6 Tips For Speeding Up Your Music Production Workflow

Get to know your DAW inside out

Our first essential pointer should be obvious, but if you don’t know the technical nooks and crannies of your digital audio workstation like the back of your hand, you can’t hope to maximise your workflow within it. Sure, if you only ever record and mix audio, it’s perfectly reasonable to pay only cursory attention to the MIDI aspects of your DAW; while the electronic producer working almost exclusively with synths and samples probably doesn’t need to drill too far down into the specifics of recording, cue monitoring, comping, and other such functionality. However, as well as being an expert on all the stuff that’s relevant to your particular musical paradigm, you should also aim to be at least proficient in everything else that your software platform of choice brings to the party. So, in a nutshell, read the blimmin’ manual!

Build your own project templates

If you’re still starting your tracks from a completely blank DAW project, then you clearly haven’t yet discovered the turbo-charging joy of project templates. A template is simply a pre-configured project with all the input assignments, channel strips, amp sims, synths, samplers, drum machines, insert effects, auxiliary routings and anything else you always need to get started already in place and ready to rock, thereby saving you a ton of setup time. Most DAWs include some form of template storage and management system, streamlining the organisation of your own ready-to-go starting points and making light work of handling multiple templates for different project types (‘Small Band’, ‘EDM’, ‘Orchestral Score’, etc); but if yours doesn’t, all you need to do is build your template(s), save it/them out for repeated future use, and perhaps set the most frequently deployed one as the default ‘New project’ in your DAW’s preferences.

Use channel presets

Along similar lines to project templates, channel strip presets accelerate your workflow with the ability to construct complete channel strips, including routings, insert effects, EQ, dynamic processing, etc, for one-click instantiation whenever you need them. Creating channel strip presets should be as straightforward as saving any existing mixer channel via a drop-down menu somewhere, and your DAW will already have a folder structure in place for its own factory library of strips that you can add to as you see fit.

Of course, in reality, no two channel strips are ever identical, so you will always have to tweak the various components to suit the input signal and mix; but having a cache of starting points for a variety of instruments and mixing schemes readily to hand can be a serious time saver.

Get your sounds in order

With the average producer’s sample library adding up to many gigabytes of disparate hits, loops and multis, it can be all too easy to put off the job of organising them into a sensible and meaningful folder hierarchy. This is well worth doing, though, particularly when it comes to affording ready access to samples you find yourself using over and over again – those never-fail kick drums, handclaps, spot effects, etc. One effective approach is to create a separate library to your main sample pool for those go-to sounds, then make sure you keep both libraries neatly organised in whatever way works best for you (by instrument type, genre, tempo, etc). And to take your sample library navigation workflow to the next level, get yourself a good librarian application, such as Sononym, Waves Cosmos or ADSR Sample Manager.

Take control with key commands

For the ultimate workflow supercharge, nothing beats mastering your DAW’s key commands. Every DAW offers a library of key presses and combinations with which to shortcut all the menu entries, navigation controls and editing functions you’re likely to need, and while some are better equipped than others in this department (Logic Pro, to give the usually-cited example, is almost overwhelming in the scope of its options here), all of them are more than adequately stocked to make the operational speed of those prepared to put the work in learning (and perhaps customising) them so much faster than those that don’t. Most DAW‘s even have functions that can only be accessed via the keyboard, so be sure to scrutinise the entire list in your key command editor, rather than just perusing all the menu entries.

Keep your system tidy

The days when keeping your music computer free of anything non-music-related and resolutely offline felt imperative are long gone, and in 2024, there’s absolutely no need – assuming you follow sensible security and backup practices, natch – to avoid the internet or ring-fence your Mac and PC off from every other aspect of your digital life. The downside of this versatility, though, is that the computer you use to make music can easily get messy, with documents, downloads, plugin demos, samples, presets, informational resources and general detritus strewn all over its hard drive, all of which can potentially bog you down when you’re in the flow. We’ve already discussed staying on top of your sample library, but it also pays to make an ongoing effort to keep your DAW and the computer hosting it free of clutter, and ensure that everything involved in your musical adventures is right where you expect it to be at all times. Uninstall all those demos and never-used plugins, archive your old projects properly, tidy up your desktop, run a system cleaning application… And for the ultimate in clinical focus, you could even consider setting up a separate macOS or Windows user account, stripped back to simulate a dedicated music computer with all potential distractions hidden from view.