One of the tutorials this October is about workflow and how to make better use of your time in the studio. It's such an important topic and i wanted to elaborate further on setting yourself up for time in the studio, and just as Benjamin Franklin once said 'By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail'.
Trial and error over and over again will teach you more about your DAW than watching countless videos of one persons methods. Although these videos will definitely help you step up the ladder faster, by know why something doesn't work, or what possible alternate routes are available will make you a much better producer.
So I want to encourage you guys to think outside of the box on your approach and set some extra curricular activities you can do each studio session to increase your production skills.
- Sound Design - This is purely a creative session for processing and resampling audio, starting patches from scratch and saving samples for use another time.
- Clean Up Your Computer - Free your headspace by organising your sample folders, consistent renaming of instrument or effect racks, tagging go to samples. Check through old dusty projects that aren't going anywhere and bounce any decent sounds out then delete the project for good.
- Sample Digging - Trawl through sites like splice for any cool sounds, be free with how you listen to the sounds rather than trying to place them into your current projects. Hit record when you watch a film, youtube, or listen to music to pick out any audio clips and sound bites to manipulate later.
- Watch Tutorials - But reverse engineer any presets, learn why and how a certain technique works the way it does
- Listen to Music - To improve the quality of your work, compare it to the best who really know what their doing. Reference their tracks to yours to understand the difference in levels, peaks and dynamics
- Try Writing Another Genre - This has helped me out so many times, routine can be a killer for creativity so stepping out of know formulas can open up new techniques and sounds that will ultimately inspire your drum and bass productions.
- Play - If you've gone through the whole list or you just can't stare at your screen any longer then pick up an instrument, make sounds, work out the relationship between certain notes that will help you lay down melodies when its needed when your stuck into a project.