Work Process Streamlining

Working in a competetive creative field means to work as efficient as possible. 

When budgets are tight and competition is fierce you need to find ways to make your working processes as streamlined as possible in order to still generate some profit from such projects.

But of course even more important are streamlined working processes on projects that have a tight deadline.

In any case, you should put a lot of focus on making things more efficient. Interestingly I see even seasoned composers/producers working in the field who developed unneccessarily complicated work patterns just because they got used to them and never bothered to investigate whether there was an easier way.

There are several areas where you can start trying to adjust your work efficiency:

1. Software Knowledge

Even though you might have been working in a DAW or Notation Software for years and think you know all the ins and outs, there might still be ways to speed up certain processes. Those might have either been introduced in more recent updates that you didn't follow too closely or you simply didn't realize you could do that when you got to know the software initially. Pay particular attention to work steps that you repeat a lot, even if they individually take just a few seconds or clicks, they might have some huge accumulated time saving potential. One field that is often neglected but usually incredibly powerful are Macro functions or built in Scripting. Even if your programming skills are virtually non existant (like me), you might find free scripts/plugins online that you can use (e.g. for Sibelius) or might be able to combine several simple macros to perform rather complex operations. I also recommend reading Manuals or watching Youtube Tutorials on the software from time to time as you might get some new ideas how to improve the workflow by that.

2. Key Commands

I know this is a sensitive matter for some people and there are quite a few people who work very mouse driven and hate the abstraction level of key commands and controlling software with the keyboard rather than the mouse but for the sake of efficiency, most software works dramatically faster with being controlled by keyboard than by mouse.

Particularly complex software with lots of possible functions (e.g. Sibelius/Dorico) benefits tremendously from prefering keyboard over mouse usage. Practically every professional software nowadays allows to set custom key commands for practically any function which you should make use of especially with the things that you use a lot. Three clicks through dropdown menus 50 times a day will add several minutes of wasted time to a process that would take a fraction of a second with a key command.

Of course one big issue is to memorize all of the commands, especially when you set up a lot of those. There are often custom keyboards for purchase for specific software that have coloured keys as well as the key command functions printed on them.

My personal solution to this is an external controller right next to my keyboard. As I like the haptic feedback of real buttons I use two Elgato Streamdecks which work incredibly well for me. Basically you can programm these keys even in different sub layers to display a custom icon or image and perform a key command or series of key commands when you press them. I'm not affiliated in any way to this company but they save me incredible amounts of time since I use them. Particularly in notation software the ability to sequence several key commands after each other under one button press saves incredible amounts of time even if you know your key commands very well. You can set up a profile for every software which will automatically launch when you start the respective programm and customize it completely. There are profiles for several programs for purchase available, for instance at Notation Express, which are really great and still freely customizable to fit your workflow most efficiently. With an additional plugin you can even send Midi CC values with it.

For even more advanced functions there are several different available solutions for tablets available like TouchOSC or Lemur but they usually need a bit more time and knowledge to program and lack the feedback of pressing an actual button.

3. Work Place

I already spoke in an earlier article about how important it is to create a dedicated work space for creative work to predictably get your brain into the proper "work mode" but also the way how you structure your work space is extremely important to be efficient. Try to get all the devices you regularly touch within comfortable reach. If you need to rotate your chair or even roll over to your midi keyboard every time it might not have the most efficient spot. Try to organize all things in a way that you need to move the least in order to reach or see it. 

Also, invest some money into the things you touch the most. It is always fascinating to see how many professionals work with the cheapest mouse or a crappy chair and complain about wrist or back pain. One great thing might be a multi button mouse that allows to customize the buttons and put key commands on them. I have my most used key commands mapped on a 5 button mouse which even saves me the fraction of a second to hit the key on the Stream Deck.

I also cannot stress enough how important sufficient monitor real estate is. Constantly needing to tab through several windows to find the right one because you cannot display all the essential ones on you screen(s) eats up insane amounts of time. Invest some money into getting maybe a second or even third screen if you have the space to put them comfortably in your view. If your computer doesn't have enough monitor outputs consider buying a USB screen which works on every USB3.0 or higher port and doesn't need any support by the graphics card. Particularly with notation software, I can recommend buying a really large screen with 4K resolution or monitors that have a 90° pivot function to display a full score page at readable sizes.

4. Templates

This is probably best know to most people so I'm only gonna mention it briefly here: Set up individual work templates in your software. There is no reason to constantly repeat steps every time you start a new project instead of having a template ready to go once you open it. Setting up a proper template in a DAW might be several days of work but it will pay off in the long run. But also setting up templates in notation software can be very effective. I prefer a certain set of notation properties and font styles etc. in my score sheets so setting them up evey time I start a new score sheet just takes time that I can save by having a template ready to go.

None of these are measures that will suddenly speed up one work process by miles but it is more about shaving these few seconds off of working steps that you do repeatedly. It is also important to observe yourself when you work and critically analyze where you could speed up things, where you need to dive through several sub menus or scroll around for two seconds to get to where you were looking for and how you could build a shortcut for that.

In the end having a streamlined workflow will also improve your general motivation as eliminating small mildly annoying processes by speeding them up will sum up to a generally better mood and it doesn't matter whether you use the gained time to finish your work day earlier or to play and experiment around more essentially making you work on things for the same amount of time. The prospect of saving accumulated several hours a week by streamlining steps that don't need to take as long as they do without optimization should well be worth any effort you put into it.

I will give you a little tour through my current work setup in one of the next parts but always consider that these are very personal as everybody has their own preferences and needs where exactly a speed up is needed. But you should definitely make a habit of regularly thinking about where you could improve and actively take these measures even if it involves some uncomfortable un-learing procedures at first.