SSL Template

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Lotus Jewel
Posts: 5
Joined: 13 Jan 2018

13 Jan 2018

I thought maybe I would make a template for the few different genres I always find myself playing around in. I wanted to share in hopes maybe it helps someone or someone will comment and it will help me. Either way I figure its a win win. :)

So this is my house template. Theres nothing special here. It may seem complex at first but it really is simple. Let me state that the reason I wanted a template, wasn't to just save time getting to a starting point, or because I generally play with house and breaks and drum and bass, but also, because I wanted to give myself something organized to become more familiar to as time progresses. My ears in particular, have come acustomed to what it needs to sound like in the studio, in order to get that sound I need on a stage or in the car, on ear buds, etc.... This template lets me get a visual basis to become familar with too.

I want enough channles but too many. So I setteled with a 24 channel mixer setup. However, what bugged me was my screen is so wide I had empty slots in my mixer rack. Apparently it took me some time to learn about parallel processing, and it took me some more time to learn which samples I tend to desire parallel processing on... thus came out with adding, 9 more channles to the 24 original channles. this gives me a whopping 33 channels... impressive I thought. Well but what about bus processing? I wanted a controller, for my ssl mixer... and there are few worthy to choose from imo, without having to step outside of Reason and thus a usb controller. I wanted to match the controller channels to replicate the mixer in the software, on my screen... so I picked up three 8 channel usb controllers, each with a master which I do not include in my count but felt it was important to have. Onwards, bus processing. To keep things simple and to the way I produce ideas, I came up with grouping my 33 channels into three different groups, each group of 11 channels being thrown into a bus. adding my channel count from 33 to 36. 36 channels fills out my computer monitor perfectly. I get 8 real audio channels which my controllers have exactly.

This idea I had sprouted from anothers doing who had thier own setup, configured in their own way, who just so happened to share it on a forum like this. Who ever the original template founder is, thanks, and thanks to the artist who shared this idea to me.

I get an awesome layout... and I have three screens, but its a bit wide. 6 ft to be exact measuring the screens width overall, my speaker monitors just sitting outside of that wide span. (the outter limits as well for the dimension of my room!) But it works out okay because I am within the outter limits of the room depth and all that. I do have a smaller mixing studio but it is however at a correct ratio and just on the small size of that graph. I am looking for more ways to improve my workflow so that I can input any sample accouding to genre, and have a place I can start from with all this work done ahead of time. What this lead to though I wasn't aware of. my ears and eyes have come adjusted to better assume the levels of the kick, or snare, the bass, the lead, which I consider the starting points for my workflow and also the loudest, or of those that consider most of the energy acoustically. To keep things simple, I have drum pattern with the nominal adjutments, and an open rack, maybe an instrument or two for ease of brainstorming. Once I start to find things I like, I place them where I want them in accordance with the mixer. Kicks at 01 to the left, the left most group is all drums, the middle group usually considest of bass, the right most group usually gets the melody, or added high hats rythem, sound effects etc, usually taking up the mid or high range.

I use 01, 05, and 08 for parallel processing within each group. These have been saved as mono or with 0 separation. That may change but I found I mostly put the kick bass and melody in first. so thats three 01 channels, then I move on to 05. then, 08... Once I fill in those 9 channels I have almost the idea filled out. The remaining open channels I get to use as fills or more context. Too much of anything is bad, and having enough of what you need is good. I just wonder, after sharing this, what will I change? what will I next realize and impliment next in my workflow design? I can pump out an 8 bar song idea pretty quickly that contains most of the song data... atm I am working on 2 basic song ideas a day with this setup. Once I get the idea in the sequencer window, I save in a file for mixing. I just gain stage, and go thru the mix there, and then redub if any samples need... save the file as a post producion to be mastered... that last phase I don't master, I pre master. I just get the right headroom levels, check my mix again and re dub any tracks that I want to change out. I also compare to the original file to see if I was able to maintain the original emotion from the pre prodcution phase. I have a lot to learn but this recent batch of 5 song ideas i did this week and banging. and they sound good, and they were easy to make and get down in the sequencer to data from the idea in my head. Hope this helps somoene who is learning more and researching and if anyone has any tips for me, Id greatly appreciate them.

cheers

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