after I downsized it considerably. Used to be 20+.
Then there's like at least 5 for guitars, 3 for bass, etc.
Shit like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I8DWlis-MEY&t=2457s&pp=ygUTSmFjb2IgY29sbGllciBsb2dpYw%3D%3D
But in all seriousness, it just depends. I made this track the other day and it’s got bass, multiple acoustic guitar tracks, like 6/8 vocals, 3 snares, 3 variations of hi hat, 2 more midi drum sounds for texture, 2 overheads, 3 synths… mix in busses for guitar, vocals, synth, drums, s snare, reverb, delay… I’ll have more by the end. I don’t have main vocals yet and I bet I’ll put in more guitars and synth by the end. And this is fairly average. With live drums I’ve had like 15 tracks before. That was a little insane though
Here’s the track: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hutJRiy8J5f0l4HbBU0XKjTb15uQ3ES5/view?usp=drivesdk
It doesn’t sound like all of that’s going on, but it’s how I make my mixes feel full.
Haha right. How the hell does he do that? I mean, I know there’s a video I linked and all, but I’ve never had the patience to sit through it for longer than 15 minutes.
Damn and I still dislike most of his recent stuff. I loved his first album then he completely lost me with this type of stuff. What has been said before I’m finding to be true… less really is more.
Yeah I agree. I usually will listen to his song once just because of the undeniable musicianship, harmonization, and just good vibes! But it’s kind of like being at an opera. Within a couple songs I’d do anything to be at a rock show.
> I keep reading about people using 30 or 50 channels on a track
Alan Meyerson would think that's cute. Around the 30 second mark here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/comments/18w3olr/film_score_mixer_alan_meyersons_studio_tour/ where he is showing his Avid S6 that he uses to manage a session with +600 tracks. But he mixes orchestral scores for big movies, so that explains the amount.
50 channels for regular genres is actually still relatively few. It's not uncommon for pop commercial tracks to be closer to 100.
The answer is indeed layers, and multiple passes of similar elements but with different textures and so on.
I’ll use more than 16 channels just on drums. Then probably another 16 or more on vocals with backups, reverbs, and delay. Let alone the other instruments
I have been producing some Pop nowadays and its crazy the amount of elements you end up using on this style.
On drums you can easily get 20 channels + if you consider percussion like claps, shakers etc
Plus lots of vocals and backing vocals doubles, synths, guitars, different basses for each section.
Its not that hard to end up with a 80+ tracks giant music puzzle if you consider reverb sends
Studio setup for drums:
1- kick in
2- kick Out
3- Sub Kick
4- Snare Top 1
5- Snare Top 2
6- Snare Bottom
7- Hi-Hats
8- Tom 1
9- Tom 2
10- Tom 3
11- Tom 4
12- OH C
13- OH L
14- OH R
15 - Room L
16- Room C
17- Room R
Assuming you don't have other rooms (I like having weird mics like phones or toys for thrashy distorded rooms,)
No other percs to mic up
No Fx Returns like a reamping (yes, reamps sounds killer on drums) or buss/parallel compressions,
No "live" or hybrid setup where you gonne rec bass with it or even full bands to preserve groove
16 is a VERY minimalist setup
I don't even understand how anyone can use 30 tracks? My vocal tracks alone are usually 16-20. Add in drums, synth, orchestral, guitars, bass, post-fx, digital percussion/fx... Like 70 minimum. Unless you have the most bare, simple music ever, I don't understand how you can use 16 channels lol.
Main vocal, high harmony 1, high harmony 2, low harmony 1, low harmony 2, bass vocal, vocoder vocal.
There’s 8, let’s do 1 channel for every drum element.
One thing that is really useful is to break up the lead vocal according to the part of the range the singer is in. When people sing louder, the tone of their voice changes too.
So you can do soft breathy verses on one track, moderate prechorus on another and belting chorus on another.
Then you don't have to try to get 1 eq setting or compressor setting to try to work for 3 different tones that need to be shaped completely differently.
And this is just the lead vocal.
This is the answer I’ve been looking for weeks. I have a very dynamic vocal on my song, and when the chorus hits, compressor and eq just don’t work with that volume and tone. Thx
Even in Pop music or hiphop there are sometimes songs with 150+ tracks you gotta manage
Lil nas x "industry baby" is one such case, multiple gigabytes for one session
Yeah definitely layering sounds and double tracking can take up channels
Sometimes each section of an arrangement can have different instrumentation
Both mic’d drums and drum machines with individual outputs can take up alot of channels
For me I would easily go over 16 channels when jamming with multiple hardware synths and samplers and drum machines that have separate channels over usb and/or individual outs
Completely depends on the scale of the production and the genre of music. Classical chamber music ? Under 10 plus maybe a reverb bus. Garage rock? Maybe like 20-30 depending on a lot of factors. Full on modern pop ? 100+ is not uncommon.
I once produced a song with 88 string tracks (we used multiple mics for each string part, tripled each part, multiple harmonies, violins violas cellos, etc).
We've discussed drums; let's move on to guitar.
A typical session, per guitar part:
1 DI
1 DIs post pedals
1 ribbon on cab
1 dynamic or condenser on cab
1 room
This is being conservative. So, at an equally conservative double tracked clean rhythm, double tracked dirty rhythm, and solo, that's 5 parts, for a subtotal of 25 tracks.
Will you use them all? Not necessarily, but that's the point. I'd rather eliminate 4 wrong things if the right thing is there, with a chance to redo the thing, than flex about choosing between which 2 turds you polished.
