Instrument Groupings

I think you have pretty well described how many of us do it myself included. I like busses and find towards the end of a complex mix it is possible to just be mixing a smaller amount of busses even though you may have a large number of tracks.

Busses are great for final balance tweaks and also it is great to automate them too. While on busses and K system metering, it is good to keep your tracks consistent rms wise and busses need to also be in the same boat. They are the product of several tracks and therefore the right amount of track levels feeding a buss is required to satisfy a good mix on any buss and the final signal level of that buss is also sitting right on your ref level.

As far as single tracks I often take bass direct to the masterbuss. Why not. It has got all the possibilities of processing and automation so it can take a more direct route to the final masterbuss. Nothing wrong with sending a mono or a single stereo signal to its own buss but you may be just adding busses that you don't need. After all I feel the idea is to keep the number of busses to a minimum. There is also nothing wrong with making a complex buss set up either as it is usually often more powerful than tracks in terms of what they can do. Just move your whole mixer to the right, and after a while I think you can leave the tracks alone, just focus on the buss setup and work there. If you do want to manipulate tracks during a mix, just move them so they are right next to the busses. I love the way we can move the position of tracks and busses so easily.

So it's about how creative you are going to be with your buss choices and what things you are going to feed them. If I only had one single stereo synth in an arrangement it would more likely go straight to the master buss. But in another production I could have 5 stereo instruments all doing just the drone pad in an ambient piece. I would create a buss for them for sure, send them all there and balance the 5 tracks as usual. Then you can turn to the buss you have just made for the pad, it would be labeled Drone Pad Mix and here you can do some final treatments to the sound. Like widen the whole drone sound if you wanted etc..Add some reverb to add some ambience etc..It is good to compress a bit over that sound too just to even things out a bit and make sure the drone never gets lost in the music etc..

In the arrangement window I might group any singular type mono tracks together to keep track of them. And still keep the colour scheme going on mono tracks. If I had 2 or 3 mono type acoustic guitars, I would definitely make a buss for them, it is a good way to tidy them up and control them.

Putting buss processing in is also nice to do and busses are a good place to start adding some sound colouration and glue etc..We have got many great plugins to do it with now too. The digital world is great as we can simply make busses as we need them. In the old days the number of busses was limited and they never had as many as we have got now.

On masterbuss things the idea is of course to sum your busses for a final stereo masterbuss mix. And the same applies level wise too there. You want to end up with your final mix just hitting your chosen ref level. Busses need to be finally tweaked level wise so everything just adds up perfectly on the masterbuss. You will always be lowering your buss levels slightly which is a good thing to do. You don't need to be (and should not be) clipping anywhere on tracks or busses even before you tweak or lower buss levels. It is good to be diligent on rms levels in all three places. Tracks, busses and your final masterbuss.