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Goodbye Templates... well, almost.

Garry

Senior Member
I really wanted the versatility of a template: the feeling of having any instrument available at your finger tips, and all of a sudden, I would surely feel like Hans Zimmer or Junkie XL!!! But... as we all quickly encounter, large templates are incredibly greedy on resources.

My system is ok, but nothing outstanding, and not powerful enough for large templates (2017 i7 4.2Hz, 4 cores, 32Gb; OS 10.14.5; 1TB SSD; Logic 10.14.4) - I quickly ran into resource issues after setting up my template.

My first attempted workaround the resourcing demands of large templates was to ditch the template and rely on Kontakt's QuickLoad: ok, now I can quickly get to instruments, but nothing else is setup, and I have to do that every time - not good.

Ok, next attempt: set up a template with all tracks loaded, named, color coded, levels & panning balanced, EQ'ed, effects busses set up, grouped, stacked, etc. Then on each track have a Kontakt instance loaded, but have it empty, so there is no instrument loaded into it. Then all I have to do when I want a track is load it using QuickLoad, but everything else for that track is already set up and ready. That definitely helped, I was down to the template running at 15Gb in RAM (but took several minutes to load). That's still not a huge amount of headroom though once you start opening up instruments when you start writing something, and so again, I'd quickly start having problems with not very complex pieces.

My current version: I now have a skeletal template and couldn't be happier! All my effects busses are saved in the template, but no instrument tracks in the template. For each of the instrument tracks, I have already set each one up as required (color coding, EQing, effects sends etc), and then saved each one individually as a user patch in Logic (sorry, not sure if there's an equivalent in other DAWs?). These user patches do NOT get loaded into RAM; you can organize them in however much detail you want. My template now loads in <8 seconds, and I can open any instrument in <5 seconds, as and when I need it. Currently unused instruments are not just sitting there costing me precious RAM! If there are any Logic noobs who don't know how to set up user templates, see Mike Baggstrom's video here (highly recommend his whole YouTube channel for Logic tips actually - like this one is great: 51 tips in the piano roll). My new template is now just 2.9Gb in RAM! Finally, I have some headroom to work with! The User Patch library contains all of your instruments and is easily accessible (see bottom left of my screenshot)

Pros:
- tracks load instantly; using QuickLoad, I'd often have to wait for the Kontakt library to load the data before I could select and load the instrument I wanted
- this is, in effect, the equivalent of 'disable track' in Cubase, which unloads the instrument from RAM because here too, an unused instrument which is just idle in your template is not loaded into RAM. I'd always hoped this would come to Logic, and maybe it will, but to be honest, I think this is better! No more Cubase envy!! ;)
- you can use Logic's search function to now find your patches (another thing I'd watched Cubase users do with envy - not anymore!!).
- RAM footprint is dramatically reduced (from >30Gb to <3Gb)
- template size and loading time is also dramatically reduced.
- you can use a custom thumbnail icon of the library, and it shows up as a big image on your track (actually, I was inspired to go this route from a post here by @stonzthro (check out how cool his screenshot looks! - now mine too! See top left of screenshot)
- template changes are very easy, as most things are stored as tracks essentially outside of Logic (in HD/Users/Name/Music/Audio Music Apps/Patches/Instrument): that makes everything really easy to organize, no matter how many subfolders, and if I want to change something that affects the whole template, I can do so in seconds.

Cons
- turns out the 1 thing that user patches don't store is group assignment, which I just learned yesterday in this thread: I'd been using groups a lot as a method to show/hide whole instrument sections, as is needed in navigating a large template, but now that my template only has the tracks in that piece only, it's no longer such a big deal to have this anyway, and if I need to, I can quickly add group info back in when there are sufficient number of tracks in the piece to make this warranted.

I decided to make this change to my workflow thanks to recommendations from @stonzthro and Mike Baggström's Professional Composers YouTube channel, so huge thanks to you both, as this has made a huge improvement to my process and to my enjoyment of using Logic again.

Are there any other pros and cons I may have missed here? Any other modifications that I should consider? Screen Shot 2019-06-13 at 4.24.58 PM.png
 
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Wow, this does sound amazing, but really Apple, you couldn’t have done this like ONE DAY EARLIER!!! :shocked:
 
I did something similar to your setup for my Kontakt and UVI instruments in Reason, it's a huge time-saver. So much easier just grabbing the instruments I want from the browser rather than needing to first create Kontakt instances and then navigate to each instrument from Quick Load.
 
Once I can get the new version installed in Logic though, I have to ask myself whether it's still worth it to use it this way, or to embrace the new 'disable tracks' which sounds like it's been implemented really nicely. I suspect I'm probably going to end up using the new feature, and kiss goodbye to the last 24 hours building a new template!! Still kicking myself over the timing!! :rofl:
 
One positive about staying with this workflow though: when I was using a large template, it can be a pain to navigate. Yes, I can isolate sections using toggle show/hide with groups, and get to what I want to use, but still, it's really just manipulating all those idle tracks for the sake of not having to load each one separately. But with this new method, my tracks consist ONLY of those that are used in the piece, and since it's so easy and quick to navigate now using the Logic instrument library, perhaps it's not worth it to go back to templates and have hundreds of idle tracks, when loading is now so fast?

I don't know, I've no doubt I'll check out the new feature once I can install the new Logic version, but I may end up staying with my new approach, and just using the disable tracks feature if the piece I'm writing gets too resource-intensive for my system rather than because of my template getting too resource heavy forces me to do so. That seems a better use of resources at the moment, and justification for having to balance resource demands, but I don't know until I've played with the new version.

But still... the timing Apple, I'm not over it!! :barefoot: I thought we were friends!!
 
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