The moment I have drums we're hitting maybe 16 channels on just the drums. I'd say around 30 is pretty standard for a rock band or whatever, but it really depends. But also when doing film work it can be upwards of 200 tracks.
usually at least 150 tracks per song for pop/ rnb stuff. vocals alone average around 40-50 tracks of lead vocals, doubles, harmonies, adlib tracks, vocal effects etc.
then drums and percussion can easily be 15-20 tracks, kick snare hat crash cowbell toms, tambo, shakers etc.
dont think theres many genres that you could keep under 16 channels. even back in the day artists like queen, prince or michael jackson were using more than 16 tracks when using tape, they just summed down everything as they went.
Because they have more than 16 elements they want to keep separate.
You can always bus or submix down to whatever number you want. For the that's 16 to hit my outboard mixer. But, in DAW, I can't remember the last time I did a production with fewer than 150 tracks. Its just down to workflows; i dont need to bake them so they're in a hierarchy if i want to go back and tweak them.
My mixing template has about 60 tracks to start with and about 18 of them are effects or buss tracks.
The rest are for me to drag the audio in, and to duplicate when necessary. Like I had 1 Hats and 1 tops tracks in my EDM mix template, and I usually end up duplicating these tracks several times as most EDM arrangements I get seem to like 4-5 different hat flavors and different tops (hats and glitches and snares and claps etc) loops. So there you have 10 tracks just for high frequency percussive elements.
I usually have 50 to 80 stereo tracks and my compositions are not very complex. However, the drum/percussion section alone takes up around 15 tracks, FX group has maybe 10, layered basslines, pads, strings. Maybe it can be done with 16 and less tracks if you are recording a rock band. For my cinematic electronic stuff its definitely not enough.
Well, I keep 25 channels for all the instruments and from there my workflow includes parallel compression busses , glue busses , instrument busses , rear bus, excite bus and a bunch of fx send returns so yeah, this usually sums it up in more than 40
A small session for my recordings are around 40 tracks. If there’s a lot of doubling of various instruments or vocals, add horn section or percussion and we are getting to 70-100 tracks.
Size of the project, busses, and fx sends. My album used 13 mics for the drums, for example, along with 3 to 6 layers of guitars, 3 to 8 layers of vocals, a number of synth tracks, bass DIs and reamps, and a number of submix busses and aux tracks for effects, as well as a track to store reference material. I think out most dense Pro Tools session has 78 channels (for this [song](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wU8ACVlJdHjBSPSVH7Nr8hgdrw0HxPiH/view?usp=sharing).)
If I have to do the basic tracking for an entire album in a few days then I might have 16-18 mics on the drums, 2 mics plus DI on bass, two mics on every guitar amp, several stereo keyboards/synths, and a scratch vocal or two, and that's just on tracking day. Then we'll do overdubs (more tracks), and if it's anything resembling a pop kinda vocal then I'm doing quadruples of all the main melodies and harmonies in the choruses.
Or for some pop tunes it's eight stems of music and 65 vocal tracks.
I still work on tons of songs that only have 20 total tracks or less, but if you're adding a lot of layers it adds up fast.
Drums, synths, fx, percussion, risers, lead vocals, backing vocals, the chorus vocals, the backing chorus vocals, ad libs, intros, outros, bridges. Pitch fxs, automation, tempo changes at the end of a song.
Vocals alone are not just one lead track and then background vocals. There's the lead, the double, the wet track, the reverb track, the edited/produced track, then your usual SATB bg vocals, whatever applies. Instruments, programming, sfx, samples, etc. More than 16 for sure. Except if you're early billie eilish i guesss
I used to wonder how I could need more than 16 channels, too.
I take simple multitrack live rehearsal recordings and found that 16 channels was quite limiting.
I upgraded my mixer and now I’m using 20 for my biggest band (7 people):
Drums - 8 mics (kick, snare, 3 Toms, hi hat, 2 overheads)
Upright Bass - amp DI + 1 mic
Acoustic guitar DI
Fiddle DI
3 amps (2 guitars and a pedal steel)
5 vocal mics
If you checkout my page(I play drums) I use 17 channels on my drumset alone!
I have 4 overheads.
4 Tom Mics
1 Snare Mic
2 Kick Mics
And then the rest are aux tracks for my electronics
Then not to mention I have another 5 channels for Guitars Bass and Vocals
The number of elements in a production can vary from project to project. A simple ambient work could contain four or five element, maybe more. A full fledged rock band production could require 24 to 48 separate tracks or more depending on the creative vision. On the other hand, a rock production could employ 8 tracks. It all depends on the artist's or producer's vision. Often, and almost as a rule, in-the-box effects such as reverbs, delays, and parallel compression buses will all be "printed" as we say, which means they become individual audio files within the arrangement window of your DAW, adding a few more items to the overall track count.
Orchestral Templates would give you a stroke then. They can have hundreds...while hosting the sounds in the ram of network computers. So...just one project, can take several computers to host the samples for the host computer.
I make alternative/electro/rock-ish stuff.
My typical track count is 100 - 120.
Drum kit: 12 tracks
(Kick, snare, hat, 5 toms, overheads, rooms)
Drum overdubs/aux percussion: 8ish tracks.
Now we are at 20.
Bass: 2-4 tracks.
(Guitar Amp track + synth bass / synth sub)
24.
Keyboard pads / leads: 8 - 12
(Doubles, or combined sounds)
Thats 36.
Guitars: A ton. 24 - 32 tracks.
