I’m a definite believer in cleaning house in order to be more creative.  For a composer, this means lots and lots of computer work.  Perhaps its setting up backups, cleaning out files, installing a new PCIe card or hard drive, updating (all!) your software programs and sample libraries.  Maybe calibrating your monitors.  Whatever it is, eliminating the clutter is a great move towards improving focus during some downtime.

This last week or so I’ve spent a huge amount of time doing just that.  For composers like myself who use large orchestral templates, it can be a painful and time consuming process to work through the hundreds (if not thousands) of samples you have available to choose just a few hundred to pre-load at any one time.  This way, when you start a new project, you are not wasting a huge amount of time and killing your creative streak by “mousing around”, looking for some good sounds.  Of course, I’ve learned to keep several tracks open in my projects for “local sounds” that are only going to be used in that given project and not to be loaded into a template.

I also save a lot of time by loading a lot of sounds into external sources.  For example, I run more than 2/3 of my template in a separate application outside of Logic Pro called Bidule.  Within it, I can then have preloaded all of my common Strings, Brass and Woodwinds which make up about 3 GB of samples that take a minute or two to load.

I host my percussion “locally” within Logic because its nice to have a little more control over the dynamics and EQ of percussion sounds.  At any rate, all of this certainly takes a huge amount of time to manage, update and keep fresh.  However, attacking this when you aren’t under a deadline is a terrific way to become reinvigorated and inspired.

John Blog Post, Logic Pro, Tips and Tricks