#133: Get Better at Music Production with My Creative Workflow

Have you ever been frustrated with how to get better at producing music? Maybe you're seeking answers to topics on how to become a better music producer, how to create a workflow, how to become a better songwriter, or even how to release more music. Then check out EP 133 of the Inside The Mix podcast.

Join me and discover the power of a finely-tuned workflow, with DAW templates and organisation strategies that promise to streamline your creative process and supercharge your music production output.

This episode isn't just about looking back; it's also about crafting the future of your music. From the embryonic loop to the complexity of full-blown tracks, I'll guide you through evolving your musical sketches into rich, layered compositions. Embrace the method of revisiting past works with fresh ears and discover how an 'inspiration playlist' can be your secret weapon against the dreaded creative block.

Dive into my Producer Growth Scorecard challenge to experience how gamification can turn your music production and songwriting sessions into a high-score chase that's both fun and productive.

Grab your FREE Producer Growth Scorecard!
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Are you READY to stop procrastinating and release more music?
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Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:01

You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark Matthews, your host, musician, producer and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favorite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learned with you. Hello, folks, and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. If you are a new listener, make sure you hit that follow button and if you are watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe and that notification bell so you get notified anytime there is a new episode of the podcast. And to my returning listeners or viewers, a big welcome back.

Marc Matthews: 0:45

So, apart from the course, the weather in the UK at the moment is pretty terrible, as it usually is in February, but I'm led to believe it's going to get better anyway. So I went to Bodmin Jail yesterday with my fiance and it's the first time I've been there. Considering I live in Devon, you'd think I'd have been there sooner, but throughout February they're often 50% off and it was amazing. I absolutely loved it. So if you're ever in the Southwest and it's in Cornwall, so it's over the border, but it's not too far from where I am check out Bodmin Jail. So it was established in the 18th century, if I remember rightly, like 1793 or something like that, and it just goes throughout the whole history and there's this great virtual tour that I really enjoyed. But then just looking around the prison itself, the jail, it is amazing and I went to. So if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen this. I went to Shepton Manor Prison last year, which was still working as of about 15 years ago, something like that, and that was amazing. We spent like two hours there, maybe more, and you can see that throughout time as well. So there's a running theme with me and my fiance. We seem to like going to now, no longer running prisons, but it was amazing. Bodmin Jail loved it.

Marc Matthews: 1:52

But one thing that stood out to me they've got this list of all the people that have been hung there or hanged, and one of them I think this was in the 19th century, like 18 something or other. So this lad was actually hanged because he forged a £2 note, which I thought was astonishing. And another one was somebody stole an ox. So some of the reasons were just incredible. Obviously, you had the the pretty high profile ones of murder, but some of the reasons were just insane. But yeah, if you're ever in Cornwall or the Southwest, do go check out Bodmin Jail and if you've been there, let me know your thoughts, write them in the comments on YouTube or ping me a message on Instagram at Inside the Mix podcast.

Marc Matthews: 2:30

So this episode topic is a well, they are all really important to me, but this one in particular really helped me in releasing my EP last year, lost and Found which you can find on Spotify. I'll actually put a link in the episode to it if you want to check it out, but you probably would have heard if you're a regular listener of the podcast. I've been banging on about it up until the end of last year and, in particular, this is about sort of songwriting and music production routines, and what I'm going to present to you today is an amalgamation of all of the advice that I've gathered, that I've gleamed from these episodes and these chats that I've had with other producers, engineers and artists etc. And I've put it together and I've created this workflow that I now use to create and write music. So this workflow 10xed my output and also resulted in just like that progress and improvements that you get from just that continuous exercising of that creative muscle of songwriting.

Marc Matthews: 3:29

The key thing is, before I introduce to you this workflow that I go through, is to not wait for motivation. This workflow is all about setting each day whether it's five minutes, 10, 15 minutes or more whatever you can afford in your busy schedule is to be consistent. Don't wait for motivation to strike. Just go in there, sit down straight away at your DAW or your instrument and just start working on something. Now, for me as a producer, as an artist, I go straight to my DAW and part of helping me with this workflow is having a template set up with all my instruments that I frequently use for drums, bass, synths, whatever it may be, and also sends as well. So I know I can open up that template in my DAW and I'm not having to scrabble around looking for bass sounds, for synth sounds, for kit sounds. I can just go in and work straight away, because you don't want to spend those. If you've got five minutes, you don't want to spend those five minutes looking for the perfect snare and they're not actually right anything. So if you want to know how to put together the perfect template, I'm going to look to my left now. You need to check out episode 61 of the podcast, which is three tips for pre-production producer song from scratch, part one. So go check out that episode and I go through how I create a template and use that in my productions.