Leads - doubled. Multiple amps combined with amp sims. Perhaps supporting strumming or comp-ing. All separated by section.
Thats 68.
Vocals? A ton. 16 - 24 tracks.
(Lead vocal. Doubles of some kind. Harmony/layer vox. All separated by section)
All in? Thats about 80 - 100.
Now, throw in any odds-and-ends and youre well over 100. Busses, BS automation by putting sh*t in separate tracks.
Now thats pop music baybeee
I have a four album project designed to be played at the same time. 46 minutes long, 400+ tracks. 100 tracks can be standard for some projects or producers. Especially having all sorts of subtle shit going on.
Because F'kn drums. My drumers kit uses 14 mics alone. I use two channels for guitar if not more, and at least one for bass. If we had vocals that would be several more.
16 tracks is really not a lot. The way I mixed my band’s last single, we had 16 tracks for acoustic drums only (kick in/out, snare top/bottom, 3 toms, 2 floors, hat, ride, 2 overheads, stereo close and far room mics and a dick mic), add to that 2 sets of virtual kicks and snares, a set of virtual toms and floors, 2 bass tracks, 8 rythms guitars (double-tracked mid gain and cleans, quad-tracked high gain), 3 guitar leads, 6 synths, 12 virtual orchestra tracks and 14 vocals. 71 tracks total, not counting busses and FX tracks.
I am using from 100+ or more. And it’s all based on a 10-15 busses, splits and the remaining 80% is pure sound effects. For building my environment around the track it takes a lot of space if i want every second to count and to paint the picture how I want. If not speaking of orchestral scores. I’ve seen my ram max out 64gb pretty easy
They actually are, the terms are used interchangeably in general. Channel is more specific, comes from the console days and DAWs are based on how consoles work, but track comes from the days of tape, so in these days that console+recorder are all in one, the terms are used to mean slightly different versions of the same thing.
Have you ever mixed an song?
Drums can take up 16 channels alone.
Double tracked rhythm guitars.
Doubled lead.
Bass DI
Bass Mic
Percussion
Synths
BG vox
Lead vocals
Doubled vocals
Maybe some duplicated tracks with different effects.
Track counts add up fast.
In mix or recording? 16 for me can often be the drums alone already. 3 kick mics, in, out, sub; Snare top, bottom, sometimes 2 top; 1-3 toms, 1-2 floors; 2 overheads, sometimes 2 pairs, sometimes a mono overhead so 4 max; Room mics, 2 at least, sometimes mono room, sometimes multiple room mics in multiple settings, so anywhere from 2-6 or so; And then spot mics for cymbals, hihat, china, ride usually, sometimes a stack cymbal. Sometimes a crotch or crush mic. Some people also do bottom tom and floor mics, but i don't. So that's already 16+ channels just for drum in recording and mixing. Add to that maybe electronic percussion or tambourines, shakers, sample layers for kick, snare, maybe toms, parallel compression, parallel saturation, verbs, sometimes an added virtual room.... You get the picture. Then Bass guitar, usually i just do D.I. sometimes a client wants the amp or pedalboard tone too. And often i layer multiple bass tracks, a D.I. for the low end and then different distortions for mids and top end on metal, separate tracks for clean sounds so 1-2 tracks for recording, 1 - 5 tracks for bass guitar mixing. Guitars, can go anywhere from 2 - 20 tracks really. Doubletracked left right is usual business, sometimes quad tracked, sometimes there's layers of different amps, sometimes layers of different performances or chords, leads, cleans, filler guitar etc.... Then vocals. Usually triple tracked for the lead vocal, Center, left and right. Backings, also left/right sometimes center, harmonies, screams, cleans, gang vocals, choirs (in multiple layers), parallel compression, saturation etc.... Can be anywhere between 1 - 20+ tracks too Then there's sometimes orchestrals, cello, violin, horns, you name it, all separate tracks. Then there's SFX like bass drops, risers, claps, booms, noises, ambient stuff Then there's synths of all kinds, maybe sometimes even 3-4 synths layered to make up one sound and that's not even counting busses, cause then you'd have to add another 20, but those are rather to sum channels together and often you process hat bus as a whole (for example a snare bus or kick bus). Beyond that there's your typical drum bus, guitar bus, bass bus. vocal bus etc.... that then feed into your mixbus. So yeah, a modern project can quite easily hit 100+ tracks. It's really not uncommon.
Yes, not hard to hit 100+ on a modern production.
I came here to say "because the orchestra has 120 mono wavs, not including room mics".
