A1, you build projects to suit what your work flow is going to be. Who's going first? = first number of tracks needed. Who's going second, etc. Or you can build a project any way you want and use those parts as you need. Total # of parts needed= project. Workflow and timeline are variable and you should allow for the "variances" that the artists will throw at you. Be flexible, it's all mixing down to two at the end.

I don't know if this would work very well or not, but one idea would be to arrange tracks in order of frequency content and where they are supposed to 'sit' in the mix. For example:

Tamborine
Acoustic Guitar
Cymbals
Piano
Vocals
Backup Vocals
Snare
Guitar
Kick
Bass

Might help in mixing and reminding you where you want everything to sit in your mix so things don't clash. But then again, having the drums split up like that could just be annoying!

@A1MIXMAN (OP), I should clarify that what tracks I do first are not the same as what I see on tracks 1-8 when mixing.  I lay down the rhythm section first to define the feel and provide the song structure; however, when mixing, I prefer to move tracks so that the vocals (lead and harmonies) are first followed by rhythm section, then lead lines, then strings or orchestration, then sound effects, etc.  This is not a hard and fast rule, but my console shows tracks in blocks of 8 and I don't want to scroll 4-5 times to get to the most critical instruments.
 
@Guitarhacker, Whatever works for you—I know you do good stuff.  Personally, it is really hard for me to know where to set the individual drum levels (particularly kick) until I hear the drums in the context of the mix.  Keep in mind, though, that the music I write and record is closer to Penny Lane than to Proud Mary so the mixes can be a real pain.  I do have one spooky narration song though that, despite all the instruments, string lines, and sound effects, began with a drum feel created on a single track with a Kurzweil PC2R—so it all depends, I guess.  I later separated and replaced all the drums, but am not sure it really made the track any better.  More info than you need, but fans of The Mighty Konrad study this stuff.

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@guitarhacker  I agree with you for some genres and there are times I do just what you do..  In others, that would never work.  Most dance music is just as much engineering as musicianship and often the scales are tipped 100% to engineering.  Songs that consist of three kicks with several snares stacked and filtered six ways to sunday would never work in a stereo drum mix.

Interesting that you separate the toms rather than putting them in a stereo field; but this will surely give you a lot of control. Hey, in the days of DAWs with unlimited tracks, why not?

konradh


Interesting that you separate the toms rather than putting them in a stereo field; but this will surely give you a lot of control. Hey, in the days of DAWs with unlimited tracks, why not?

Its standard practrice to record and put each tom on a seperate mono track. No one really will ever record all the toms on one stereo track. Its not a good judgement call to record all toms on one stereo track when you can have them each in mono on seperate mono tracks
 
CJ

Re: The Tom Question, I guess my thought was that there could be three to eight toms, so a stereo field seemed logical and easier to manage for virtual drums that would not have a lot of noise or issues to fix drum-by-drum.  The majority opinion here seems to be to separate them, though, and I can see how that thinking makes sense (although with what I do it will not matter as much).  Thanks for the thoughts.  I will set up the next few projects with individual tracks and see how it goes.

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