It sounds very generic so far. Listening skills is always underplayed. GOALS. Is the goal speed or realism? What extra work would be needed to fix it from a mockup to the real thing? How much is reusable? How confident should we be? What ground work should we definitely get in? Choice of libraries or identifying libraries? What level of layers and articulations to go to? When is a blanket ensemble allowable, vs a 5 part solo parts? How to WIN THE CONTRACT against competitions? What makes an outstanding mockup? What sort of speed turnarounds have you encountered? Is this mockups just for trailers, or scoring or games, or what? I feel templates for mockups are ten a penny. What shortcuts do you do, for pseudo mixing/mastering? How do YOUR mockups differ from YOUR masters where you won the brief? Is this just a technology course, or is there any musical coverage in it al all? BTW how closely do YOU match the tempo, key, orchestration and mood of any references supplied by the client? When you have 3+ references, how do YOU average between them? What do you more often find they were missing from the reference/s? Do they want a clone, or where does originality win you the gig? I think it's a shame when there are no musical examples included, discussed on a musical level. I'm personally not sure if basic technology is really what stops most people from doing a good mock up. I think under pressure it's capturing the musical mood and sending in over quantised, over compressed and clinical arrangements that loses people the work. In my mind, a mockup has to be a excellent musical representation, done in a short term, versus a cookie cutter approach that sounds sterile and me too. So sound design and what level of customisation would YOU do in a mockup?

btw where is the pre-release buy link?

Technically, it's more efficient to have one Kontakt instance as a multi, but the difference never seems that great - maybe 5% per instance. I guess it adds up. Recently I've tried doing a multi for each SECTION - so all strings in one, brass in another, Kazoos in another. (You can never have too many kazoos, right?) I think the thing about templates that is more real world (especially for peeps without a second dedicated power horse) is to keep the flavours, more generic. i.e. I know I'll likely always use a Demolition percussion so I'll load a top patch, but be prepared to swap it out for Taikos 39 or Bombo 16, as the need arises. I don't have a great need to have every percussion instrument on it's own track, "in waiting". For strings and brass, as I like to MIX brands, again I'll have 1 flavour from each library, and again swap them out as I feel the need for that specific texture. But I think the REAL saviour is to remember your purpose! A quick SKETCH template for fast ideas. When it comes to PRODUCTION, then I would load them as needed. But then you should have time, to experiment, because it shouldn't be cookie cutter at that level. All that said, I'm nowhere in the league of these guys with 500 tracks, ready to print, at a seconds notice. I can't imagine ever being that ? to compose live to broadcast. The problem with templates is they stifle creativity. For composing/sketching, the limitations are useful. AYK you want to focus on the notes - not on the amount of rosin or the mic position, of the third bassoon. Or adjusting DIVI. But for production, final product, to be more realistic, at that point I absolutely do. So a long winded way of saying, I have sketching templates. For production sessions, I'll tend to build them more from scratch. If you rebuild the disk index for the libraries you use, loading times are not so bad these days with SSDs. Have you changed the way you use templates recently then @Kevin Williams ?

Hey there ;-) I'm Peter from SUNNY London UK. I'm a songwriter/producer foremost. Been in the business over 4 decades (AKA old). Cinematic & film composing was always a "grandiose" idea, but became more practical in the last decade or so, using my old "song" connections. Used to be a recording and mastering engineer in another life, so that helped too. Were we supposed to use the post template? Guess I will... 1) What are your goals? To 10x my income from music composing/production over the next 3 years. To get one of my pieces played by a real orchestra (possible for under 1K these days, so more about confidence and finding a real orchestrator I can afford). 2) What is your current demo reel? I don't promote a public showreel. All my work has been from close contacts, not the general public. My "artist" career has been on a back burner for probably 3 decades now :-( Have torn up my EP, 3 or more times, to start again. I'm really an eighties girl, so still trying to find my modern style. More in to Trance/Ambient than house/trap/EDM (as you might imagine - LOL). Honestly RAP annoys me, with all the angst screaming ;-) 3) What immediate help do you need? Not really expecting any help. These days (AI and all) "originality" is the key - and that's not really something you can be taught. I believe one can be taught to widen ones thinking (novel exercises and so on), but ultimately (for me) originality seems to be about DOING and making MISTAKES! So it's time intensive. Sound design is something I should do a lot more of, but that's seldom what I divert my time to, so far. Hope you are all having a productive day!