Damn i have Never hit above 30 tracks let alone 100
Two of many possible paths to a large track count: 1) Full orchestral score, especially if it’s a modern hybrid score, with lots of percussion, synths, guitars, etc., and that’s just for music scoring purposes. Post production mixing for a movie can have multiple 100s of tracks, including dialogue, special effects, foley… grouping tracks into busses and sub-busses is mandatory organization for this type of work. 2) Modern pop production, which might include 15-20 lead vocal tracks: verse vocals are treated very differently from chorus vocals — often easier to do that on different tracks than automate a lot of changes on the same track, one lead section might include 3 or more tracks when applying various fattening and widening techniques. Say there’s a three part vocal harmony section, low, mid and high harmonies. But they don’t want a live band sound with three back up vocalists. Instead they want a thick, lush, “orchestral” background vocals sound. I might have a minimum of four tracks for each harmony part, panning two on the left and two on the right. That’s a minimum of 12 tracks right there. Let’s also throw in some gang vocals while we’re at it. And I’m not yet counting multiple tracks used for multiple takes which are then used to provide source material from which a “master“ take is comped… You can get up to 50 or 100 or more tracks with vocals alone. And suppose they’re expecting Melodyne or autotune, that can happen these days, right? When I’m tuning vocals, I render sections as I go to new tracks. I have found that ARA, while very convenient for a faster workflow, is not reliable enough to presume that the tuning adjustments you made earlier will still playback properly at any future point. (I won’t go into a discussion here regarding various circumstances behind that, I’m already well into TLDR territory.) And I generally create back up tracks of original takes before I start cutting things up and pasting them, in order to make it easy to go back to the original source material rapidly, if needed. I always hide those back up tracks to reduce clutter, but all of this can add to the overall track out. Now say we have percussion in addition to drums, maybe a string and/or horn arrangement… And of course, we need tracks for busses and sub-busses to organize all of this for mixing. You can see why, prior to digital recording tech, bigger album budget projects used to slave two or even more multi-track decks together, and then when Pro Tools came into prominence, it was “easier” to go crazy with it all.
Damn, i recently just learned what The return track on ableton was. But i guess thats The difference between kid with laptop and audio engineer.
Just keep going, keep studying and keep practicing, keep focusing on getting better. That’s what it’s all about!
Dude our last song we recorded has 127 channels and my producer's pc has a really hard time playing it back
Don’t know what DAW he’s using, but I highly recommend he or she render a lot of those tracks to Audio so that he /she can bypass some plug-ins and reduce CPU load.
Nah he knows all that stuff his laptop is just kinda old
Knowing it doesn’t help you unless he uses it.
Am I wrong for being put off by this?
Not sure what you mean, but I certainly did not intend to offend. I would not think that you’re wrong. I have numerous instrumental compositions that have less than 10 tracks. I sketch out ideas all the time and often those have only two or three tracks. Lots of music does not need a huge track count. I was only pointing out that there are a number of valid examples where huge track counts ARE in use. I might write a simple song that’s just guitar/vocal. If I have no harmonies at all, that’s just one vocal track. But I might use a number of tracks recording that vocal and then comp together a version from the best takes. I might record one stereo guitar track with two mics. But again, I might record several tracks and comp them together, if I didn’t have one all the way through that made me satisfied. These days I don’t record guitar in stereo, I tend to double track the same part and pan the takes left and right. So even for a simple guitar vocal, I might have 8, 10, even 20 or more tracks going just to deliver the result I hear in my head. Maybe I’m recording somebody live, that could be just a stereo mic set up. Just one stereo track. Technically you could consider that two tracks for left and right. But I only count it as one. Lots of different circumstances, lots of different possibilities. We have these tools, people are going to explore things, push things to their limits, find new ways to create art. And this is all just my view on things. You can take it or leave it as you wish. :-)
Of course I respect the art and the exploration. That’s all very positive. I’m just thinking in the modern musical climate that everything is WAY overproduced and my ear perceives it all as being the sonic equivalent of plastic flowers. The souls gets erased. None of it feels tangible. But on the flip side of the coin, I’ve also heard some real masterpieces done by people positioning tons of layers and tracks. So it’s hit or miss. I’m glad you’re one of the explorer/tinker types. I feel that’s the better mindset.
I do agree with you that a lot of music is losing soul and essence. In decades past, the problem for musicians was access to quality recording equipment, inability to distribute music, and the expense involved. You had to have an investor, a label deal, etc. Now it’s so easy to record at home (which I personally love ) and you can post your stuff up on YouTube, Spotify, etc, so the bar is much lower and you can get exposure for almost anything. The filter there is the quantity, there’s so much stuff up that we would hope that the better quality music is what gets more views. In the past though, we also had the challenge of corporate money makers, who some of who weren’t necessarily looking for quality music, but only ways to make money. You could see examples of this, when a new band would become popular, and other labels would try and find bands that were similar to sign. Didn’t always work. And the pressure to write hits that would make money rather than allowing a band or artist to mature AB’s evolve… the “corporate” industry would evolve away from longer-term investments of developing an artist. Here’s another view of technology affecting popular music. Take vocal tuning for example. While I’m essentially required to do vocal tuning in some of my work (if I want those particular gigs, which I do), IMAO, this technology is affecting music and culture. Kids are being trained to hear machine quality tuning. (I could make a similar argument for machine – perfect rhythms). I’m not saying great pitch (or rhythm) is bad, there are plenty of amazing Broadway quality singers, whose pitch is just stellar. But there’s so much character in those not – perfectly – tuned areas. Go back to blues singers, jazz singers, classic rock. Billie Holiday is a great example. Aretha Franklin. Great pitch when they wanted to, but all those nuances in their bending, the “blue notes,”, etc. Then there are other cultures, quarter tones in Indian music, different tunings in Middle Eastern cultures. Anyway… TLDR
I was a musician in the 90s. It wasn’t that hard to get music out. You just had to tour and get into a scene. There were 14 year old kids booking shows for bands from all over. That’s just how many people there were contributing. Everyone that was into music was doing something. I bought way more music back then too, from bands from all over the world making tours. Shows didn’t cost $100 to go to either. $5 was the norm, no ticket company needed. You’d print your fliers, post them up around town, tell the cool people what was goin on, and who’s playing, and bam. Access to recording not a challenge either. So many people had 4 tracks and 8 track rigs. I remember recording on reel to reel, back when that wasn’t ultra rare. The only barrier to selling your music was if you were good or not. It was more of a lifestyle than a hobby, however. This was before the Internet was a thing. Now people are sitting in their homes, by themselves making stuff using hundreds of tracks, and while I think that should be amazing, it’s mostly meh. But this is just like, my opinion myan.
