[Ben Jenssen]

I have not been using control surfaces (Command8 and Artist Mix) very extensively or for very long. My approach has been; I get to know about this stuff slowly as I find new things it might help me with. My main goal has been to get more and more eyes away from the screen to help me listen better when I mix.

I never got along with foldertacks/routingfolders. From the start they behaved badly for me, open/closed status changing etc, and they just got in the way. So I use mostly AUX'es and VCA's.

With my single (soon to be dual) Artist Mix, I have basically only one Eucontrol layout; it fixes my main outs to fader one.

One thing that I find very cool about VCA's is very simple but very powerful:

A very simple example:
A typical session w/rock band:
VCA1: BEAT
All drums+bass tracks
VCA2: GIT+KEY
guitars+keyboard
VCA3: VOX
Main vocal + background vox.

I place the VCAs to the left in the mixer window, so that they are next to the main fader. If I bank right, the main out will follow and always be on the leftmost fader but not the VCAs. This gives me quick access to solo or mute the main sections of the mix via the VCAs. Then I can solo/mute within those main sections individual tracks, provided that the VCA groups are not enabled.

I hope this makes sense.