200 Tracks?!

[Zydrus]

I just recently stumbled across Pensados Place and he mentioned in one episode I was watching that he rarely gets a project with less than 200 tracks anymore. I'm not sure if he meant the entire album or just a single song but even when he does his ITL's each song has a crap ton of tracks on them. What is the avg number of tracks on your project? I'd say so far on mine they have been 12-16 tracks each song.

 

[witzendoz]

Usually less than 24. The track number has blown out to ridiculous numbers.

Alan.

 

[Seafroggys]

I've only once or twice gone above 16 tracks. Typically Its 10-12.

 

[Chili]

Including the 8 tracks from EZDrummer, I have about 15.

There are probably a lot of throwaways out of those 200 tracks of Pensado's.

 

[fat_fleet]

40-50....

 

[mdainsd]

24 is about the most. I have done 69 tracks, all analog, but that was more or less to see if I could do it, not so much for the project.

 

[miroslav]

I just recently stumbled across Pensados Place and he mentioned in one episode I was watching that he rarely gets a project with less than 200 tracks anymore.

They must all be Blues tunes.....

 

[Armistice]

30 or 40 normally, including a dozen for drums... but lots of those have almost nothing on them.. and just come in at choruses etc.

 

[rayc]

About 20 tracks per song. Mind you that includes busses.
I have a bad habit of adding bits here & there for texture or a special emphasis spot etc so not all happen all of the time.

 

[PDP]

If I was to send all the tracks I recorded during the making of a song it could easily be 200 but after editing out just what Im going to mix Id say 24-48, I'm pretty sure if I was limited to 48 I could always work with that.

 

[ecc83]

The guy would probably benefit from the latest Cubase 7.5?
Check it out at Feb sos and the very well received "Track Versions"

(NOT that I understand it at all really!)

Dave.

 

[Moseph]

30 or 40 normally, including a dozen for drums... but lots of those have almost nothing on them.. and just come in at choruses etc.

About 20 tracks per song. Mind you that includes busses.
I have a bad habit of adding bits here & there for texture or a special emphasis spot etc so not all happen all of the time.

I bet Pensado has something like this going on. It's also very easy to experience track bloat if you're doing multi-layer timbres. Say you're doing a super-slick pop song (the kind of thing Pensado does) and maybe you use 3 different kick drum samples mixed together for your kick sounds. Then you switch to a DIFFERENT 3-layer sound for choruses vs. verses. If you do it again for the bridge, that's already 9 tracks, just for your kick drum.

 

[Thurgood]

Usually around 48-60 when counting samples and buss plus submixes. I started on analog 8 track then over the years moved to 16, then 24 then 48 individual recorded tracks. When mixing the number expanded to what was available. The daw world has really gone a bit nuts. "But in the end" (que Beatles) it all comes down to two for me at least. Have not made the move to 5.1. It is the plug-in count that gets crazy. Be well all. Back to work now.

 

[grimtraveller]

30 or 40 normally, including a dozen for drums... but lots of those have almost nothing on them.. and just come in at choruses etc.

not all happen all of the time.

That's the thing. The fact that someone may have 200 tracks doesn't necessarily mean what it seems to mean on first glance.
When I used to record on an 8 track portastudio, obviously I was limited to 8 tracks.
But that was 8 playback tracks.
I always did a lot of bouncing and recording in sections. Backing vocals alone would be 3 or 4 tracks bounced down to one. With everything taken into account, 40 tracks wasn't unrealistic. I had to learn things like track sharing as well, which could be hard to remember what was where and coming up while mixing !
Nowadays on my 12 track, I still bounce a lot and with virtual tracks, that means even more. The drums will often have 10 tracks bounced down to two. Although there will be a maximum of 12 playback tracks, depending on the song, the number of instruments, backing vocals etc, there could be over 40 tracks of stuff, various elements coming in and out at various points in the song.

 

[Xdrummer]

I normally use in the range of 24-30 tracks (this normally includes 10-12 audio tracks (guitars, bass. lead and harmony vocals), 8 tracks for drums and normally about 6-8 tracks for MIDI modules) - many of the tracks only come it at a chorus, etc.