Armin van Buuren teaches how to organize music projects

Organzing projects is something a majority of music producers struggle with. On an average every project has atleast 60 audio and MIDI channels. Though organzing projects doesnt have a direct corelation on the quality of music production however it’s well proven that organizing projects leads to faster workflow and easier implementation of ideas.  Five times number one DJ in the world,  Armin van Buuren is teaching aspiring music producers how to organize projects in his MasterClass. Here are some takeaways from his MasterClass to give you an overview of what he talks about in the 4th lesson.

| Best VST Plugins of 2021 – Read Here

Templates 

A template is the starting screen of every DAW. It has a clear overview of where you place every sound but it can be a lot of work do the same steps all over again. Hereby it comes in handy to save your template with the setting and sounds already at the start. That way you don’t have to worry about finding sounds, you can let your creativity take you on a journey. For Armin, it’s important that the tempo is at a 130 bpm arrangement. When pressing play he instantly has a kick drum playing, a standard bass, leads connected to his keyboard, and white noise to use as a first effect. Besides that, he uses busses to send every sound to. Everything goes into 1 bus, while that bus is routed to 2 other busses where he doesn’t apply dynamic processing and some dynamic processing. Why? It’s important to switch between the sauce that goes on top of all your sounds and the dry sound. You can check easily if the dynamic processors are killing the dynamics too much.

Organize

It’s important to grab the art in the moment action. Feeling inspired and ready to start a new song. You don’t want to look for samples and search for that one sound. That will kill your creativity. Save a template with the essential samples and sounds you need to easily start a demo. Also, color-code your samples, that way you can find every sample in a second. For example, color code the drums red, synths blue, and Fx pink. That way it has a clear overview, not only for yourself but also for a co-producer. Always group your samples so you know where to find everything.

Archiving

Save whatever you do and use version numbers. If you are working on a track for someone else, it can happen that they changed their minds and still want to use that one synth that you’ve used in early versions. That sound is gone if you’ve overwritten every project. That’s what you want to avoid and be a professional person to work with. It’s also important for yourself to have different versions because it can happen that you are losing the magic of the track. In that way, you can go back to the previous version where it still has that magic to it. This whole masterclass is useful for yourself to step up your game, take your business seriously, and give your creativity a bigger chance to take over control.

Back up

Your computer is running so smoothly, everything is working great and you just finished your new album. The last thing that can happen is that your computer crashes and you lose everything. That can happen. Be prepared for everything. If you’ve lost all your samples, projects and someone can get it all back. You will pay him whatever he asks right? Invest that money in professional hard drives or even a copy software that automatically copies your whole catalog to the hard drive. It’s important to understand that your work is also as important as the work of the bigger artists. You never know what song will be a hit, so be prepared.

The tips and tricks stated here on the masterclass ‘Armin teaches how he organizes his projects’ are a synopsis of the Masterclass by Armin van Buuren. Armin van Buuren’s masterclass is available at a price of $90 for lifetime access, or $180 per year for the all-access pass, which grants unlimited access to all new and existing masterclasses. You can check out Armin van Buuren’s masterclass by clicking the button down below.

Read the next article: Armin van Buuren Teaches How To Build A Homestudio

Image Credit: Ushuaïa Ibiza (Press) / Provided by NEU Communications