How to learn any DAW (Part 1) - Think like a chef

Hey there!

In addition to my Ableton Live-focused YouTube channel and client work, I'm also teaching at Edmonds College and the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program currently. Both institutions combined, I'm teaching five classes right now - and none of them are in Ableton Live. To add an extra layer of hilarity to the situation, the first week of class at Edmonds and PNWFS coincided with the last week of summer term at Point Blank Music School, where I was teaching a class with a mixed Ableton Live and Logic Pro cohort. So for a moment there I was teaching in four different DAWs at once - Ableton Live, Cubase, Digital Performer, and Logic Pro.

In parallel to my recent teaching experience, I received a comment on one of my more recent YouTube videos from a viewer who described feeling excluded and frustrated at how many YT channels focused on Ableton Live. They even went so far as to describe it as "gatekeeping." I empathize with that sense of exclusion but I think they are missing the forest for the trees here, especially given that their desire of DAW agnosticism. Let me explain.

In at least two of my classes, I am explicitly teaching students how to use a specific DAW (Cubase and Digital Performer, respectively) but I am also, and I would emphasize more importantly, teaching them how to learn ANY DAW in the process. This is something that too many music producers miss completely. They silo DAWs off as if each one is a completely different language without any connection.

In their defense, this process happens naturally due to how complex a DAW is. The more specialized a tool is, the easier it is to think of it as isolated and unrelated to other tools. Nobody has this problem with simpler tools. Imagine if somebody had left a similar comment on a YT video about a Black and Decker screwdriver. "This is gatekeeping. I wish you would focus on other brands like DeWalt or Milwaukee for a change." You'd pause for a second and ask yourself if we're still just talking about screwdrivers here. The simpler a tool is the less concerned we are with make and model.

The key to learning/learning from any DAW is to simplify it. To do so, I would encourage you to think like a chef. By which I mean that despite the fact that every kitchen in the world is laid out differently, if you put a chef in a kitchen, they're going to start cooking. For a chef to do that, they have to locate certain things within the kitchen. Where is the range? Where is sink? Where the hell are the knives? They orient themselves to their environment and they get to work. You should be doing the same thing with any DAW you work in.

Much in the same way that you're going to find the same core tools in a kitchen, you'll find the same core tools in most DAWs: audio and MIDI tracks, a mixer, inserts/effects, busses, etc. Knowing where all of these things are will allow you to work faster and more efficiently. It will also allow you to learn any DAW quickly (or watch YouTube videos and learn from other DAWs quickly). Yes, there are absolutely different feature sets unique to each DAW but the core functions are unchanged and shared universally.

But to truly know any DAW (including your own) there's one more concept you'll need to have a firm grasp of. We'll discuss that next Monday.

Til next time,

ZW