Computer slowdown / Too many tracks / Bouncing down help

I have a kind-of old laptop, which works otherwise fine, running Reason 7 and about a squillion near-finished songs that I really need to complete. I find I get so far and then can't add any more to my tracks because the computer can't run fast enough. This is especially noticeable when I'm trying to, say record a guitar or a vocal track over quite a complicated mix as the song has a habit of pausing or stuttering.

I've tried bouncing tracks down and trying to record over those, but I have a habit of going down wormholes where I have 2-5 versions of a track in different states of completion where one will have the raw guitars played properly, the other will be tweaked in a way that I like better, another will have something else going on that I like etc... I also find bouncing things down and recording on top of them to be frustrating because I can't change the bounced-down track. I have to go back into the master, change that, bounce it down, and put it back into the new version, which is very longwinded and difficult to manage.

I've also tried adjusting buffering and latency, with differing results. I'm unsure as to whether this is going to affect the quality too.

So does anyone have any hints or tricks when it comes to a good creative workflow in the face of lo-spec adversity? I'm so frustrated because I've spent so long on all these tracks and they're so close to being finished now...

i suppose a new(er) laptop is out of the question?

haha, i have considered it but this one's only about 3 years old and i have holidays to pay for. besides, i get the impression if i were to upgrade i'd only hit a similar rut further down the line - it's a perennial problem for anyone using computer hardware and doesn't have a lot of cash i guess?

My computer's about seven years old and I'm always putting off getting a new one because I've spent a long time installing many thousands of pounds worth of warez on it and it would be a pain to start all over again.

Anyway, I do this:

1. I have one main song file - i.e. blah.song - and when I've got basic tracks down I'll export blahroughmix.wav

2. I usually create two new song files - e.g. blah-guitars.song and blah-vocals .song - into both of which I import blahroughmix.wav, and fuck around recording the guitars and vocals in these.

3. When I'm done with guitar and vocals I'll export various wavs - main vocal, backing vocals, all the diff guitar parts etc. - and put them in blah.song

This is all nice and simple for me, not really a pain at all.

you make it sound so simple! i can't even understand myself why i have so much trouble with this, it feels like i'm tying myself up in knots. so many different versions of these tracks. i'll try and keep it simple as poss.

you got an audio interface? increase the buffer size? look into "direct monitoring" with your interface if having a bigger bigger buffer size makes latency too big and recording difficult.

can you bounce all the fancy reason stuff into single tracks and plop those in audacity to record?

glitching/stuttering usually = too many plugins running and yer cpu will crap out, or too many audio tracks running and yr hard disk will crap out.

not used reason before but is there a freeze option? where you can "freeze" any effects + automation in place, that'll save a load. (you can then go back and unfreeze). otherwise, take any reverbs off while you're recording, they're usually the most cpu hungry effects.

I'm trying to use the bouncing-down technique and it was working okay... until:

1. I suspect my bounce-downs sound different from the master tracks. Not sure yet, but I swear they lack a little oomph.

2. This is probably a Reason only problem, but I'm working on a middle section of a track where a tempo shift occurs. I exported the whole track and started working on some guitar sections. After hours of honing these, I bounced the guitar tracks down and put them back into the master section only to find that Reason is altering the tempo of my guitar tracks when the tempo shift occurs. This is unwanted because I naturally slowed down my playing during the recording phase, so they're being slowed down twice and going out of sync with the track. This happens even when I disable stretch.

3. This is a general issue: I find if I'm working on a separate section to be bounced up to the main mix, I'll encounter moments where playing (e.g. guitars) means I want to alter something like the physical layout of the main track (such as a rhythm section). This is where it starts getting messy because I end up with several different sections in various states of progression. I start losing track of what's going on and tying myself in knots. I guess this can't be helped and it's about maintaining a very rigorous workflow.

Most DAWs have a freeze track function that temporarily renders a track as audio within the song, cutting down on processor strain. It looks like Reason doesn't have this, which is strange.

no, i don't think it does this. you're right, it's a bit of an oversight. i guess propellerhead are confident in it being such a compact, all-in-one DAW that it's not necessary.

I think you're probably right when you say it's about maintaining a rigorous workflow. I also work with a slow/buggy computer (with Reason, which I've always found to be exceptionally solid) and consequently I don't even turn the bitch on until the song is essentially "written". Also, I try to mimic the method that seemed to work quite well waaaay back in the day when, as a rule, they seemingly always had different people to a. write the song, b. arrange the song, and c. perform the song. I do sometimes simply open up Reason and fuck around but that gets boring as my main thing has always been about the live & visceral aspect of music and not so much with the twiddling & tweaking of knobs.