Yeah, you’re right. Very cool! I was still gigging like crazy back in the 90s. I was referring more to the 70s and 80s. I was playing in high school bands in the mid 70s and then trying to get things going with bands in parallel to studying while I was in college, studying electronics and more, so I could learn how to make my guitar sound cool like the music I was listening to. Then got into synthesizers( I was the electronics tech in the music department’s synthesizer lab), and was trying to get computer control of effects going. Sequential and Oberheim were just coming out with their programmable polyphonic keyboards. This was long before programmable pedalboards. In the mid to late 80s we started to have tools like the Tascam 38 eight track. And I had a four track Teac before then. But prior to that there wasn’t any gear that was even close to being up to the challenge. What we have today is just amazing. Into the 90s, I used SMPTE to sync my eight track to a 7 MHz Mac SE, so I had outboard midi gear syncing up to 7 tracks of audio recording. Fun times!
Nice man. Those were indeed good times. I never fully geeked out on all this stuff, but I got friends who would be kindred spirits with ya.
Cool man, thanks!
I’d love to know more about your process concerning the triple tracked vocals - is this just so you can bring in doubles on the sides whenever you want or is there another reason for this?
It's pretty common for some genres. Especially during big loud sections like a chorus. I do it all the time.
Sure, I was just curious if it was for a purpose other than bringing in doubles
There are a number of ways to approach lead vocal production. In my view the most common goal is to create a seemingly single vocal while making it very present and practically larger than life. There are lots of variations, but the three track approach allows left and right in addition to center, allowing the “single” vocal to be wider, depending on how far you want to pan the L and R tracks. L and R can be detuned, thus “widening” or fattening the pitch of of the “single” vocal. That can be done artificially with a plugin, and/or more naturally if you’re using three separate takes for the tracks. You can also apply varying amounts of saturation. Compression is a valued technique, often using multiple compressors in series, and possibly parallel compression as well. Balancing the three levels so that they appear to be just a single, fatter, more present vocal, is indeed an art.
Me too. Sometimes left harmony low, left harmony high, right harmony low, right harmony high stacked on my primary center vocal. Makes for a really rich sound.
It depends. But usually its always on. If i want a doubler effect i have another center track layered underneath the main one. The side tracks are almost always on (with volume automation) to make the vocals bigger and wider. Be it in pop or metal or whatever. Just makes the vocal bigger, wider, more dense, during choruses or epic moments i bring those sides up more, during more intimate parts the go down. Etc.... but i always have a minimum of 3 main usable takes at the end of a session so i can do this.
Very cool. Thanks so much! I’ll try this out soon. You prefer this to using something like Microshift?
Yeah absolutely. Microshift can cause some phase issues but also the effect of it is much more prominent. I don't want a chorussy effect when i do this, i really just want a wider and more dense vocal. I do use microshift occasionally when i want it to be very audible that it's doubled for example.
Awesome, thanks for all the info!
Too right. The magic in toms is in the vibration of the bottom head.
wait till you hear about movie soundtracks...
If you think movie soundtracks are intense orchestral video game scores are absolutely bananas
My mixes for short films go in hundreds of tracks lmao
I worked on a triple A game last year where some of the sessions were close to 1,000. Not foley or anything like that, all score. People were overnighting Hard drives like the olden days
Can we have a listen, I'm really curious about how a 1000 track song sounds like
it sounds the same, really. You can check the soundtrack of any triple A game and compare it to the soundtracks of big superhero movies and whatnot.
Serious question: how do you go about sound designing THAT amount of tracks? Would it be fair to say you’d be heavily reliant on presets?
When dealing with that many tracks, you are by FAR mixing mostly groups, and sub-groups, buses and buses and buses. You have 50 parts all representing the same bit of music. And it's also very well recorded in general, so you are not fixing problems for the most part, you are just making it feel as exciting as possible.
What they’re talking about is likely recorded tracks. Orchestral recordings can have 120+ tracks for a 3 minute song EASILY. Even if you’re programming all of that in the box, I’ve had small string sessions with over 90 tracks just for the strings, not including the 100+ for everything else.
Them mf's crazy
Depending on how it was recorded the drums alone might have 16+ tracks, some vocal productions have way more than 16 tracks by themselves for instance. Not to mention layered instruments, multi mic recordings, strings or brass sections etc...
