Streamlining the Production Process with Templates

We've used Pro Tools as our digital audio workstation of choice for about the past five years.  While every little project should, theoretically, have its own unique approach, we're in the process of creating music as quickly as possible.  So, to do this, we have made a basic template of tracks used for every project:

We've earmarked a few tracks for drums;
We have a couple mono tracks for guitars;
We have one track for bass;
We have a few stereo tracks for synths (if any);
We have kept several available for vocals.

We have also specified basic inputs, buses, and plug-ins for each template track.

We've saved this template as its own file.  Whenever we create a new Pro Tools project, all we have to do is import the tracks (which otherwise have no data in them) from the template file to the current project.  Almost instantly, we're ready to rock -- just add music.

Hopefully this song-a-week project will be realized sooner than later.  Cheers!

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