Work Smarter In The Studio

Fitter, stronger, happier, more productive… Streamline your workflow and live your best studio life with our top production hacks

Manage your projects like a pro to get a better studio life

Music-making is, of course, a highly creative endeavour. It requires a balance which is almost impossible to quantify; with one respectful eye on music’s rich past and the other looking to help shape its future. And so it’s no surprise that musicians dedicate their lives to this pursuit, with performing musicians spending hours in practice rooms refining their technique and those of us who write their notes and phrases constantly seeking out new textures, new harmonies, new structures.

Set against the hours we spend actually getting on with being a musician, streamlining our creative process is easy to postpone. Musicians are often their own worst enemies, sacrificing sleep, daylight, an appropriate level of fitness and more, in order to spend more hours in pursuit of musical enlightenment. And yet this is so much more likely to come if we spend some time thinking about workflow and our working environment, seeking ways to not only be musically free, but organised and methodical too. The benefits are almost impossible to calculate but, never ones to shirk a challenge, we’re exploring many of them over the next few pages.

An Environment For Creativity

We all have a utopian vision of the ‘perfect’ creative process. Picture the scene; you come to your studio

space, a good night’s sleep in the bank and a steaming coffee or glass of water in your hand. Your mind is a blank canvas, ready for the creative Gods of Fate to guide a path to musical heaven, or perhaps you’ve already been singing a hook in your head for the past 10 minutes which you’re about to turn into production gold. You boot up your computer and close your eyes with a smile on your face; life is good. Right then, reality check time. Almost always, music-making isn’t like this. Instead, we wrestle with our creative inner demons, have days when all we want to do is throw our computers at the wall, wish we had a new piece of gear to get us out of a creative slump or wonder why we can never get beyond the first 16 bars of any new tune. The reality is that what we songwriters, producers, engineers, composers, remixers and sound designers do is, to quote a cliché, 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration and, without fail, those who succeed and climb the highest are also those who work the hardest.

And of that chosen few, there’s another factor which is common; they’re the most organised. Their studios and working environments invite exactly the kind of creativity hinted at in the first paragraph above because – cliché number 2 coming up – a clear workspace equates to a clear mind. Imagine a situation where, upon boot up, your computer was ready for you to get straight to work, without the faffing around of plugging things in, without wasting minutes finding specific plugins or reaching for the same ones at the very beginning of the writing stage of each new session. Imagine not having to wade through lists of disorganised effects or having to navigate plugins you don’t really know how to use. And that’s even before we’ve begun to discuss the delicate balance which needs to be struck whenever you’re collaborating with someone else. Just think about how much more streamlined and inspiring your songwriting sessions would be if a microphone was already plugged into your computer so that when inspiration strikes, you’re ready to capture it.

And is there anything else you can do to make the chance of inspiration striking that much more likely? In short, yes. And through the following tips, tricks, advice and examples, we’re going to see just how much more productive you’re likely to be if your workflow and studio environment are streamlined. We’re going to advise you on how to make your working space feel like it’s ready to work as hard as you are. We’ll suggest some setup tips for your DAW so that it’s ready to make music at the speed of sound. Let’s risk one more cliché: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. So let’s get prepared.

Make your working space feel like it’s ready to work as hard as you are