The elephant in the room: Why would you need 450+ tracks in an arrangement? Feels a bit like going on a holiday carrying one's entire library of 450+ books. But you may have a good reason and from that maybe there's a smoother workflow to be found
Excellent question and observation!
Having a virtual festival of Instrument Tracks is something I consider to be an aspect of
arranging, hence my observations on arranging in this reply.
There are times when I need a lot of instruments and voices; and since Studio One supports having Instrument Tracks in a song template but not enabling them and their effects, this is relevant to
arranging.
For reference, I did
not know about disabling and enabling Instrument Tracks until reading the replies in this topic; but now I am using it with excellent results.
As explained in more detail as follows, I like to add a lot of what I colloquially call "sparkles", which are short in-and-out sounds (instrument and vocal).
The problem is that there are limits to the number of enabled Instrument Tracks Studio One can handle; so this technique is excellent and is saving me a lot of time. For example, I am working on what might be ether a Christmas song or music for a new chapter in my old-time science-fiction radio play; and I am using UVI Workstation for some of the "sparkling", which works nicely but not when there are hundreds of instances. So I instantiate an instance; add a few "sparkles", record the audio; and then disable the respective Instrument Track. This way, I can revisit the retired Instrument Tracks if necessary, but mostly they are present and
not using resources.
Last night and this morning I am adding Latin percussion "sparkles", which takes a while since I have never heard the song and just listen until an idea for a new "sparkle" appears.
I have just finished writing Volume 10 of my ongoing series of books on "The Art of Digital Music Production", which is available as a set of Kindle eBooks; and
Volume 10 is on arranging, which is the relevance to this topic and the general concept of needing hundreds, if not thousands, of tracks in a song template, and perhaps in a song, as well.
Rather than focusing on specific types of what one might call "traditional arranging", I decided to focus on what I think is a new and modern perspective on arranging which is consistent with the virtual cornucopia of virtual instruments and sampled-sound libraries, where there are so many products available that instead of defining music based on a symphonic orchestra, various ensembles, genres, and styles, I think it makes better sense to focus on
everything, which in turn maps to a modern orchestra potentially having every possible instrument in the world, as well as the trillions and trillions of combinations and permutations possible with a set of complex and elaborate synthesizers.
I think most folks naturally consider music to be a combination of typical musical groups and an orchestra, which for example is the way the Beatles did their music, albeit with considerable help from George Martin. George Harrison broadened the festival of music genres and styles by including Indian instruments, including sitars, tablas, and so forth, which then maps to {Symphonic Orchestra, Rock, Indian}.
Yet, today there is much more available, including for example Bali Gamelan tinkly bells, different types and styles of Middle Eastern instruments, Irish and Scottish instruments, Chinese and other Asian instruments, African instruments, Australian instruments, South American instruments, Caribbean instruments, and everything else, all of which are available in various sampled-sound libraries, which curiously includes a sampled-sound library of a fellow banging on washing and drying machines with a sledge hammer, available from Bolder Sounds.
There also are elaborate sampled-sound libraries of foley sounds, including the sounds of clothing, shoes, walking, running, rooms, equipment, and everything else which is not technically consider to be "music".
Then add Artificial Intelligence (AI) voices like 11ElevenLabs AI Voices and my favorite virtual female soprano, Realivox Blue (RealiTone); and the
new modern orchestra is a bit mind-boggling in its ability to include
everything.
Since having Instrument Tracks which are not enabled in a Studio One song template has a generally small footprint, it certainly is possible to have hundreds of Instrument Tracks and their corresponding VSTi virtual instrument engines and sampled-sound libraries; and depending on the genres and styles of music one is focused on doing at the time, this is logical, where the "focused on doing at the time" aspect might map to what colloquially is called an "album".
Over a decade ago, I was exploring Miroslav Philharmonik (IK Multimedia) and decided to count the number of French Horns (articulations, dynamics, styles, and so forth); but after an hour or so, I stopped counting at 150.
I like to count things; and I once devoted hours and days to counting the number of what I call "Quantum Sonic Entanglement (QSE) Sparkles" in Michael Jackson's hit song "Billie Jean"; and once again, I stopped counting at 150, where these are rapid in-and-out sounds like Elvis Presley inspired hiccups, whoops, sibilants, and basically any type of human sound, as well as instrument sounds, including maracas and hand-claps, which was one of Quincy Jones' hallmarks beginning as early as "It's My Party" (Lesley Gore), something I now consider to be a fundamental requirement of hit songs, if only because some of them might be random bits of serendipity, but all of them are done by design and intent, which makes them important in the formula for a hit song.
Another strategy for a Studio One song template is to have a set of Instrument Tracks for every VSTi virtual instrument you want to use, since this is a good way to create new Instrument Tracks for the virtual cornucopia of sampled-sound libraries, including AI voices and foley sounds, where for example if you like to use SampleTank (IK Multimedia), then have an Instrument Track for it in your Studio One song template, which you can enable and then clone as many times as you desire.
EW Composer Cloud+ claims to have over 40,000 instruments in its sampled-sound libraries; and by the time you enhance them with Studio One native effects, VST effects plug-ins, and Reason instruments, effects, and utilities (Reason Studios) via the Reason Rack VST, there you are; and it's mind-boggling.
For reference, there are phonons, which are tiny wave particles and have been proven to be able to become entangled with photons, and this have quantum spin, which I use to represent the tendency to move from one panning location to another in the range of far-left to top-center to far-right. There is a simple mapping of glass beads to music notation, as well.
The "Glass Bead Game" concept comes from Hermann Hesse's literary masterpiece "Magister Ludi" and is a fascinating way to conceptualize the music, lyrics, and emotions comprised by a song.
[
HIT SONG CLUE: "Hound Dog" (Elvis Presley), "It's My Party" (Leslie Gore), "I Want To Hold Your Hand" (Beatles", and "Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson) all have hand-clapping, and Elvis does uvular trills on the "H" of "Hound". ]