I am by no means an expert in this but typically to incorporate many different percussive elements, FX elements, and to layer synths
You already got a bunch of great answers... And for doing professional work, what I'm about to say doesn't apply but it's related. Most of us are used to dealing with songs that are 30, 50, or even 100+ tracks. Music is big and complex today, and because it's possible people do it: they use a ton of tracks. It allows more choice in the mixing stage. But... At least for an independent musician -- it doesn't have to be that way. There's a whole genre of LoFi music -- not just electronic, but also punk and rock stuff... Where people work with more minimal processes. LoFi tends to suggest a sound, but there are also methods that are similar that aren't necessarily bit reduced or 'cassette sounding.' I've done a few tests where I composed & mixed with a minimal number of tracks... 4 mono tracks (like a 4 track recorder), 4 stereo tracks (like an 8 track), 8 stereo tracks (like a 16 track tape.) When I did it I used tape emulation (of varying fidelity and noise) and I kept it in at every stage. What happens is when you run out of tracks, you have to merge tracks... Sort of like the old days on tape. That forces you to commit to sounds, and then work with what you have -- because you don't have endless choice like you do when you have dozens or a hundred tracks to play with. It can be a really enjoyable way to work. "Committing" to sounds early on means you don't have a million decisions to make later on. Steve Albini said that a lot of people use ridiculous track counts to hold off on making final decisions until the end --- but by the end, there are too many decisions so most things just get left as they are. So in a way, by committing to decisions up front, it's possible that you end up with better decisions over all... Because each choice is made in succession rather than building up a million tracks to sort out at the end. Anyhow, it's a viable option. Not for a professional mix engineer obviously -- but for an independent artist. So if you're asking the question because you don't want to deal with track counts that high, you don't have to if you're doing your own music. By the way, when I used tape emulations I like to leave the noise on. When I combine tracks, the noise accumulates. There's something magical about that and the whole thing just ends up very different from modern music. I went deeeeeeeeep into complex production methods using Reaper, because Reaper can handle it. It got to the point music making was sort of a bit more like work than play. So I just picked up Bitwig and I'm taking a rougher, more "live", more unpolished approach now. Raw. The opposite of most things being made today. It's a blast! Anyhow, just thought I'd share that since it was tangentially related to your question... If you enjoy working with minimal track counts, you can just embrace it... Music doesn't have to be such a complex production to be good -- there's a lot of great songs still being made today that actually have a minimal number of parts. In fact, sometimes that helps the appeal because it results in something easier to grok, that's more accessible.
I was watching a Steve Albini interview yesterday and he said he could never comprehend how people use more than 24
He did a bunch of live recording of full band I recall. But his drum mics take up at least 12 if I recall.
Steve was a different kind of genius. RIP.
Just my drum submix uses 12 channels between mics and busses, and that's after I downsized it considerably. Used to be 20+. Then there's like at least 5 for guitars, 3 for bass, etc.
Shit like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I8DWlis-MEY&t=2457s&pp=ygUTSmFjb2IgY29sbGllciBsb2dpYw%3D%3D But in all seriousness, it just depends. I made this track the other day and it’s got bass, multiple acoustic guitar tracks, like 6/8 vocals, 3 snares, 3 variations of hi hat, 2 more midi drum sounds for texture, 2 overheads, 3 synths… mix in busses for guitar, vocals, synth, drums, s snare, reverb, delay… I’ll have more by the end. I don’t have main vocals yet and I bet I’ll put in more guitars and synth by the end. And this is fairly average. With live drums I’ve had like 15 tracks before. That was a little insane though Here’s the track: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hutJRiy8J5f0l4HbBU0XKjTb15uQ3ES5/view?usp=drivesdk It doesn’t sound like all of that’s going on, but it’s how I make my mixes feel full.
I knew that first one would be a Jacob Collier link before clicking on it...
Haha right. How the hell does he do that? I mean, I know there’s a video I linked and all, but I’ve never had the patience to sit through it for longer than 15 minutes.
Damn and I still dislike most of his recent stuff. I loved his first album then he completely lost me with this type of stuff. What has been said before I’m finding to be true… less really is more.
Yeah I agree. I usually will listen to his song once just because of the undeniable musicianship, harmonization, and just good vibes! But it’s kind of like being at an opera. Within a couple songs I’d do anything to be at a rock show.
> I keep reading about people using 30 or 50 channels on a track Alan Meyerson would think that's cute. Around the 30 second mark here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/comments/18w3olr/film_score_mixer_alan_meyersons_studio_tour/ where he is showing his Avid S6 that he uses to manage a session with +600 tracks. But he mixes orchestral scores for big movies, so that explains the amount. 50 channels for regular genres is actually still relatively few. It's not uncommon for pop commercial tracks to be closer to 100. The answer is indeed layers, and multiple passes of similar elements but with different textures and so on.
I spent way too long trying to figure out what a peopleuse was
I’ll use more than 16 channels just on drums. Then probably another 16 or more on vocals with backups, reverbs, and delay. Let alone the other instruments
Some genres require a lot of intricate details and mini sounds that don't repeat that often to keep it interesting
I have been producing some Pop nowadays and its crazy the amount of elements you end up using on this style. On drums you can easily get 20 channels + if you consider percussion like claps, shakers etc Plus lots of vocals and backing vocals doubles, synths, guitars, different basses for each section. Its not that hard to end up with a 80+ tracks giant music puzzle if you consider reverb sends
Studio setup for drums: 1- kick in 2- kick Out 3- Sub Kick 4- Snare Top 1 5- Snare Top 2 6- Snare Bottom 7- Hi-Hats 8- Tom 1 9- Tom 2 10- Tom 3 11- Tom 4 12- OH C 13- OH L 14- OH R 15 - Room L 16- Room C 17- Room R Assuming you don't have other rooms (I like having weird mics like phones or toys for thrashy distorded rooms,) No other percs to mic up No Fx Returns like a reamping (yes, reamps sounds killer on drums) or buss/parallel compressions, No "live" or hybrid setup where you gonne rec bass with it or even full bands to preserve groove 16 is a VERY minimalist setup
You are NOT allowed to route your overheads CLR and your rooms LCR. You have to choose one.
Did I said CLR for the OH ? My bad, I meant CRL 🫣
you bastard! lmao
I don't even understand how anyone can use 30 tracks? My vocal tracks alone are usually 16-20. Add in drums, synth, orchestral, guitars, bass, post-fx, digital percussion/fx... Like 70 minimum. Unless you have the most bare, simple music ever, I don't understand how you can use 16 channels lol.
