1. Stay Organized
They say clutter suggests a creative mind, however at the end of the day, you still need to get some work done. When somebody asks you for a guitar tuner, or wants you to rout the keyboard through an outboard delay unit, you do not want to be the individual looking for setting or missing things up things that need to have already been set up.
The very same opts for your computer system– a great digital filing system is vital for any efficient studio, and DAW templates can be substantial time-savers too. Tasks like color-coding and labeling tracks can appear lengthy and tiresome at first, but in the end, you’ll work much quicker with efficient session versus a session where you need to hunt around on the screen each time you want to find your snare drum track.
2. Know Your DAW
On top of having excellent design templates established, understanding your DAW faster ways is an indispensable ability for making music rapidly (plus it will help you look cool in front of customers). With a fast command of your keyboard, you can edit takes and established routing on the fly to save you from doing the work later on.
Not only does this assistance you get your tracks sounding good earlier on in the recording procedure (another great way to impress customers), it also indicates you won’t have a huge chunk of work awaiting you when you get to the editing phase.
3. Print Your Effects
As much fun as it can be to mess around with results, this procedure is easy to get sucked into. Have you ever found yourself opening up one plugin to check out some reverb sounds, just to emerge from the studio hours later on with a glazed search your eyes, having just dealt with one guitar track all early morning?
Instead of spending hours in the blending phase trying different impacts, discover a sound while you’re taping and stay with it, or at the minimum, split your signal so you can print a dry variation together with the damp one.
4. Think Backwards
In his Speed Blending course, Joe Gilder of homestudiocorner.com shares one blending method that can totally change the method you blend: When most people learn to blend a tune, they typically start with one track (like a kick drum) and build their way out from there. Joe’s method, however, is the total opposite. Instead of applying EQ and compression to your kick drum, then carrying on to the snare, toms, and other parts of the kit, the faster and more efficient way is in fact to start with the drum bus and work your way backwards from there until you get to the specific parts of the package.
The exact same goes for the mix as a whole– instead of EQ’ ing one instrument at a time, begin with some EQ on your stereo bus and work backwards through your other buses, down to specific mics or individual instruments. Mixing in this manner, you’ll typically discover that by the time you get to a track like the kick drum, you don’t have much EQ’ ing left to do. This remains in contrast to investing a lot of time into a good kick drum sound, just to realize that this sound does not work when you’ve EQ’ ed the remainder of the package.
5. Concentrate on What Matters (and Overlook the Rest).
The in reverse mixing trick is a good way to help you focus on what matters in a tune, and shut out what doesn’t. Information and subtlety, obviously, are still essential– they can indicate the difference between a bad recording and a good one, or a good one and an excellent one– however try to keep point of view on which information are essential and which are unimportant.
You might get obsessed with trying to get rid of the amp noise on one guitar track, only to play it in context later on and realize you can’t even hear the sound. This is why it’s a good idea to avoid blending tracks in solo whenever you can.
Another method to train your ears to listen to the vital parts is to bear in mind to take frequent breaks while you’re mixing. This will prevent you from obsessing over the important things that don’t matter, and will help you hear the tune as a whole every time you return to it.
Conclusion.
Parkinson’s law states that “work broadens so as to fill the time offered for its completion,” and this is definitely what seems to happen with music production if we’re not mindful. The thing is, we frequently get similar arise from sessions that take a few hours versus sessions that take a few days.
Sure, faster does not always mean better, however if you can get more work carried out in less time, with equal or even greater outcomes, why not conserve some time and pick the quicker path?