We’ve never had so much choice when it comes to the tools we use to make music — but it’s important that you can choose quickly, and with confidence.
Music production was once a simpler affair. Sure, as technology advanced, we started to develop more sophisticated techniques, running ever more mics through increasingly large mixing consoles and out to a tape machine. But even once we’d thrown EQ, compression, reverb and effects into the mix, the production process as a whole remained relatively quick and straightforward. Today, computers, DAW software and, increasingly, plug‑ins lie at the heart of our projects, and these powerful systems give us affordable access to pretty much any ‘gear’ we want. Plug‑ins can be used for so many tasks, and they’re almost instantly available, which makes them convenient. The possibilities are endless — and that’s all good, right?
Overchoice & Shiny Objects
The thing is, it’s precisely because plug‑ins are so quick and easy to acquire that they bring with them a significant risk of temptation. We can then end up acquiring so many of them that we can become paralysed by the sheer number of options. Lots of us burn precious time and energy worrying about which compressor or EQ plug‑in might be the optimum choice to shape a given sound. And that distracts us from focusing on what’s really important: the music, the groove, the feel of a production, and finishing that production!
...plug‑ins are so quick and easy to acquire that they bring with them a significant risk of temptation. We can then become paralysed by the sheer number of options.
Psychologically, this can be a tough circle to break: it’s well documented that too much choice, or ‘overchoice’, can lead to a state of inaction. Overchoice is a term first coined by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock, and it occurs when someone is presented with so many options that they cannot easily choose between them. Importantly, not only is their ability to make a good decision reduced by this overload of choices, but so too is their satisfaction with their final decision.
I’m not suggesting that choice is inherently bad, though, and studies have shown that having zero choice also results in very low satisfaction — increasing the available choices does initially lead to greater satisfaction, but eventually, as the number of choices grows, our satisfaction level will drop off. We feel more pressure, confusion and potential dissatisfaction with our choices (maybe that other vintage Neve EQ emulation might sound better than the one I spent the last 15 minutes tweaking?). The lesson from all this is that larger choice sets might initially seem appealing, whereas smaller choice sets lead to increased satisfaction and reduced regret.
So let’s consider how this applies to DAW‑based music production. If we acquire an assortment of plug‑ins, we have to choose which to use. On the plus side, there’s variety: we know that we almost certainly have tools at our disposal that can help us achieve what we want to achieve. But there’s also complexity, which is likely to cause either delay to or dissatisfaction with our plug‑in choice. Minimising delay is important — when in the creative mindset, whether writing, arranging or mixing, our best work is done in the immediacy of the moment, often quite intuitively. Trying out six different delay plug‑ins in the middle of a live project could well yield worse results in the long run than simply sticking with the first choice and getting the best out of it.
Even if you act on that knowledge, though, and perhaps start weeding your plug‑in folder to reduce the overwhelming number of choices, in time it’s easy to drift back to a state of too much choice because of something popularly known as Shiny Object Syndrome: “a continual state of distraction brought on by an ongoing belief that there is something new worth pursuing.” As with any commercial company marketing products, plug‑in developers turn to a variety of psychological and sales techniques to drive us into making purchases.
I’m not saying that ads and marketing are inherently bad. The claims may well have merit, and if there are plug‑ins out there that might genuinely make your life easier or help you achieve better results, you want to know about them, right? But if we allow ourselves to be seduced by the marketing campaigns, acquiring plug‑ins can become compulsive, and that can create real problems for us. As well as the problem of overchoice, you can end up spending too much time shopping for or playing with new plug‑ins, and not investing the time that’s necessary to develop the deeper skills by learning every detail of your tools — you become a jack of all plug‑ins, master of none. Consequently, your productivity tanks and you never seem to finish things.
Getting To Know You
How can we overcome these roadblocks to productivity? First, you need to understand what sort of musician/engineer/producer you are, as that will give you a good idea of what sort of tools will likely work best for you. In turn, that should help you focus on which plug‑ins might be good acquisitions, and which probably won’t improve on what you have.
What style of plug‑in suits you best — a simple one‑slider GUI, one with more to see on the interface and plenty of parameters to tweak, or perhaps one that keeps the details out of sight until you need them?
There are, broadly speaking, three types of plug‑in. First, there are modelling plug‑ins that emulate the functions of real hardware, along with its sonic characteristics (saturation, phase shift and so on). Second, there are what I think of as ‘digital precision’ plug‑ins, that include useful features like spectrum analysers, detailed metering and, most importantly, comprehensive control that allows you to dive deep into the details in order to achieve precisely the outcome you want. Finally, there are ‘assisted’ or ‘automated’ plug‑ins. These usually involve an outcome‑driven workflow: the user’s attention is focused on sonic outcomes, while the complex parameters are adjusted behind the scenes to achieve them. I’d put many of the newest ‘AI’ plug‑ins in that category, obviously, but also ‘macro’ plug‑ins like Waves’ One Knob range.
