Brief Summary
Along with learning your keyboard shortcuts, using a template is standard advice we hear often, but the value of a template depends on the work you do. Here’s why Julian only uses one template for one regular task, the rest of the time preferring to create sessions from scratch.
Going Deeper
Use a template is standard advice which gets repeated endlessly online. However in a recent conversation with the Experts team it turned out that none of those present use templates. It’s not that using templates is bad advice, it’s just that, like so many things, there isn’t one answer which fits everyone. But there are other ways to speed up setting up a new session which don’t rely on recalling a template. I’ll caveat that with saying that there is one case where I regularly use a template but exactly what that is illustrates a point in itself.
What Do I Mean By A Template?
A Template Session could be any empty session which is set up the way you want as a starting point. There will be a library of these supplied with most DAWs and people even sell templates online as a purported way to gain some kind of advantage in your mixing - which I’ve never really understood.
Looking specifically at Pro Tools, though similar facilities exist in all DAWs, a template is a session which when used, instead of the template being used, a session based on that template is created, making sure that the template remains unchanged, ready for use next time. Pro Tools sessions have the file extension .ptx, templates can be saved from the file menu and have the extension .ptxt. There is a library of template sessions which can be accessed from the Dashboard and these are a useful way for new users to discover more about the software but I’d recommend a template be created from scratch by the person who is going to use it. That way they will understand it inside-out. As sessions get larger and more complex the case for using a template created by someone else gets much stronger, large post mixes or sessions specific to larger tracking sessions or using lots of outboard and the like.
Why Don’t I Use Templates?
So why don’t I use templates? In short because I enjoy setting up sessions from scratch. If I found it tedious I would use the facilities available to avoid it. But I’m very familiar with Pro Tools. I can create a typical session very quickly and I find that when I do, I rarely do it the same as the last time. There are things I’ll always have in a session but once you know how to quickly create and route multiple tracks using keystrokes it really doesn’t take long.
Also I rarely do exactly the same thing over and over. The point of a template is to save you repeating yourself creating the same session time and again. If you’re not repeating yourself then what time are you saving? For example a template might have a set of tracks set up for a tracking session, with drum mics, a drum submix, probably via a Routing Folder. I’ll probably have a couple of Folders within that Folder for kick and snare mics and maybe a similar arrangement for guitar mics and DIs and audio tracks for keys with MIDI capture. I’ll have at least some confidence reverb on a return for the vocalists and of course multiple sends for as many headphone mixes as I’ll be using. Name everything, colour code your tracks and you’re ready to start creating Groups and Memory Locations.
If you know Pro Tools reasonably well you can set that up in as long as it takes the kettle to boil and to drink the resulting tea. I’d always recommend doing it in advance of any musicians showing up as you need to test your lines and headphones but for a band tracking session it’s not the biggest job of the day.
The One Time I Do Use A Template
The example above is for tracking, at the mixing stage I’ll inevitably add more stuff but it’s rarely as prescriptive as using a template would be. I did however mention using a template in one case and that case is the weekly Production Expert Podcast. That uses a template session I inherited off Mike Thornton, who used to edit the podcast until 2017. It contains tracks for guests, with plugins already instantiated, some clip groups for the stings, the necessary plugins for managing loudness and the routing for a print track - I record to a print track and consolidate the clips on the print track rather than bouncing the session at the end of the edit. It’s more flexible and faster for long form content like the podcast.
An interesting thing about this template is that it’s not a template, it’s a session. By this I mean that it’s a .ptx rather than a .ptxt. There’s no particular reason for this, if you save a template there is an option to include media with it so my stings can be accommodated but I just open the podcast template session and save a copy.
Post Production Templates
We have shared Damian Kearns’ post template on the blog in the past. Looking at this illustrates why one size doesn’t fit all and if you work in Post, multichannel workflows and multiple deliverables increase the benefits of using templates hugely. However for the work I do I find I’ve never really needed templates and the templates I have created have been quickly abandoned.
So how do I approach a tracking session for example? Do I create a new session for every take? Do I record everything into one big session? No. I do something in between.
The tracking I do tends to be mobile, in the sense that I’ve long been a fan of bringing a recording rig to the band rather than the band coming to me. Since my first Digi 001 system I’ve loved the flexibility of being able to turn up to a suitable space and record. In those early days I used to arrive with a PC tower and CRT monitor but with my current rig of a Macbook Pro and Pro Tools Carbon it’s unbelievably convenient.
Other Ways I Recall Session Elements
However all a template session is is a way to only have to set things up once. There are things I do which involve this but fall short of recalling an entire session.
My preferred technique when tracking a band is to create a Master Session which is unique to that tracking situation and to create a new playlist for each take. Holding Option when creating the new playlist creates one for every track. It’s perfectly feasible to do a whole session in this one master session with the session getting bigger and bigger. This is what I tend to do because it is so fast to switch from take to take. However it is very much a case of ‘all eggs in one basket’ and if that session were to be corrupted (which has happened to me) then without other versions saved I’d be vulnerable to losing work. I do of course back up to alternative drives during sessions too. To make sure I have a discrete, saved session of each track what I’ll do as often as is appropriate, as well as saving the master session, is to do a Save Copy In of each take, selecting Main Playlist Only. That way I have Individual sessions of each take. I’d adapt this if I recorded to a click and might want to mix and match between playlists but that doesn’t tend to be the kind of recording I do. It’s almost always live and not to a click.
As for vocals and overdubs, that would typically happen afterwards and be tracked in the discrete saves. Scratch vocals would usually be recorded with the take but aren’t typically kept.
Recalling Elements Of A Session
A template can be as temporary as you like, and I do it this way because it’s fast and it works. I could use a template but I do it this way. However there are some ways in which I recycle elements from other sessions which fall short of creating the entire session but instead just “template’ an individual element. User presets are probably the most obvious way of re-using settings between sessions but I only tend to use user presets if I want to change the default setting with which a plugin instantiates. My favourite example is Xpand! 2 which opens by default with “Beneath The Waves” - a rather ponderous evolving pad. I have never, and will never, use that sound. Instead I changed the default to a user preset which in my case is an electric piano. I’ve also created a default setting for EQIII which is more suitable for use on my S1. Little things but they fix issues I actually experience.
Track Presets are where things get more interesting as if there is a particular group of tracks, and plugins you regularly use which are tedious to set up, saving a Track preset can recall them into any session, arguably a more flexible arrangement than using a Template. Import Session Data is of course always availble for importing tracks for another session too. Lastly, saved IO settings are also a very worthwhile time saver, anything from specific IO for a given studio to complex routing, you can save some genuine tedium if you get organised with your IO.
One size doesn’t fit all is a cliche but it’s irrefutably true and in the same way as there isn’t any such thing as a typical user, there often isn’t any such thing as a typical mix. The way I did it last time might well have been a good way but it isn’t the only way. If, like me, you like to experiment then maybe templates aren’t for you either. Unless you do Post…