# My wasted time (and not) on templates.



## Studio E (Sep 14, 2020)

I recently landed a couple new scoring projects. One of them is potentially a big deal for a little guy like me, so having a few weeks to think about them, I set off on a new (new new or new NEW new) mission to build a template to serve the projects.

I have an older i7 PC running Cubase 10.5. I also have a newer i7 laptop with VE pro. Both have 64 gigs of ram. So I got busy and serious about the whole deal. It had been a long time since I had networked the PCs together, so that took a minute of setup. Once they were talking to each other, I ran VE Pro on both machines and Cubase on the older PC. I wanted the whole thing to be organized from the get-go, so I really thought it out. I also bought the “Template in a Weekend” from Thinkspace. I did learn a few things but most of it was already common knowledge. Regardless, it’s a joy to watch Guy Mitchellmore!

So as I’m loading up the template, in a sensible order, I am shocked by how much I can load. I managed to get Spitfire Symphonic In it’s entirety, and LASS, and then some Albion stuff, and more stuff, and more stuff and more stuff. Eventually I arrived at about 800 midi tracks, going with the one track per articulation for the most part. 

I was so excited to have all this at the ready. I did disable and purge most things, and even made a folder as a quick start, with ensemble instruments, piano, and a percussion kit. I was ready to work fast and in detail, whatever I needed, and I still had room to breathe....sort of. Both machines were idling at 40% CPU +/-, and my memory usage was maybe 50% on the slave machine. Everything was super organized and beautifully color coded. That was one of my favorite things, all the different custom colors I created, morphing from one shade to the next as the tracks scrolled by. It was really easy to find whatever I needed. I loved it

So the same week that I’m basically finished with it, minus a little more balancing, the first project hit. I opened up the template and started work. The first night, all I used was piano, but there was everything else, just waiting for me.

Saturday morning, I got up at like 4:00 am to start working. It’s one of my favorite times. Now it’s time to start orchestrating and find inspiring sounds. I needed some things that weren’t in the template. Some sound design, some ethnic stuff, some pads, etc. As Im jumping around, adding things, everything is feeling a little clunky. Every time I deselect a track I was just auditioning, the sound abruptly cuts off. It feels awkward. I get a few things done music-wise, and start saving. Now saving takes like 15 or 20 seconds. I deal with the clunky behavior, the awkward audio cutting off between selecting tracks, and the long save times, for maybe an hour, and then I have a crash. I never get crashes. I restart, everything works fine, but with the same little issues, and I then I make a command decision. This way of working sucks. I love the idea of having all this firepower, but I can tell that my machine and Cubase don’t like being this stressed and it’s really not worth it to have 800 tracks worth of load going on while using somewhere between 6 and 40 for any given project. 

So having nothing more than a scratch piano track of the entire structure of the piece (it was a 1:15 trailer), I just closed it out, opened a template I already had, which is nothing but a set of colored/labeled Folder and Group tracks with a single piano loaded, and started over. I did leave VE Pro open on the slave, and I did end up using it for about three tracks because those tracks had CPU intensive VI’s on them. Otherwise, I just marveled at the speed and clarity of my machine when I was only using what I needed as I loaded one Instrument track at a time, as needed, on the fly. Loading took a little time, but my main libraries are on SSDs, so at least it’s mitigated somewhat. 

So that’s it. I just don’t think it’s for me, at least not currently. I really disliked the clunky-ness. Once I was down to only what I needed, saves were lightning fast, reloading after shutdown was 10 times faster, etc. having the folders and group/stems already routed and bussed with FX, is all I really needed.

With all this said, I do believe that the time I spent (probably about 60 hours) was not completely wasted. During that time,I got reacquainted with my libraries a LOT. It also made me really work on integrating different libraries with different reverbs, etc. I feel like I learned a lot, and I also created custom colors that will serve me for a long time on all my projects.

The more I do as a film-composer-wanna-be, the more one thing becomes clear, and it’s what I’ve heard from the beginning, and I’ve also thought “yeah right”. That would be to do this your own way. Yes, it’s about composing, but it’s also about your entire approach. It’s interesting to know what other people do, how they write, what libraries they use, but in the end, you really just have to trust that it’s ok to be you in whatever you do, so long as you are happy with the results.


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## dzilizzi (Sep 14, 2020)

I think as an exercise, it is good to learn to make a template with VEP. But really, you kind of have to keep track of what you regularly use and make a template with that, kind of like your template with the piano. Then add the things that work for just that project. Or you have 20 templates, one for each theme type, i.e RomCom, Horror, Action, etc.... I'm thinking they may be different? I don't know, I've only done trailer exercises. 

I do need to learn how to do this though. I got VE Pro and everything. I will check out the Template in a Weekend course. Guy is great! Thanks for the suggestion.


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## pmcrockett (Sep 14, 2020)

I was really pleased with myself when I constructed a full template for Hollywood Strings -- we're talking almost all articulations, all mic positions, level balancing, complicated routing, articulation maps, the whole nine yards. I have RAM enough to easily accommodate it, but it turns out that loading the whole thing produces huge project files, lengthy save times, and sluggish DAW performance. Not a waste of time by any means because it still improves the overall usability of the library, but I'm back to running a reduced subset of the original template and loading the more exotic bits of it only as needed.


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## Al Maurice (Sep 14, 2020)

No effort in life can be seen as futile if there is potentially a learning experience to be had from it.

Currently there seems to be a trend away from the load everything into one template and go method; especially with a move now to single instrument patches, rather than multi-timbral plugins.

I've tried both approaches and have found likewise, there seems to be a threshold when loading everything taxes your available resources. So now I look at each project on a case-by-case basis and move on from there.

