5 Biggest Time Wasters in Home Studio

 

It’s the most thrilling feeling to craft songs in home studio. You know the excitement when an inspiration sparks and the pieces start falling in place. Sadly, that’s not always the case. On the flip side, it’s the biggest frustration when you spend hours on your music and get nothing done. 

Whether it’s songwriting or mixing, it’s really annoying to leave the home studio empty handed. It sucks when your time is wasted. I’ve wasted days or rather months in my home studio. Believe me, I know what it’s like.

Can you pinpoint what are the tasks your time is wasted on? The things you spend your time on, but give nothing back. The first step is to acknowledge what eats up your time, and the next step is to get rid of those tasks.

I’ve started to get more done simply by figuring this thing out. However, it didn’t happen overnight, as some of the time waster tasks are actually really fun to do, and therefore I still sometimes get lost of doing them. For me the five biggest time wasters are the following:

1.Creating Everything From Scratch

Probably the biggest time waster regardless whether you’re writing a new song or mixing it, is to do everything from scratch each time. Doing the same mechanical stages of creating tracks, finding suitable sounds, routing, colouring, adding the same plugins etc. It is a waste of time because it has nothing to do with music. It’s just something that has to be done.

Why don’t you create a project for songwriting and another for mixing and save them for later as templates? When you’re songwriting, you can start with ready made tracks and sounds and when you’re mixing, you can import the tracks to your mixing project template, where you’ve got routings, colouring and plugins in place. This will save time, but also energy as you get straight to the point.

2. Searching Sounds

Searching sounds is a pain in the ass. Especially when looking for suitable synth sounds from a plugin that doesn’t seem to have any. It’s also frustrating to search a guitar sound that represent what you’re hearing in your head. You can’t go on before you find it. When you’re songwriting, you want to be able to create the music you hear in your head without any delays. The loss of sounds is not only a time waster, but a motivation too.

The answer is to save the sounds for later use. Each time you find a sound that resonates with you, SAVE IT. This is something I knew I had to do, but never seemed to remember to do. Please, do yourself a favour and just save the sounds you like. Once you start doing this, it feels revolutionary, as it fastens the process so much.

With “searching sounds”, I also mean mixing before everything is recorded. Just don’t do it. You have to start from the beginning anyway once everything is recorded and you’re actually ready to mix. Mixing a song before it’s finished will eat up your time like crazy. It’s fun, but try to resist it. It will only slow you down.

3. Focusing on Small Details Before Bigger Lines

This applies to both songwriting and mixing. It’s tempting to start fiddling with drum fills, meaningless little guitar licks or backing synth parts before you have the basic structure in place. When mixing, it’s fun to start adjusting the perfect snare sound. Guess what? It doesn’t matter as long as there’s no big picture – no basic balance. You’re wasting your time.

It’s like throwing spices on the plate that has no food on it. Spices are important, but only once you’ve got the bigger lines figured out first. The chances are, you’re not going to use these particular spices when you see the overall big picture, so you end up doing them all over again from the beginning.

Save time and focus on the big picture first. Smaller details can wait. It’s also easier to judge what you need later on. Do basic arrangement and instrumentation before starting to create massive synth arrangements to your intro. Also create drum beats on every part before spending time on small fills and details here and there. When mixing, start by focusing on the overall balance rather than small details.

4. Saving Options for Later

Saving options for later is a huge time waster for two reasons. One: You use time for recording several takes and you still might not have a good one. Two: You have to hand pick and edit them later on.

Also when you can’t commit to a sound, you’re delaying the decision until mixing phase, which slows down the mixing process considerably. Picking sounds and takes in the mixing phase is painfully slow and makes you not even want to start.

What you want to do instead is to record takes that withstands daylight. Record in such a way that “fix it in the mix” isn’t an option. Concentrate on the performance and commit to the sounds you’re using. Don’t delay the decisions.

5. Mixing with Tired Ears

Mixing with tired ears never leads to anything good. At that point, it’s going to be only a waste of time to mix any further. You’re working blindly, so how could you make the right decisions? You have to correct the wrongs the next time you open the project. This also leads to the biggest frustrations you’re going to face in home studio.

To prevent your ears from becoming tired, listen at low volumes in a good listening environment. When mixing in a space that has a lot of reflections, you can’t hear properly and your ears are getting tired much faster.

As your ears start getting tired and you feel like you can’t seem to focus anymore, do yourself a favour and take a break. You’ll end up saving some serious time.

Summary

Nothing kills the motivation like the feeling you’re not up to it. In truth, it’s rarely the lack of skills that slow you down. To keep music making interesting and motivating, it’s really important that you don’t feel that you’re wasting time.

Even though some of these tasks are fun to do, try to acknowledge what eats the most of your time without giving anything in return. The biggest time wasters for me are:

1. Creating Everything from Scratch
2. Searching Sounds
3. Focusing on Small Details Instead of Bigger Lines
4. Saving Options for Later
5. Mixing with Tired Ears

What are the biggest time wasters for you?

Thanks for reading. These PDF-guides will help you further with your music:

5 Steps to Create Music Faster  (..and avoid the writer’s block!)

6 Step Guide to Realistic Midi Drums

You can get them for free today, no strings attached, enjoy!

GET FREE ACCESS

 

Read also: “How to Have More Time for Music?”