Selection fluency matters

(This is sort of a specialized subset of my RTFM post from a while back.)

I was thinking randomly today about my level of fluency in various DAWs. I own a number of them, and use them in varying amounts depending on what I’m working on:

• Pro Tools: my main DAW. I use this for production and mixing, which is most of what I do.

• WaveLab Pro: I use this for mastering (including mastering stuff that I’ve mixed!).

• Logic: I use this for session compatibility when I’m working with an artist who works in Logic, which is a lot of them.

• Ableton: I use this for our live show.

And it dawned on me that when I think of my fluency in a DAW, it’s really tied almost exclusively to one data point: how good I am with making selections.

When you’re doing music in the computer, a whole lot depends on how accurately you can make selections, and how quickly you can do so. For many genres of modern music, the accuracy of your selections directly equates to the crispness and quality of your production. It’s the difference between a mediocre scene change and a "wow” scene change; between a cleanly-articulated vocal automation and an indistinct one; between quickly putting together accurate vocal comps and muddling through them.

At this point, I know most of the selection key commands for Pro Tools at a muscle-memory level. I know about 1/3 as many for WaveLab, and it shows; every so often, when I need to move waveforms around in a particular and fiddly way, I get badly stuck and it takes me literally 10 minutes to figure out how to do it.

Which completely kills my flow! I’m still learning that environment, and at this point I mostly know what I need to know to zip around — but the stuff I don’t know has the potential to really mess me up.

I would suggest this: you should know how to use your main DAW with a high degree of fluency. Because the more seamlessly you can interact with your working environment, the more it becomes a natural extension of your thought process — which is what allows you to best get at the ideas in your head.

An extra-nerdy RTFM encouragement — jamie