I’ve always setup my Track Colors to indicate the instrument/audio-source, drums are orange, bass brown, vocals green, etc. Lately I’ve been thinking about changing it to reflect the bussing structure. So for example all the Tracks feeding a Group Channel would be the same color as the Group.
I thought before going through the effort of changing all my Templates it might be good to hear about the clever ways others might be using Track Colors (and then steal the good ones).
I just set them as your first way…
Hi,
I’ve tried using different kind of colour saturation to indicate busses that are higher up in the hierachy within a colour-coded instrument group. At the end of the day, I have decided to go back to simple colour codes for instruments and vocals. Different from yours but the same concept.
It looks good in the project to have the deepest blue assigned to the bus closest to the Stereo Out but it didn’t really help to improve my workflow. Maybe that’s just not for me, who knows?
I stick to simple colour codes (bass is brown here, too) and a strict naming policy. Very basic 
I tend to have a mix of logic, semi-logic, inconsistent “logic”, consistent, and ad-hoc coloring.
There are certain instrument groups that are in almost all my projects, that I am very consistent in coloring: Drums are red, bass is blue, acoustic guitars are yellow/gold, electric guitars are green, lead vocals are violet, and background vocals are magenta. The logic in those assignments? A somewhat hodgepodge mix. I really have no idea why I arrived at red for drums (maybe the drum set we had in my parents’ basement was red???). “B” for “bass” and “blue”. Most acoustic guitars have a yellow-ish face. “G” for “electric Guitar”, “V” for “vocal” and “violet”, and magenta is the closest to violet in the Cubase color palette.
There are others that I have in some combination almost every time or frequently where I’m less consistent. I have piano in almost every project, but I’ve varied the color. Sometimes I make it teal, which is the color I most often use for synths (which I don’t have as frequently), sort of as a keyboard group, but, if there are a lot of synths, I might choose a different color for the piano, with that color depending on what else is available and stands out enough from other colors. If I’ve got an organ, it’s likely to be orange (take a letter off the end and move one letter and…). If I’ve got strings, I’ll tend to use the closest color to brown (but it tends to look fairly orange in some of the uses), brass would likely be some gold-like color, and woodwinds tend to be more or less miscellaneous colors, depending on what is available (except sax would be the same color as brass since I’d mostly be using that in a trumpet/sax/trombone brass section). Percussion would probably be pink (a combination of the “P” connection and that it’s a lighter red, thus close to drums in that sense).
Okay, so kind of all over the place.
One thing I am pretty consistent on, though, is that the submix buses for any given instrument group are the same color as the instruments within the group. If that group also has effects buses in it (e.g. drums and lead vocals almost always do), they’ll also have the same color, or possibly a lighter shade of that color to help me quickly distinguish the FX from the tracks. As for multi-instrument subgroups, like instruments submix, mix bus, rear bus, and master, I usually just leave those the default track color, and those end in a different zone in the MixConsole. Or, for some related instrument groups, like a drums and percussion submix, I might use a shade between those of the groups.
I don’t use project templates since my projects have mostly been pretty different from one another in terms of which actual virtual instruments get used in some of those basics, but I do tend keep the same, or a similar, vertical track order for those groups, for example, with drums at the top, then percussion if it’s there, bass, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, piano, organ and/or synths, brass/strings/etc. if used, background vocals, then lead vocals. FX and subgroup buses are with their related tracks, or after all there components (e.g. in the case of an instrumental submix), and main mix, rear bus, and master (Stereo Out) are at the very bottom, but I use the visibility zones in the MixConsole to put key buses in different zones.
because brown note??
Thats weird. My bass is brown too. Are your synths orange by any chance? My outputs are red.
I group different instruments, inputs, outputs, etc and when naming a track it gets a 3 letter extension. For example with a fender bass it might be fender.bas. Then in Metagrid, or if you can remember your KCs, set up a shortcut for every group to turn them all to the same color.
A word of caution: be careful with 3-letter extensions. For example with a snare group channel, “snare.par,” when you go to save that in windows as a preset, .par is already an established windows extension, therefore snare.par not possible open.
The amps?
Haha, analyzing our particular choices of colour coding from a psychological perspective would catapult us right away in
shrink territory with a nice splash of esoterics.
FWIW - I guess brown for bass because of its earthy flavour or being “based” on the bottom end. Don’t ask me if I did this on purpose many years ago… IDK. Kind of an established colour coding tradition here.
Haha, brilliant, I’ve never heard it before 
Hi @Greg_Purkey ,
no, orange is not assigned here to any particular instrument. My vox are all coloured red (because they get the most attention?). I know some US based mixing engineer who use green for vox cause that’s where the money is (dollar bills)…
Sorry @raino - you were asking how we use colours and not which colours in particular. I know…
Chromesthesia is when you experience a sensation of colour in response to sound (or more specifically, the frequency of sound).
Aside from all the visual uses, track colours are also extremely useful within the Project Logical Editor. For example, I have a massive template with a few different orchestral options available. Strings are shaded in purple, with each individual instrument (1st violins, 2nd violins, etc.) as different shades of the main colour, Same with winds, (flutes, oboe, clarinet, etc), pianos, guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon, texture, etc.). If you name your colours in the project colours setup, you can use that as a condition in the PLE. So I have a Metagrid button that will show only my acoustic guitars, one for just electrics, one for nylon string, one for textures, and on and on. You can have tons of colours, and in addition to making it visually appealing it’s really useful to use them zip around in a large template.
Yes, that’s what I meant to write above, but skipped over that little detail…PLE. It’s all done in the PLE. And not necessarily with a 3-letter extension as I mentioned. It could be any word etc.
So after you have added some tracks, and have the name of the track associated with the PLE, just execute the KC or button in Metagrid, and all tracks with that name, or maybe just a 3 letter extension, turn that color.
And along the same lines, when your track list on the Arrange Page becomes too long and you hate scrolling vertical, and everything is already in folders, then sometimes use “show names” or “toggle tracks”.
@raino was the first person to lead me on to Metagrid years ago. I borrowed my wifes iPad, but bought a new one once I discovered I really like Metagird. And just a few months ago, I finally upgraded to Metagrid Pro. I was probably one of the very last hold-outs until Perz removed it off last fall, and the app “broke.” So I either had to upgrade for $99 or try something else. I sent all my data to them, and it came back all installed on Metagrid Pro.
That’s also really useful. What I’m doing with my PLE is having it look for tracks, for example, that are coloured with the colour named Acoustic Guitar, show them and hide everything else.
then surely it’s easier to just change the group chanels to the same colours you set up for your tracks !.. no?
M
That’s interesting, I use the exact same order. And then I have my Group Channels in the right zone with the order flipped, mirroring the Tracks’ order - so the Vocal Tracks & Vocal Groups are closest to each other while the Drum Tracks & Groups are furthest apart.
I think of the order as starting with the rhythm section and then expanding into more melodic or featured sounds culminating in lead vocals.
That is pretty much exactly my logic, so it’s probably not so coincidental that we use the same order.
Same here. Drums red at the top, then going from dark (bass) to light (lead vocal or instrument).
my bass is purple,
