One Track per Instrument

A lot of users want to use just one track per instrument and are asking for help on making this work.

This page gives our take on the issue and has a few pointers.

One track with all articulations or one track per articulation?

All Orchestral Tools collections are heavily optimized for using one track per articulation.

We prefer this workflow for multiple reasons:

- Ease of organization
- Articulations can easily be stacked and blended
- Very easy volume balancing and mixing

Nevertheless, a lot of users prefer to have a single track that keyswitches between articulations. This is easily possible with the use of Multi Articulation Patches.

Multiple Multi Articulation Patches on one track

You can easily load multiple patches on the same MIDI channel, for example a Longs and Shorts multi. To control articulations, there are two ways:

1) Leave slots empty. For example use Slots 1-6 for Longs, Slots 7-12 for Shorts.

2) Shift the key switch range for one patch so that the keyswitches do not overlap. Then leave one slot per patch empty, which you can select to mute that patch when other patches on the same channel are supposed to play.

It is also possible to blend between slots in different patches.

Combining Multi Articulation Patches with choice Singles on one track

The Multi Articulation Patches offer a lot of unique features and possibilities not available in the Single Articulation Patches. However, there are situations where you want to use the Singles (for example, to use the Trills Orchestrator or the Adaptive Legato with Expression control). In these cases, simply load your chosen Single Articulation patches on the same channel as your multi(s). Of course, you will only want one articulation at a time to play, not all of them at the same time. To do this, you can define a Mute Instrument keyswitch in the Controller Table that mutes and unmutes that specific Single Articulation patch. This way, you can use Singles and Multis on the same track with ease.