Track Grouping Cheatsheet

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to check out a visual representation of the track grouping of an average project, I have borrowed the idea from a similar cheatsheet I've found posted from a user (thank you, Toby!) on the URM Academy Facebook page, but I have modified it a bit according to my workflow and naming conventions.
I consider this visual representation an useful tool because it tidies up the concepts we have been already analyzing in detail in our home recording main article, and in our project preparation one.

Let's start by saying that this picture is by no mean a fixed rule, you can modify it according to your workflow, remove and add all the tracks/groups you need etc, but it could be considered as a solid starting point if you're new in mixing a project with with a full rock band and don't know where to start. 

Let's begin from the left, here you have all the individual tracks: almost all of them are routed into subgroups and/or groups, this is made to make you process the tracks in groups, if possible, thus saving time and computer resources (as opposed to processing them individually), and when you have your sounds right and the relative balance within the group, you can literally just move the group faders to balance the main parts of the mix among them (eventually balancing only the drums, bass, guitars, vocals, synths and fx groups, just 6 faders, is much easier and gives us a much better perspective once the ground work is done).

Why the Sub Drops etc... track is alone and goes straight into the Stereo Out? Because we don't want it to be part of the "Fake Master", we don't want all the low end of these tracks to hijack completely the buss comp creating a horrible pump effect. Eventually some pump effect can still appear when this track will reach the limiter, and we will have to be good in finding the right volume for it to arrive to the limiter without creating problems.

I hope this was helpful!

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