Workflow is how efficiently you are developing your work to produce a high quality piece of music quicker. All famous composers, producers and musicians all must have a very good work flow when they produce there music, if you run into a distraction or you run into an obstacle in your music this can completely disrupt your workflow and slow down you productivity. There are many strategies and techniques to help you develop and improved workflow when producing music, we are going to talk about a few of them here on this page.
keyboard shortcuts
A keyboard shortcut is a configuration of keys you can press to quickly access a menu or tool from you DAW. The most popular shortcuts today that you may know are (command C) for copying something and (command V) for pasting an item somewhere else. Logic and other DAW’s such as Ableton have many keyboard shortcuts, Logic is the DAW I have been using this project and from my experience in using it here are some keyboard shortcuts I have learnt while working on this project: R (record), S (solo) and space bar (pause / play). In my music I also added markers so I that I knew where each section began and ended, there is a keyboard short cut to quickly go to these markers. To do this the keyboard shortcut is a umber between 1 and 10. Number one will take you the first marker in your template while 10 will take you to your 10th marker. These are just a few of many keyboard shortcut’s on Logic, these help productivity as it stops you from wasting time while searching for specific menus or tools.
Comofort
Comfort is very important when producing music, this is because if you are feeling agitated or uncomfortable you will not be able to produce high quality work. A few causes of discomfort can be headphones hurting your head, lack of back support from your chair or your studio items may be out of reach. To solve this issue before working on a studio session out must male sure everything is set up correctly to create and effective and comfortable work environment. Comfort should always be priority when sitting down for long hours at a computer, this is because you may develop long term health conditions with your body if it is not comfortable in its physical environment.
Organised Template
Unorganised template with many tracks can cause a producer to get lost in their own project, this can waste time when they are trying to find one track in a sum of around 60. When a project becomes hard to navigate around it is essential that it is organised to improve work flow. I learnt this in my mixing stage of the project, this is because I had a lot of tracks that all had numbers for names. This made my track very hard to navigate around and I realised that I had to organise it to improve my workflow. To organise your project you should delete all tracks you are not using out of your project as this only makes your template unnecessarily crowded. MIDI channels can also lead to system overload because the MIDI files take up a lot of CPU and too much can cause the computer to crash. System overload kills your workflow as it put’s a temporary pause on your music disrupting your production time. A popular method of organisation is grouping instruments into their instrumental families, this includes :percussion, woodwinds, strings and brass. grouping instruments will allow you to find specific instruments more effectively.
Sample Organisation
Sample libraries are very good as they can give you high quality instrumental sounds outside of the stock DAW plug-ins. Samples can allow you to make realistic compositions with lifelike sounding instrumental samples recorded by orchestras and professional musicians. However too many samples can crowd up you computers Hard drive making it very difficult to find the right sample for your music. To solve this over populated sample library issue you can put them into organised folder such as: bass drums, trumpets, choirs and pianos. Organising your folders alone will help you navigate yourself more effectively around your sample library. It is important that each composer has a unique sound in their music that makes them stand out from the other composers, this is why you should make a folder consisting of your favourite and best quality samples. This will help you find your favourite samples and produce the highest quality music you possibly can.
reference tracks
Sometimes when you finish your track and compare it to mainstream mixes sometimes you can find that the mix or arrangement can sound unprofessional in comparison to others. To avoid this problem you should be comparing your composition to your reference track throughout the development of your track, this will help you understand how to alter your music to develop it professionally. Also when saving your progress never overwrite your previous save, this is so that you can compare your current save with the previous, this will help you understand what you are doing correctly as well as what you need to work on more. If you follow reflect on both your own progress as well as the reference track you will have the potential to create a professional sounding composition.
Disable Distractions
When making music outside distractions can sometimes get in the way of our work and disrupt our progress, the main distractions when it comes to production are from our phones, family and friends. Being distracted can completely take us out of the production mind set, this can cause us to produce poor quality work or be completely unproductive. To avoid these distraction you can put your phone on silent and out of the way or log out of social media, this will stop your phone from distracting you with text messages or social media notifications. To stop others around you from distracting you from your work you can politely ask them to not interfere you while while you are working, When these distractions are out of the way you will be able to direct to your full attention to your music.
These are a few of many ways you can easily improve your workflow when composing more. Everyone has different minds and has different methods to creating A effective work flow in the own personal preference. The methods I have mentioned are viewed upon on a more universal perspective.
Reading List
Music, C., 2016. 10 ways to speed up and improve your production workflow. [online] Computer Music. Available at: <https://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/10-ways-to-speed-up-and-improve-your-production-workflow-627873> [Accessed 26 May 2021].