USE TIME WISELY
Jul 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Doug Eisengrein
Computers are indeed the miracle workers of modern music production, yet just about everyone who has ever worked creatively with one must have wondered at least once, “What am I, an artist or an engineer?” Those who are more technically minded naturally might consider themselves both and be perfectly happy in either role. But for those more creatively inclined, the less time spent fussing with the computer and the more spent actually making music, the better. For either type, however, increasing creative output means being as efficient as possible in the studio. By examining ways of increasing that efficiency, you can make more music and spend less time being your own IT person.
MICROCHIPS OR MIDI CABLES?
When talking about studio efficiency, the first topic is whether your entire studio is in your computer. If so, you're in luck because you don't have to deal with the physical-interface bungle. If you have outboard gear such as hardware synthesizers, effects processors and the like, you may have to deal with your computer and all of the extra gear, as well as how they all interact. If this is the case, you have to set it all up and assure that the entire system works as a cohesive unit — and that takes time.
So first things first: Isolate your setting up, testing and troubleshooting time from your music-creating time. It may be hard to spend entire sessions doing the dry work of configuring your system, but it's certainly no fun to stop in the middle of a creatively inspiring session to figure out some daunting technical issue. After setting up, you should spend plenty of time learning each component of your studio, and, yes, that includes reading the manuals. Although this, too, can seem dry and technical, it can often end up being pure experimental fun. When there's nothing at stake (like an album in production) and you're just playing around, you will likely find cool twists in your gear that will stimulate your creativity or expand your sonic palette. The better you know the functionality of each piece of gear, the less time you will spend during sessions trying to figure out how to get “that sound.”
QUICK WITH QWERTY
If the computer is your studio, then tips for increasing work flow get more specific. First, know your hotkeys. The many Control (PC) and Command (Mac) key combinations are some of the best tools of efficiency that you have at your disposal, no matter what programs you use — and that includes your OS. Instead of dragging your mouse around the desk or your finger across the track pad to accomplish every single command with the drop-down menus, you can easily turbocharge your work flow by first memorizing common key commands, followed by application-specific ones. Many hotkeys even translate across different operating systems. For example, Ctrl-O (PC) and Apple-O (Mac) execute the Open command for virtually every application that I know of. On PCs, even the main menus can be pulled down with Alt key commands. Corresponding hotkeys are always displayed alongside all menu items that possess them.
Most DAWs allow you to customize and save screen sets. If you work in an application that uses multiple windows and find yourself constantly clicking from window to window or if you have a small screen such as those found on most laptops, screen sets are an invaluable time-saver. Hotkeys, such as F1 through F12, are often used to activate different sets, and you can often customize those hotkeys. A similar time-saver is to create custom song templates. For example, suppose you work on 4/4 dance tracks, and you generally use the same basic kick pattern in much of your work. You can create a template song with the appropriate MIDI notes already set up for the kick-drum pattern and ready for you to apply a new kick-drum sound to the existing MIDI notes. You could potentially do this with several basic elements so that when you open the template to create a new song, a foundation is already there. Even if your music is not this genre-specific, you can still use this approach. For example, if you use a certain few soft synths over and over, make a song template with your favorites preloaded on as many tracks as you think you'll need.
FOLDER FINESSE
The next thing to do is organize your files. One of the most time-consuming tasks when working with computers is scanning your drive for files that you need. When files are nested several folders deep, it can be an absolute time killer. Therefore, try to avoid storing frequently used files deep within multiple folders. Next, make a system, and stick with it. Say you don't generally use audio files in more than one song. In this case, it might make sense to keep all audio files for a particular song in one folder and store that folder in the same directory (or folder) as the song. That way, backing everything up can be a simple and quick affair, and if you ever want to put the track aside and return to it later or remix it, you know where everything is. If, on the other hand, you tend to recycle sound files a lot or use multiple applications interdependently, you might consider keeping all of your audio files in one all-purpose audio-file folder. With that system, no matter where or on what you are working, you always know where to locate that certain sound.
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