Marc Matthews: 4:47

Okay, so imagine you've got your template set up or you've got your instrument to hand, whatever it may be. So what I'm going to do now is show you how I start sort of the folder structure for putting all these ideas into some sort of order. So I'll describe this for those listening. But if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see I've got a project folder called Music Projects and within there I've got three folders. I've got one called ideas, I've got one called paused projects and ideas and I've got one called WIP, which is Work in Progress. So here's where I would start with my workflow.

Marc Matthews: 5:20

So each day of the week I dedicate 10 minutes of the day to just banging out ideas, just getting some ideas down, and what I do is I have this folder called Ideas, funnily enough, and I'm going to click on it and in this folder. I've got another folder for each day of the week, monday through to Sunday. So the idea here is that for the day of the week that it is, I'm going to save what I'm working on, the new project, in the corresponding folder. So let's have a look at one, for example. So I'm going to click on this Monday and you can see in here I've got synth pop, b, flat minor, 110 bpm.

Marc Matthews: 5:56

So another quick tip is I like to label my projects with a brief description of the genre, the key and the tempo. So I quickly know, okay, well, I know exactly what that is within reason in terms of concept, tempo and key. So if someone were to approach me and say, mark, if you get any ideas in this key, in this tempo, in this genre, I could do a quick search. I'm using a Mac here and I'll be able to find something along those lines, because what you could do here in theory is just build up a wealth of for one of the way of way of putting it is like beats. And then if someone were to approach you publishing company or an artist and say, if you've got anything in this particular style, you've got it all clearly labeled here.

Marc Matthews: 6:35

And another key tip as well is and I didn't do this straight away and it was a pain because I had to go back through and do it always, regardless of how much you complete in five minutes, whether it's just an eight bar loop bounce it, bounce it and have it there ready so you don't have to open the project to go in and listen and find out what it is. Basically and I was I got my fingers burnt and learned that the hard way. So learn that tip from me to, regardless of how long the project is, is to just bounce it and have it in the folder there with it. So I don't know what this is actually. This is back in February, the fifth, so let's have a quick listen and see what I have here. Okay, that's quite interesting and that probably a bit more than five minutes there, but there's a project that might take forward. So basically, we are going to be saving our ideas each day of the week into the corresponding folder.

Marc Matthews: 7:31

Then what I do is this I'll have a designated day each week separate to my writing time. So, for example, if I'm doing five or 10 minutes in the morning, I might do a revision, or rather I might go in and audition my ideas of a Monday afternoon. So the idea then is okay, I've got all these here bounce, and I can quickly go in and play them and then any I want to take forward into my work in progress stage, I can do that here. So what I'll do then is I'll open this folder and you can see I've got some projects that have moved from the ideas folder into my work in progress folder and you see again I've got them labeled with the genre, the key and the tempo, and there's also a few in here. You can see I've labeled them with the artist where I got the influence from. So in this instance here it's Heim, and there's one here called Backlegs and there's one called Synth Project One. I think that predates my new routine that I came up with. I think these ideas may well predate the podcast.

Marc Matthews: 8:37

I did actually go back at the beginning of this year and found some old projects that I had started probably about three years ago, and I think these are two of them that I want to revisit and maybe release. Who knows. But these are some of the ideas that I'm gonna take forward and I've started to label them with. I've got 01 and 02 at the top here, the idea being I'm gonna label them and rate them and put them in order of the ones I want to tackle first and I've started here and I need to make my way down through the rest. But that's. The next step in the process is set a day and time in a week, outside of the writing or production stage in the ideas process, and review your ideas and decide which ones you're gonna take forward into your work in progress. Alternatively, if I'm not gonna take them forward often, I'll put them in this paused projects, ideas here for me to come back to later. And again you can see I've started to label them in terms of importance. I've got one, two and then so forth and then the naming convention in here again.

