In FL Studio (but probably your DAW too if you use this as a conceptional thing)

Nothing feels more disenchanting in the creative world than the word ‘efficiency’.

It’s language reserved for corporate board members squeezing the worker for a 1% increase of the price on their stock options. Its the reason delivery drivers have to choose between the empty plastic bottle or stopping at a restroom and being fired mid-shift, its how huge global corporate fastfood resturants make sure that you get your bland tasting burger and fries in under some arbitary amount of minutes some research discovered the average point where people get annoyed of waiting.

Imagine a world where you couldn’t doom-scroll because your algorithm isn’t perfectly tuned to be not so interesting it embraces further thought but not so boring you choose to do something else? That’s a hellscape I am just NOT ready for.

In the modern day, I think its safe to say that when you really think about, efficiencies reputation is pretty dirty. It’s reprogrammed us to expect things in a certain way with very high expectations, like how we get slightly annoyed when our 1-day delivery actually comes a day late or when the little car on the app takes a route to your destination that you just ‘know’ is longer because you’ve lived in this place all your life.

We’ve grown love it in our day-to-day so why do we choose different for our musical ventures?

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Remember when you’d just call a number and say you wanted a taxi? you’d give your address over the phone and then the kind of angry person on the other end would give you a rough estimate of how long to wait and a rough description of the car “Yeah, they’ll be with you in 5-288000 minutes mate, blue Astra” then you had to listen for cars coming down your street hoping that it’ll be your guy? Sitting there with your coat and shoes on just not knowing when you’ll actually be going to your destination. Worse yet, when the cabbie turns up, you have to walk around the back of the car first because you don’t even know what an Astra is but you play it off by saying “ahh, I thought it was that model, had to walk around and see” in a frail attempt of showing a stereotypical sense of masculinity….Anyway you get going, you remember you forgot to top up your phone with £5 credit so you can’t even tell your mate theres traffic and you’ll be wayyyy later than you said. When you finally get there, cabbie flicks on that little roof light on and the cabbie goes “Yeah that’ll be £8 please mate” and here comes the choice..

Do I break the fresh £10? Its been a long journey…so I should probably just tell him to keep the rest, supporting the working class right? Yeah but you do have a couple of pound coins in your pocket, could I give the £10 note, £3 in coin and ask for a fiver? What if he doesn’t have a note?

“Ahh- heres ten mate, keep the change”

And that my friends is me describing your workflow. Its messy, archaic and quite honestly, anxiety enducing just like trying to catch a cab pre-uber.

Sometimes things need to get better, sometimes you need to grow up.

Don’t worry, your pal Chris is here to show you how to make the annoying things a little bit easier so the important things are more special, let me teach you how to modernise yourself while still keeping what keeps you, you and most importantly, fixing your ugly, inefficient workflow and project files.