Paul’s power template
Before Paul dives into workflow specifics, he hammers home the importance of having everything prepared for creativity. “This is my [Cubase] template that I start every track with. Because I have groups and routings set up, I get a bit lost without it, and it takes a long time to recreate. So this template has everything set up.
“There are a bunch of empty channels, routed into several sub-drum buses (Kick, Hats, Percussion, Breaks, etc), that all go into a ‘Drums Main’ bus. ‘Sub Bass’ is a mono group, so I can shove a sub straight into that. Then three channels for midrange bass (Midrange 1, 2 and 3). All bass sub-groups feed into a ‘Total Bass’ bus. I also have a ‘Synths’ bus, ‘Vocoder’ bus (which requires specific routing in Cubase), and an ‘FX’ bus.”
Paul’s template lets him integrate hardware too. “I have a [Dave Smith] Pro-2 synth here, which has a plugin for control, so I have that loaded ready to go; and the output of the synth runs straight into Cubase. Then this TT-303 [a TB-303 clone] is routed straight into the project. I wouldn’t use these in every single track, but it’s handy to have all these routings sorted just in case.”