Marc Matthews: 9:41

Some of these do predate my new routine. For example, aliens. I look at that and I figure it's something alien related. But you can see how it's much easier For this one here I've got Dominion Mother Russia F-121 BPM. I know immediately what that is, whereas with aliens or Anna idea one, I have no idea. So you can see, labeling them correctly makes it so much easier.

Marc Matthews: 10:05

The key thing as well here is that because they're in that folder. It doesn't mean they necessarily have to stay there. For example, if I go back to my work in progress folder here, I might find that I start this synth project. One First thing I'll do is rename it when I go in. But I might start working on that project and think, actually I'm gonna move it back to my paused projects. I don't feel it's quite there yet, I'm gonna put it on the shelf and come back to it later, and then you can sort of move them between these two folders of work in progress and paused projects. What I tend to do is, as you can see in the ideas folder here, until it gets a bit beyond an eight bar loop, I'll leave it in there. Then, when it gets a bit more substance to it maybe a whole chorus or a whole verse or something on those lines that I feel I can take forward then I'll move it into the work in progress. Alternatively, I might have an absolutely bang an eight bar loop and then move it into the work in progress. But it's entirely up to you. But I think these three folders here really do work well in terms of organization.

Marc Matthews: 11:04

Now I'm still refining this process, but I wanted to share with you what really helped me produce some great music last year and release some really good stuff. I released an EP last year the end of last year that I'm really proud of, and this workflow really helped me do that, in particular, not waiting for motivation, setting that routine daily. Okay, I'm gonna sit down at my door and I'm gonna try and write something and take that forward, and then I've got this bank of ideas and paused projects here that I can then come back to at a later date. So just to recap this workflow then so every day of a week, five minutes, 10 minutes you're going to dip into this ideas folder, find the relevant day, for example Monday, open your template in your DAW, write something, save it in here, bounce it and then leave it. Okay, then you're gonna come back to it in a week's time, let's say, and then you're gonna look and listen to what you've got in there and decide whether you wanna take it forward into either a work in progress so then you're gonna continue working on it or, alternatively, you're gonna move it into the paused projects ideas place here and then come back to it at a later date.

Marc Matthews: 12:15

Now with here, I'm still trying to work out a sort of hard and fast rule of when I move it out from ideas. But, as I said just now, I think if you were to have something with substance, maybe you just got a whole chorus or a whole verse but multiple instruments going on. I think something a bit more than an eight bar loop to move out of the ideas phase here. So I mentioned earlier just setting a day in a week whereby you go back and listen to all these ideas. Alternatively, actually thinking about it, you could just, for example, today is Sunday, so if I'm working on something on a Sunday, in a week's time I'll come back and I'll listen to what I did a week ago on a Sunday. You could do it that way. Alternatively, you could just have one day of the week whereby you listen to all of your ideas. So, whichever works for you, here's a great tip for inspiration Create a playlist and Spotify, youtube, soundcloud, whatever it is you use to consume music and call it inspirations.

Marc Matthews: 13:06

Anytime you hear a song that you like, save it to that playlist and you can use that whenever you are stuck for ideas or you're sitting down at your DAW and you wanna kickstart that songwriting. You know you can dive into that playlist and listen to some of those songs because you save them in there for a reason. You like them and they're gonna inspire you. And I used this to greater fact last year and it really did turn out my output in terms of songwriting, cause I knew whenever I got stuck for an idea, I could turn to my inspiration playlist. So give that a go. Folks create an inspiration playlist in whatever it is you use to consume music. So there we go Some top tips to improve your songwriting and your production output. Some really great stuff in there, and those tips and tricks really did help me last year in terms of my songwriting and it's gonna kickstart me this year as well.

Marc Matthews: 13:55

A podcast episode that you need to check out I'm looking to my left again here. It's episode 57, write songs faster key tips for better songwriting, with the safety word. So a lot of this workflow I've got here was taken from that episode and it worked wonders. So do go check that out. And also, while I've still got your attention head over to synthmusicmasteringcom, forward slash free and download my producer growth scorecard. It's a 28 day challenge. It's entirely free and the idea being you're gonna gamify your songwriting and music production and you're gonna 10X your output using this. I did it and it worked wonders. So head over to synthmusicmasteringcom. Forward slash. Free. Download my producer growth scorecard. There's a video there as well where I introduce it so you can get a better idea for it. Alternatively, you can click on the link in the episode description. So use these tips and tricks, release more music and happy producing and songwriting folks.