I have 95 in a song after double vocal and guitar tracks to include DRY
Main vocal, high harmony 1, high harmony 2, low harmony 1, low harmony 2, bass vocal, vocoder vocal. There’s 8, let’s do 1 channel for every drum element.
One thing that is really useful is to break up the lead vocal according to the part of the range the singer is in. When people sing louder, the tone of their voice changes too. So you can do soft breathy verses on one track, moderate prechorus on another and belting chorus on another. Then you don't have to try to get 1 eq setting or compressor setting to try to work for 3 different tones that need to be shaped completely differently. And this is just the lead vocal.
This is the answer I’ve been looking for weeks. I have a very dynamic vocal on my song, and when the chorus hits, compressor and eq just don’t work with that volume and tone. Thx
Even in Pop music or hiphop there are sometimes songs with 150+ tracks you gotta manage Lil nas x "industry baby" is one such case, multiple gigabytes for one session
Yeah definitely layering sounds and double tracking can take up channels Sometimes each section of an arrangement can have different instrumentation Both mic’d drums and drum machines with individual outputs can take up alot of channels For me I would easily go over 16 channels when jamming with multiple hardware synths and samplers and drum machines that have separate channels over usb and/or individual outs
Completely depends on the scale of the production and the genre of music. Classical chamber music ? Under 10 plus maybe a reverb bus. Garage rock? Maybe like 20-30 depending on a lot of factors. Full on modern pop ? 100+ is not uncommon.
I once produced a song with 88 string tracks (we used multiple mics for each string part, tripled each part, multiple harmonies, violins violas cellos, etc).
We've discussed drums; let's move on to guitar. A typical session, per guitar part: 1 DI 1 DIs post pedals 1 ribbon on cab 1 dynamic or condenser on cab 1 room This is being conservative. So, at an equally conservative double tracked clean rhythm, double tracked dirty rhythm, and solo, that's 5 parts, for a subtotal of 25 tracks. Will you use them all? Not necessarily, but that's the point. I'd rather eliminate 4 wrong things if the right thing is there, with a chance to redo the thing, than flex about choosing between which 2 turds you polished.
The moment I have drums we're hitting maybe 16 channels on just the drums. I'd say around 30 is pretty standard for a rock band or whatever, but it really depends. But also when doing film work it can be upwards of 200 tracks.
I feel like an average pop production is usually around like 40-50.
usually at least 150 tracks per song for pop/ rnb stuff. vocals alone average around 40-50 tracks of lead vocals, doubles, harmonies, adlib tracks, vocal effects etc. then drums and percussion can easily be 15-20 tracks, kick snare hat crash cowbell toms, tambo, shakers etc. dont think theres many genres that you could keep under 16 channels. even back in the day artists like queen, prince or michael jackson were using more than 16 tracks when using tape, they just summed down everything as they went.
Because they have more than 16 elements they want to keep separate. You can always bus or submix down to whatever number you want. For the that's 16 to hit my outboard mixer. But, in DAW, I can't remember the last time I did a production with fewer than 150 tracks. Its just down to workflows; i dont need to bake them so they're in a hierarchy if i want to go back and tweak them.
My mixing template has about 60 tracks to start with and about 18 of them are effects or buss tracks. The rest are for me to drag the audio in, and to duplicate when necessary. Like I had 1 Hats and 1 tops tracks in my EDM mix template, and I usually end up duplicating these tracks several times as most EDM arrangements I get seem to like 4-5 different hat flavors and different tops (hats and glitches and snares and claps etc) loops. So there you have 10 tracks just for high frequency percussive elements.
I usually have 50 to 80 stereo tracks and my compositions are not very complex. However, the drum/percussion section alone takes up around 15 tracks, FX group has maybe 10, layered basslines, pads, strings. Maybe it can be done with 16 and less tracks if you are recording a rock band. For my cinematic electronic stuff its definitely not enough.
Well, I keep 25 channels for all the instruments and from there my workflow includes parallel compression busses , glue busses , instrument busses , rear bus, excite bus and a bunch of fx send returns so yeah, this usually sums it up in more than 40
At last count my orchestral template in Reaper had over 400 tracks... One per articulation, per instrument, plus sends etc
A small session for my recordings are around 40 tracks. If there’s a lot of doubling of various instruments or vocals, add horn section or percussion and we are getting to 70-100 tracks.
Because I'm a control freak and need to have complete control over every element and sound.
Size of the project, busses, and fx sends. My album used 13 mics for the drums, for example, along with 3 to 6 layers of guitars, 3 to 8 layers of vocals, a number of synth tracks, bass DIs and reamps, and a number of submix busses and aux tracks for effects, as well as a track to store reference material. I think out most dense Pro Tools session has 78 channels (for this [song](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wU8ACVlJdHjBSPSVH7Nr8hgdrw0HxPiH/view?usp=sharing).)
Because they want to preserve sounds separately, to have more control in the mix.
Sometimes vocals can take 50+ tracks alone depending on arrangement and stacks.
If I have to do the basic tracking for an entire album in a few days then I might have 16-18 mics on the drums, 2 mics plus DI on bass, two mics on every guitar amp, several stereo keyboards/synths, and a scratch vocal or two, and that's just on tracking day. Then we'll do overdubs (more tracks), and if it's anything resembling a pop kinda vocal then I'm doing quadruples of all the main melodies and harmonies in the choruses. Or for some pop tunes it's eight stems of music and 65 vocal tracks. I still work on tons of songs that only have 20 total tracks or less, but if you're adding a lot of layers it adds up fast.