If you’re detail‑oriented and obsess over minute details, a one‑knob effect plug‑in probably won’t cut it for you. Conversely, if you’re a beginner or don’t have lots of time/money, a complex Swiss Army knife EQ with tons of features might not be the best choice — maybe try an EQ with a simple interface such as a graphic EQ, where you just have to move a few sliders. Or perhaps an ‘assisted’ plug‑in that listens to and analyses your audio, and generates an EQ curve as a starting point to speed you along. Alternatively, maybe you’re a hobbyist who gets a buzz from recreating the vintage studio experience with iconic hardware mixing boards. A console channel‑strip EQ emulation with a beautiful skeuomorphic GUI could well be a good choice. In short, they will all get the job done: the question is, which one suits you?
Try Before You... Bias?
Our bodies are hardwired to crave dopamine, the ‘feelgood’ chemical that rewards new experiences and new ideas: we get a hit of it every time we obtain a new plug‑in. We need to get past that if we want to stop hoarding plug‑ins, so how should we make our purchasing decisions?
There are many reasons why people are loyal to the choices they make, and they may or may not be relevant to how you will experience the quality or enjoyment of any given plug‑in, so be aware of this when trawling through social media and watching demo videos! The fundamental attribution error when absorbing comments about plug‑ins in these places is the assumption that people offer objective, impartial opinions. In reality, we’re all prone to cognitive bias. If you need opinions, it’s much better to seek out feedback and guidance from a trusted colleague whose opinion you value, and who has experience with the products involved.
For example, if you’re in a Slate discussion group and ask about a certain Slate compressor, someone who owns a competing Plugin Alliance product may weigh in to suggest that the PA equivalent is better. Their intervention is almost certainly driven in part by cognitive dissonance: they’ve invested money in the PA plug‑in, and to accept (or even examine!) the possibility that the Slate one might be as good/better forces them to reassess their decision. It could even lead them to question their understanding of compressors! It’s much easier to confirm their pre‑existing belief that the PA compressor is best.
Another cognitive bias that drives behaviour is the ‘halo effect’, whereby our impression of one aspect of something influences our perception of other aspects. For example, if a plug‑in has an attractive GUI, we might be mentally prepared for it to sound as good as it looks. We might experience the halo effect because focusing on a certain aspect when forming an impression about a plug‑in reduces our cognitive load — the more factors we consider and the more complex they are, the harder it is to form a valid impression. So if a developer’s marketing triggers a dopamine hit by focusing on one specific aspect of the plug‑in, we may neglect the bigger picture — we won’t ask ourselves if this plug‑in will serve any real need beyond the dopamine hit.
It’s also easy to succumb to ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out) during time‑limited sales. The reality is that the sales always come back sooner or later, and in any case they’re usually long enough (at least 48 hours) that you can download and try a demo — doing this has saved me from several purchases I’d have regretted.
To recap, try and assess the value of adding any plug‑in to your collection. Ask what value it brings to you, and what sets it apart from the competition. Does it offer unique features and functionality? A better quality of sound? Ease of use?
If you aim to complete every task to a satisfactory standard, rather than ‘perfection’, you’ll be more productive.
Perfection Versus Productivity
Stock DAW plug‑ins often can’t be moved in your plug‑in folder, but you can usually organise third‑party plug‑ins into meaningful folders and subfolders for easier, less overwhelming access.Ever heard the phrase, ‘The perfect is the enemy of the good’? This lies behind a decision‑making strategy known as ‘satisficing’. The idea is that always aiming for the optimum solution consumes time, energy and resources you need for things that must be perfect. Aim to complete every task to a satisfactory standard rather than ‘perfection’, and you’ll be more productive. The best way to get into this mindset is to restrict your choices: limit what your eyes can see in your plug‑in folder!
Most DAWs let you organise at least third‑party plug‑ins into custom folders, and doing that makes choosing more efficient. When looking for a reverb, for instance, it helps if they’re all in one folder, so you don’t have to recall a plug‑in name or which developer’s reverbs you’ve installed. Studies show that our brains process options most efficiently when there are seven or fewer of them. So if you must have 20 different reverbs, consider subfolders (eg. algorithmic reverbs, convolution reverbs and special effects), each with seven plug‑ins or fewer. This is also an opportunity to do some weeding: if you’ve not used that free distortion plug‑in you downloaded a year ago, do you really need to be staring at it when looking for a distortion?
