The Good Shit

I'll open this whole thing with a general breakdown for folks who just wanna get a setup like what I have going. I've organized (and kinda brute forced) my computer into being optimized for my workflow, using mostly free tools, scripts, and saved projects. Here's how I did it.

Sampling Anything, From Anywhere

The most useful and drastic change I made to the default Windows workflow is implementing an audio re-routing and sampling system. I use Voicemeeter to manage all the audio on my computer; this gives me the ability to route any application's audio through a number of different utilities. For example, my interface has a loopback channel, and the ASIO integration with Voicemeeter lets me make it an input/output within the mixer. Details are below; note that ASIO 5 and 6 are stereo channels for the interface-driven loopback.

This allows me to record any program's audio output into my DAW using the interface's ASIO, letting me sample Youtube, Instagram, music apps, or any google-dorked website I find.

Rolling Sampler Integration

This grows even more streamlined/quick to use when Rolling Sampler is factored into the mix. Rolling Sampler is a program developed by Bird's, and can be got for roughly $20usd. It's a simple program with one purpose: it records a certain amount of audio into a buffer and lets you drag-and-drop the audio out into other programs. Referring back to the figure above, the second virtual output on the mixer is used specifically with Rolling Sampler, letting me re-route audio to the buffer with a patchbay kinda system.

The DAW Side of Things

Eventually, all this work ends in the DAW. I use Fl Studio; I have since I started producing music, and I will until I stop producing, most likely. I've taken a bunch of steps to trim the fat and force FL into the shape I like. Some changes are aesthetic, some utility; most are meant to reorganize and streamline the program for my creative process.

Utility Bits

The least interesting changes involve my master bus; I've got a spectrometer and a stereo field analyzer, as well as a compressor and EQ which I keep switched off by default. These are perhaps a bit unusual; most of the producers I know will keep the master channel as lightweight as possible until the mastering stage. This isn't unfounded; stuff like compression does run the risk of ruining the non-processed mix if they're on for the entire production process. However, they let me produce without worrying about peaking, which lets me prioritize mixing purely for energy and intensity. I keep them switched off by default to avoid the downsides, but will turn it on when my mix gets sufficiently busy. This wraps up the master channel, and most of my utility bits revolve around FL's Current Channel feature. It serves as an alternate effect rack for whatever mixer channel is selected, and doesn't affect sound. On this channel I've put three visualization utilities for sound design: an oscilloscope, a spectrogram, and a peak meter. These insights into a selected sound's "shape" is useful for all sorts of stuff; creative design, more advanced mixing techniques, aesthetic purposes, etc. It lets me know, at a glance, what any wavefolding is doing to a bass, or exactly what an all-pass filter is changing about my sound. For the clipped, folded-over sounds I enjoy, this lets me make decisions about what kind of distortion to apply with more insight than simply what I can hear. The other Current Channel utility I have is another instance of Rolling Sampler, hosted as a plugin and moved to the bottom of my arrangement window for easy access.

The Streamlining!

This instance of Rolling Sampler shrinks the time-consuming process of resampling into a click-and-drag process, and represents in a nutshell the entirety of my approach to making a succinct and personalized workflow. Everything that requires more than a few clicks, or anything that I do immediately upon opening a project or an instrument, has been shrunk down as easy as possible. My empty project template has all the standard instrument processing plugins (think EQ, compression, filtering, etc.) loaded in before I even think to need them. My drum buss loads in with a tape sim and a compressor. The aforementioned compressor and EQ are on my master both because they provide a safety net for producing, but also because I use them as such every time I mix. Every step I take which could potentially break my creative flow has already been done for me when I load in an empty project. This extends to the mid-production process, too: I obsessively make presets for my plugins which switch settings on and off without changing the empty instance, and I've scripted several key commands which don't come default with FL using AutoHotKey. All of this is built purely to make creating in the moment as simple as possible.

The Bit Where I Yap About My Philosophy

"Creating in the moment as simple as possible" is a phrase that was brought up in a discussion with a friend about how to break writer's block, and the thing that inspired this whole blog. We were discussing inspiration and the creative flow, and I was trying to give tips on how "optimizing your workflow" could help avoid creative blocks. However, the whole conversation was overshadowed by the fact that the word "workflow" didn't have a clear denomination. Was it the plugins we usually used for specific purposes? Was it the whole of the DAW? Did our respective sample libraries contribute to it? The official Oxford definition is the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion but for the purposes of a conversation about the philosophy of our process, this is about as useful as nothing at all. As such, I'd like to propose this definition for the more theoretical segment of the blog post:

A workflow in this context is the ways in which the physical, technical aspects (like hardware and software) interact with one's creative process and vice versa.

This definition isn't perfect, but it works quite well for the purposes I want to discuss.

The Purposes I Want to Discuss

My main philosophy concerning workflows is one I've already mentioned before. An artist's workflow should, above all else, make the creative process as smooth and seamless as possible. Every moment where the artist loses focus on the act of creation or has to pull themselves out of their flow to futz with some bog-standard basic utility is a small hit to their concentration and their energy, and can be incredibly draining in the grand scheme of the production of a song. Although it could be a pleasant afterthought for some, I've had to develop this philosophy out of necessity. If I lose concentration I find it incredibly challenging to regain it, so I prioritize this clean, smoothed-out philosophy towards developing a workflow. This could be whatever the artist creating it needs; in fact, it should.