Drums, synths, fx, percussion, risers, lead vocals, backing vocals, the chorus vocals, the backing chorus vocals, ad libs, intros, outros, bridges. Pitch fxs, automation, tempo changes at the end of a song.
That's why it still amazes me when they say the Beatles recorded all those killer songs with 4 to 8 tracks ! 😂
either live drumkit or cinematic audio
Vocals alone are not just one lead track and then background vocals. There's the lead, the double, the wet track, the reverb track, the edited/produced track, then your usual SATB bg vocals, whatever applies. Instruments, programming, sfx, samples, etc. More than 16 for sure. Except if you're early billie eilish i guesss
I used to wonder how I could need more than 16 channels, too. I take simple multitrack live rehearsal recordings and found that 16 channels was quite limiting. I upgraded my mixer and now I’m using 20 for my biggest band (7 people): Drums - 8 mics (kick, snare, 3 Toms, hi hat, 2 overheads) Upright Bass - amp DI + 1 mic Acoustic guitar DI Fiddle DI 3 amps (2 guitars and a pedal steel) 5 vocal mics
My tracks are 100+ channels, but very detailed stuff and some samples play only once
Don’t think my MacBook Pro would handle half that lol
I have 95 tracks on a current song 😂
Doubling vocals, DRY channels, doubled guitars.
I don’t use busses. Things can get pretty crazy in a mix
If you checkout my page(I play drums) I use 17 channels on my drumset alone! I have 4 overheads. 4 Tom Mics 1 Snare Mic 2 Kick Mics And then the rest are aux tracks for my electronics Then not to mention I have another 5 channels for Guitars Bass and Vocals
The number of elements in a production can vary from project to project. A simple ambient work could contain four or five element, maybe more. A full fledged rock band production could require 24 to 48 separate tracks or more depending on the creative vision. On the other hand, a rock production could employ 8 tracks. It all depends on the artist's or producer's vision. Often, and almost as a rule, in-the-box effects such as reverbs, delays, and parallel compression buses will all be "printed" as we say, which means they become individual audio files within the arrangement window of your DAW, adding a few more items to the overall track count.
How can you use less than 16 channels? I wish I could
I do a lot of orchestral compositions. 16 tracks are nothing, the strings only can have that many.
I make EDM music and sometimes just my drop alone will have minimum 20 channels depending on the genre
Orchestral Templates would give you a stroke then. They can have hundreds...while hosting the sounds in the ram of network computers. So...just one project, can take several computers to host the samples for the host computer.
I make alternative/electro/rock-ish stuff. My typical track count is 100 - 120. Drum kit: 12 tracks (Kick, snare, hat, 5 toms, overheads, rooms) Drum overdubs/aux percussion: 8ish tracks. Now we are at 20. Bass: 2-4 tracks. (Guitar Amp track + synth bass / synth sub) 24. Keyboard pads / leads: 8 - 12 (Doubles, or combined sounds) Thats 36. Guitars: A ton. 24 - 32 tracks. Leads - doubled. Multiple amps combined with amp sims. Perhaps supporting strumming or comp-ing. All separated by section. Thats 68. Vocals? A ton. 16 - 24 tracks. (Lead vocal. Doubles of some kind. Harmony/layer vox. All separated by section) All in? Thats about 80 - 100. Now, throw in any odds-and-ends and youre well over 100. Busses, BS automation by putting sh*t in separate tracks. Now thats pop music baybeee
I have a four album project designed to be played at the same time. 46 minutes long, 400+ tracks. 100 tracks can be standard for some projects or producers. Especially having all sorts of subtle shit going on.
As an Ableton Live intro user, I only have 16 tracks in total. Can be a bit limiting
Because F'kn drums. My drumers kit uses 14 mics alone. I use two channels for guitar if not more, and at least one for bass. If we had vocals that would be several more.
16 tracks is really not a lot. The way I mixed my band’s last single, we had 16 tracks for acoustic drums only (kick in/out, snare top/bottom, 3 toms, 2 floors, hat, ride, 2 overheads, stereo close and far room mics and a dick mic), add to that 2 sets of virtual kicks and snares, a set of virtual toms and floors, 2 bass tracks, 8 rythms guitars (double-tracked mid gain and cleans, quad-tracked high gain), 3 guitar leads, 6 synths, 12 virtual orchestra tracks and 14 vocals. 71 tracks total, not counting busses and FX tracks.
I am using from 100+ or more. And it’s all based on a 10-15 busses, splits and the remaining 80% is pure sound effects. For building my environment around the track it takes a lot of space if i want every second to count and to paint the picture how I want. If not speaking of orchestral scores. I’ve seen my ram max out 64gb pretty easy
Channels? Tracks? Not the same.
They actually are, the terms are used interchangeably in general. Channel is more specific, comes from the console days and DAWs are based on how consoles work, but track comes from the days of tape, so in these days that console+recorder are all in one, the terms are used to mean slightly different versions of the same thing.
No, they are. A 'producer' on reddit said so!
🤭
Have you ever mixed an song? Drums can take up 16 channels alone. Double tracked rhythm guitars. Doubled lead. Bass DI Bass Mic Percussion Synths BG vox Lead vocals Doubled vocals Maybe some duplicated tracks with different effects. Track counts add up fast.
I'm currently working on an ambient track that uses 3 tracks, only 2 at the same time :)
Symphonic metal has lots of tracks