Yet, no matter how well your plug‑in folders are organised, it’s easy to forget what you have, and what worked or didn’t previously. To help with that, why not use your DAW’s preset system to store and recall chains of effects with specific settings? Maybe in one mix, you created a killer parallel drum‑processing setup, with a saturator, an EQ, a transient shaper and room tone, each a different plug‑in. This chain may or may not work in future mixes, or perhaps part of the chain will work with tweaks. Save it as a preset and that’s easy to figure out! Having variations of these chains can help combat overchoice fatigue too. You can have too many, of course, but you’re spending less effort choosing and tweaking plug‑ins, and even if they don’t work in the new context, they may jump‑start an idea, or point you in an interesting direction. The point is to help you make a choice quickly and move on.
Templates With Disabled Options
Some customised effects chains, ready and waiting for drum processing in Studio One. Such chains can not only save time, but reduce the burden of decision making — so you can keep your focus on making music.An underrated DAW feature is the ability to load project templates with tracks or plug‑ins disabled. If you like having lots of choices immediately available, this is just the ticket. You could have, say, your 10 drum parallel‑processing buses ready and waiting to be auditioned at the click of the mouse, with no need to hunt through plug‑in or effects‑chain menus. This can also facilitate easy creative experimentation, because you can use multiple choices. By the way, this applies to instrument plug‑ins just as much as processing: why not have your five favourite Rhodes patches ready to go for easy auditioning, or a whole orchestra ready to call on but not consuming computer resources?
Of course, templates with an excessive number of unused instruments and effects plug‑ins just ‘standing by’ can hinder as much as they help. If, for example, on loading there’s a problem with a plug‑in that needs updating, it can be time‑consuming to troubleshoot. And even though the load time isn’t increased, with all the additional disabled tracks the file size can swell — with each ‘save’, your DAW is doing heavier lifting than necessary, and each ‘save as’ can duplicate content that’s irrelevant to the project. With all the tracks, hunting down routing problems that may arise can also become more cumbersome.
So I prefer a hybrid approach, combining the advantages of templates with the benefits of stored effects chains. For instance, I have a multitrack drum‑recording setup in my template. The tracks are all set with the proper inputs, named and colour‑coded, and a few of my favourite third‑party plug‑ins on each track as a starting point. I also have a few of my favourite instruments ready and available for quick inspiration. I have sends for two independent headphone mixes and a comfort reverb in place on each track. But beyond these basics, I prefer to call up channel strips I’ve saved over the years for things like guitar or vocal processing. Remember the rule of seven? This is the same: I don’t want my template to visually overload me.
Here’s one of my DAW templates. It combines active, offline and bypassed plug‑ins, which helps to limit my choices and facilitate speedy experimentation and decision making.
Cognitive Nudges
It all sounds so simple doesn’t it? But denying yourself a dopamine hit can require the self‑discipline of a monk! So, for when you’re next hovering your cursor over that ‘buy now’ button, I’ll leave you with a few cognitive nudges that may help:
- More is not better. More choice often leads to worse results, if you factor in the indecision and delay it can introduce in the heat of the creative moment.
- While sometimes new is better, often it’s not — the more important question is, will it be better for you?
- Remind yourself that not every plug‑in will lead to better mixes. (Your specific choice of Pultec emulation is probably not what’s preventing you from achieving a great kick sound.)
- Set an arbitrary limit to the number of new plug‑ins you add to your system. Even if they’re free downloads, resist!
- Make a mental note of how often you use the plug‑ins you have. When that dopamine buzz is pending, this can help jolt you back to reality.
- Remove temptation from your inbox. If dieting, you might change your route so you don’t walk by the bakery. Similarly, you can unsubscribe from plug‑in reseller mailing lists.
- Make the effort to see past the hype. How often do true ‘gamechangers’ come along after all?
- You’re not FOMO‑proof! Ask yourself how much of what is driving your desire is the fear of missing out on something new, sexy, and cool; versus something you really need and will benefit from. Try ‘wait and see’: even if it’s in a time‑limited sale, avoid buying on impulse; sleep on it.
- Research every new plug‑in you acquire to understand its potential. Walkthrough videos might be better than review videos, as they remove some of the subjectivity, making it more likely you’ll use your own judgement.
While things might never again be as simple as the ‘point and record’ beginnings of our craft, with some careful management, you can minimise distraction and stay focused on what is most important: making great music!