Similarly to described above, I also have some basic templates, mostly with the group buses and stems, which include some basic instruments as a starting point for different project types and those seem to work equally as well.


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## Rory (Sep 14, 2020)

This is one of the reasons that I purchased Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra. Jake Jackson's and Christian Henson's template, and the videos that Henson has made on the template and its development over two years, saved me hours and hours


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## labornvain (Sep 14, 2020)

I spent a month building a 2500 track template in Cubase, taking advantage of disabled track feature. I was very excited when I was done and proceeded to start a new project. 

And then I discovered that there was a defect in Cubase thatt made all of my tracks lose their midi input assignment when re-enabled.

Once I got over my severe annoyance and disappointment, I stumbled across something I didn't even know Cubase could do. And that is multitrack presets.

Within my template I had sorted all of it my instruments by articulations and instrument sets. So I had all of my first violin Longs in one area, cello alongs in another, cello shorts in another Etc.

Then, using the logical project editor, I set up switches to hide or show any one of the sections. It was very cool.

Anyway, once I realized that my template had failed because of this Cubase defect, I realize that all the sorting and preparation I put into creating it made it very easy to go in and select all of the tracks within various groups of articulations and such, and save them as multitrack presets.

So now if I have a solo cello part, for example, but I'm not sure which library to use, I can simply load all of my solo cellos at once as a multi-track preset and then drag the midi file through them until I find one that fits the part.

It's very cool, doesn't create a project file that's over 2 GB as my template did, and works quite well in terms of workflow and productivity.

I still dream, however, I've having all of my instruments ready to play without having to load anything so recently I purchased VePro and am about to embark on setting up a slave with all of my most important patches pre loaded and ready to go. Must keep the dream alive of having multiple instruments ready at a moment's notice at your fingertips.

Someday technology will allow such an instantaneous selection and loading of instruments that all of this hassle we go through won't be necessary. I only hope I live long enough to experience it.


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## IFM (Sep 14, 2020)

I thought the MIDI assignment issue had been resolved? There’s a great video by Trevor Morris talking about VEP vs all in one. He’s just doing all in one with disabled tracks.


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## Nyran (Sep 14, 2020)

I use a template with Logic and VEP on my slave PC. I don't have 800 tracks but I instead update the template with the stuff I actually use all the time (3 string libraries, a full ww library and some solos and the brass and percussion I actually use) then whatever else additional I use I just add it on my main machine. Keeping the instances uncoupled (I open the VEP project first) helps keep the file size and the save times very small. It works for me. I don't use it for every project but I when I have any full orchestral piece I go with that. I agree that a full 800 track template would be too much for me although I know that cubase is better at managing sizes like that.


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## X-Bassist (Sep 14, 2020)

I continue to work on my templetes, but only to import the tracks I need into my project session. Not sure if Cubase has track presets, but it’s easy to create preset tracks (groups of midi/vepro tracks) for different pianos, basses, strings, etc. And add them to my project as needed. Then you get the best of both worlds - organization yet as light as possible. The same might be possible by importing tracks from your templete session into your project session, just make sure at least one vepro connection is grouped with the tracks and it should be ready to play.

Edit: ah yes, multitrack presets mentioned above. Highly recommended if you can organize them and select them as a new track as in Pro Tools.


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## labornvain (Sep 15, 2020)

IFM said:


> I thought the MIDI assignment issue had been resolved? There’s a great video by Trevor Morris talking about VEP vs all in one. He’s just doing all in one with disabled tracks.


Yeah they appear to have fixed it. But it took them two years after I was working on my template.


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## Saxer (Sep 15, 2020)

I just load what I need but I do a lot of "Section Templates". I use Track Stacks in Logic and can load a complete string section (including articulation sets, eq and reverb sends/aux) from the library in one go.

The things I dislike in bigger templates:
- scrolling through too many tracks
- loading times
- slow song saving
- a lot of unused tracks
- less flexibility
- laggy GUI behavior
- CPU intense
- big song files

And I don't like that every big template project "looks" the same. When I start a new song it takes one hour and the song is getting an individual "face" which it makes it easier for me to orientate.

In my daily work I switch through songs and projects a lot. This week: Got a call where a live orchestra lost the score parts of horn 2/3/4 in an older project and have a live performance this weekend. So I had to open that Logic project and print horn parts. Then there's a composer who wants to sing a pilot track for the singer of a song he made. So I open that song and bounce a playback without melody. Then there is a call for an audio play where some music could be "recycled". So I'm looking through ten older projects to find unpublished stuff. And from there I go to my current main project arranging Christmas songs for a ten piece combo.
Working with bigger templates makes all that really inflexible. Even if I keep VEPro loaded I had the case that decoupled songs didn't connect all instances and I had to reload the entire template. And I do a lot of collaborations. Just using the same DAW and plugins that both parties have is hard enough but it works. But never with a big template.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Sep 15, 2020)

I'm still convinced that big ass templates are a nerdy thing (men like to nerd off with their prized posessions) without real practicality. I built big ass templates only to realize I could never get anything done with those Frankensteins.

Thanks for track presets, Steiny.


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## ProfoundSilence (Sep 15, 2020)

Jimmy Hellfire said:


> I'm still convinced that big ass templates are a nerdy thing (men like to nerd off with their prized posessions) without real practicality. I built big ass templates only to realize I could never get anything done with those Frankensteins.
> 
> Thanks for track presets, Steiny.


It depends, there's orchestral templates - that actually have enough articulations readily available to create convincing phrases, and then there is the 3000+ templates that have every sound they've ever bought just incase they want it. 

I think the latter is nerdy, the former I'd imagine is pretty much the default for any serious orchestral writing in a daw.


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