Reducing number of instrument tracks

[aa_miller]

I'm working on quite a long piece of music broken into 8 sections that currently has 40 instrument tracks and things are *just* beginning to show signs of slowing down, some of the instrument tracks have the same VI. Is there a way to reduce the number of instrument tracks while still being able to control the panning of each individual part? I'm new to this and there's probably an easy way to do it :)

I tried setting up an Aux with a VI with a couple of Midi tracks set to different midi channels, but changing the panning on one midi track changed it for all of the channels.

[Darryl Ramm]

If you want to lower the load from the VIs you can freeze or commit those tracks.

If you want to change panning on a VI track use pan automation.

Many online tutorials, like on YouTube will walk you through using these features.

There are other ways as well, but these are the most obvious.

[albee1952]

Indeed, freeze or commit, and I would suggest using commit as freeze SOMETIMES can cause some issues for some. If you right-click on a VI plugin, you can choose Commit up to This Plugin(what I would do) and check the box to make the original track inactive, but do not Hide(unless you are sure you are done editing midi on that track). In any case, as long as you don't delete the original, an inactive track uses zero system resources and yet is always available if you need to make changes to it. Also, frozen tracks cannot have the audio edited(making Commit a better option IMHO)