I live in thailand, but I'm an american with US bank accounts and USD. So, I make a lot of overseas payments (have paid for mixing services out of france, mastering services out of the UK, video editing services out of Austria, general transferring of funds from US to Thai banks, paying for services in thailand, etc). I find for most situations, such as paying for services, Wise is the most convenient. The exchange rates are pretty fair, as are the fees, and it's completely transparent so you know how much it's going to cost. It's generally very fast (sometimes in the matter of a couple seconds) and supports a large list of currencies and countries bank accounts. For general transferring of money, bank wires are typically the cheapest if you're doing big bulk transfers and their exchange rates are pretty much always the best. But, they can take a long time to transfer and there's always the potential that one of the banks doesn't have english speaking support if something goes wrong, whereas Wise does. One downside to Wise is that the way it works is they essentially hold a large amount of money in various currencies. When you transfer via Wise, they just send the money via one of their local bank accounts in that country. It's why the transfers are so fast. If Wise is low on funds for the currency the money is being transferred to, and if the amount your transferring is large enough, Wise may not have enough money to cover the transaction and may need to move around some of its currency first, which can take a couple days. Having said that, I've never personally experienced this, and I think this would only be an issue in circumstances where the transfers are huge (tens of tens of thousands, if not hundreds) and the currency being transferred to is rare or less popular. Now as far as "receiving" payments, I haven't done that with Wise, so I can't comment there. I've received transfers through wise to my bank accounts, but I have not received transfers through wise to my Wise account (Essentially your Wise account can store money before you transfer it off to your bank account), but in general I find the platform very simple and convenient to use.

@Mikołaj Rejzner Thank you! :)

@Mikołaj Rejzner Clara really made a huge difference to the song. So glad to have had her contribute her artistic style to the piece.

I used to have a big template w/ a bunch of articulations and tracks, but it got to be too cumbersome and just a pain to scroll through, so what I do now is I have a VERY small and extremely stripped down template that consist of only the absolute bare minimum of tracks that I use in every single song. That comes out to about 20 tracks (I always want a piano in there, I always want my main string library, etc). But I don't include any of the miscellaneous instruments or obscure articulations that I only sometimes use (tin whistle, organ, orchestral effects, etc). Then for the misc instruments, I save "track presets" (feature in studio one that lets you save a vst and all its sends, and the fx chains, etc) as one thing, that you can then bring in all at once. So, if I want a tin whistle, I just create a new track and click the "tin whistle" track preset and it brings in the tin whistle VST along with all the configured mic positions, EQing, reverb sends, track routing, etc. This is WAY easier on my computer and a lot easier for me to manage (because there's way less tracks to scroll through). I know some other DAWs have similar features. But to directly answer your question, when I had a template, I would include anything that inspired me or made me want to write, or that I used frequently. So maybe I only like just the low strings in a library, then that's all I would include and I'd leave all the rest out. For synths, I wouldn't bother since I don't like using the same synth sounds over and over.

@Vincenzo Santonicola I don't use reaper, but I think they're called track templates in it.

Kinda depends on the track, but for the stuff I like to write (epic/trailery), I reach for these more often than not: Strings: Pacific Ensemble Strings, Audio Imperia Areia, Psychatto Shorts from Afflatus Brass: Trailer Brass, MA1 Brass, JXL Brass Woodwinds: CSW Perc: LAMP, Damage 2 Synths: Zebra, Diva, Serum Piano: OT Spindle or VSL Synchron Yamaha CFX Then a bunch of random misc instruments. I think you're probably going to get a different answer from each person, since there's really no "best", just what works for the track and what your personal preferences are.

@Matt McDonnell I've heard so much about this. Been debating if I should try it. Would you say it sorta does similar things to a mix as OTT, but in a different way?

@Craig Hall haha it really is so good. I usually put it on the small ensemble without the bass. Soooo nice.