Streamlining your music production workflow for an efficient music-making process.

Music Production Productivity and Workflow Tips

There was a time when recording had to be simple, because there was no other choice. Studio time was expensive, tape recorders only had a handful of tracks, and most of the effects we know and love hadn’t been invented. Now that those limitations don’t apply any more, recording should have got easier, but it hasn’t! With no studio clock ticking, we end up diving down rabbit holes and chasing our own tails. Learning to keep things simple can make our music not only better, but also faster, and more enjoyable to produce.

Invest Your Time In Pre-Production

The benefits of simplicity start at the beginning: with the material. That doesn’t mean that a three-chord punk song is better than a complex prog-rock piece. It means that a well structured, well arranged, well routined piece of music is a better starting point than a collection of half-baked, unrehearsed ideas. The process of getting your material in shape before recording starts is called pre-production, and it’s something successful producers lay great stress on. If you’re in a band, make demos and listen back to them. If you’re working with a group, go to their gigs and rehearsals, take notes on what works and what needs tightening up. Try out different arrangement ideas in the rehearsal room and commit to them at this stage. If you’re making electronic music by yourself, be bold about muting, editing and committing MIDI parts to audio, and get the arrangement in shape before you start mixing.

Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

Similar considerations apply when recording real instruments. Just because you can put four mics on a guitar amp doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, and just because you have unlimited tracks doesn’t mean there’s any benefit in double-tracking everything. Take the time to get the part and the sound right before you hit record, then capture it once. Leaving yourself endless mix options will just make the mix process slower and more difficult. Likewise, if you’re given someone else’s multitrack to mix, don’t assume that you have to use everything they’ve recorded. If the bass amp track sounds great as it is, why waste time trying to phase-align a bass DI track to it? Just hit Mute and move on.

Use Stereo Processors In Moderation

Something that can make any production hard to mix is too much stereo. Digital keyboards, samplers and soft synths love to spit out expansive stereo sounds, because they sound impressive in isolation and help to sell instruments. Some engineers love to mic everything in stereo, because, well, they can. And some DAW programs love to export every part in a multitrack as stereo even when the sources are mono, which can be a nuisance when you’re mixing someone else’s session.

A wide stereo mix may be your ultimate goal, but the way to achieve it is not to have everything within the mix be stereo. Rather, keep the number of stereo elements to a minimum, use a lot of mono tracks, and be bold with the pan controls. Some early stereo mixing consoles had switched panning, where each track could only be placed hard left, hard right or straight down the middle. Try taking the same approach with your DAW software. Go further and begin each mix in mono, listening on a single speaker: for many engineers, this is the fastest way to get a good balance of instruments.

Consider The Whole Mix

Keeping the mix process simple is easier if you bear in mind one key point: the only important thing is how the mix as a whole sounds. It doesn’t matter if the acoustic guitar sounds a bit ropey in solo, because no-one but you will ever solo it. But it does matter if the overall balance of the mix is off, and that doesn’t just mean some instruments being too loud or too quiet. What’s often harder to get right is the tonality of the mix. Does it have enough bass? Is it bright enough? Is there enough energy in the mid-range?

Make Broad EQ Strokes First

It’s hard to keep the bigger picture at the forefront of your mind when you’re adjusting the EQ on individual instruments. For this reason, starting the mix process by applying a global EQ can greatly speed up the process of getting your mix up and running. Rather than adding top end to every track in the mix individually, get a rough balance of instruments on the faders and then insert a good EQ plugin on the master bus. Nine times out of ten, adding a few dB of high-frequency shelving boost, turning over somewhere between 1.5 and 5kHz, will immediately start to make the mix sound more like a record. Use master EQ to get the tonality of the whole mix into the right ballpark first, and only then apply channel EQ to anything that still sounds too dark or bright. It’s easier to retain focus, you’ll save time and you won’t waste CPU cycles adding EQ plugins to everything individually. And if that doesn’t help you we have Mixing and Mastering guide for beginners you can check out.

Stay Organized

The same advantages can be gained on a smaller scale by taking advantage of your DAW’s groups, auxiliary channels, busses and folder tracks. If you’ve recorded a multi-miked drum kit, you’re always going to want to edit all of its constituent tracks in one go, so turn them into an Edit Group or place them within a folder. Likewise, routing all of them to a single stereo bus or group track allows the entire drum kit to be processed and turned up or down in one go.

Tackle The Hardest Part First

Another simple way to use your mixing time more effectively is to get the most difficult section of the track mixed first. A common problem with home-studio recordings is that as the track builds, the balance of instruments goes wrong, compressors start working too hard, and the tonality becomes harsh. Keep the mix process simple, then, by not beginning with the start of the song. Instead, locate your DAW’s playhead in the busiest section of the track and take that as the starting point for your mix.

Ask Non-Techy People For Their Opinions

Finally, one of the most important things that a good producer brings to a recording project is a fresh set of ears. If you’re in the band, or you make music on your own, the chances are you’ve lived with your material for so long that you’ve lost any sense of perspective about what works and what doesn’t. So if you’re recording yourselves, ask other people for their comments. If they’re not technically minded or musical, so much the better, because they will be looking at the wood, not the trees. You’re not looking for comments along the lines of ‘The snare drum needs a bit more 3kHz’: you’re looking for broad-brush opinions, things that music fans will notice about your music. Perhaps the intro is too long, or you can’t hear the words clearly. It’s these bold, simple changes that will turn a flawed track into a great one.

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