"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Bill Gates, 1981
Saving
time by use of Color Coding
Author: Marc
Mozart - Last updated: February 3rd 2005
"I see a red track and I know without thinking: This is a drum track"
I am using color coding in many areas of my production work. Let's start with the most basic one: on my audio-drive, the files with a red label are not backed up - so I should go ahead and do this before I loose important data! Once backed up, I change the color into green.
This is simple and in fact, many people use the labels. The old Mac OS Classic had them and - after disappering in OS X for a while - they came back with Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther".
Now as we all know, Logic has a color palette that allows us to color our tracks and parts in the arrange window. Actually, let me tell you a little story and then lets take the idea a bit further:
One of the guys I used to work with in the 90s had a great
talent for organizing and simplifying things. Actually, I must give
him credit for this amazing idea. The genius' name is Alexander
Hahn and he is now a well-known personality in the world
of advertising and marketing, most famous for inventing the great website slogans.de,
the biggest and best databank for german advertising slogans.
In the mid 90s we were co-producing some dance-records together
and like his great website today, his songfiles were always extremely
logic, well organized and hence easy to work with.
We both had our own studios with mostly identical equipment
so we were exchanging song files all the time. Therefore it was extremely
important to be well-organized. After all, we wanted to load a song
into the computer and start working on it without wasting too much
time figuring
out what this was all about.
One day he came to my studio and introduced a new color coding system
to me. I thought it was
great,
and I am using
it
ever
since:
the idea is to put instruments in different categories that have all their own unique color code:
red = DRUMS
dark green = BASS
light green = GUITARS
blue = KEYBOARDS (Synthesizer, Organs, Piano, Clavinet, ...)
orange = INSTRUMENTS (all "realistic sounding" Orchestral Instruments)
pink = VOCALS
yellow = EFFECTS (sound effects)
Now we are using these color codes all the time, e.g. in our EXS soundlibrary
as well as in the Arrange Page of Logic.
In Logic Pro 7, even Mixer Channels in the Track Mixer
have their own colors. So if you keep the tracks belonging to the
same instrument group next to each other, you get this as a result:
You get the idea... color coding makes things so
much easier. After I while, I got so used to it that I now see a red
track and I know without thinking: "This is a drum track".
Anything I have
worked on in the last five years is color coded. If I wanna
work
on
an older
song
or
idea,
I am
literally
"back
in the picture" within seconds.
Well, if you're a professional, you might know all this - but it's the same as always. Knowing about a color coding system doesn't save you any time unless you actually start using it!
Related Articles:
"Macro Mixing" - reduce to the max! (coming soon)
Marc Mozart - 10 Jahre Musikbusiness
www.marcmozart.com