Golfing vs Speed Running

Resource constraints are the mother of both ingenuity and efficienty. There are, in a way, two ways to view constraints: a time limit, or an action limit. The former, a time limit, encourages speed running, where we aim to do as much as possible within a given time limit, or to execute a particular pattern in as little time as possible. This later case, the inspiration for my using the term speed running coming from gaming.

The other constrain idea, an action limit, I term golfing, drawing inspiration from code golf, which in turn draws inspiration from the sport of golf. The idea with golfing is to minimise the number of distinct actions you make. For example, in Ableton, if we want six identical tracks, one approach is to create the first track, then hit duplicate five times. But we can do better: we can duplicate once, select both tracks, and then duplicate that pair twice; or we can duplicate twice, select all three tracks, and duplicate. The art of golfing is to explore these possibilities in order to find the shortest, most efficient way of accomplishing a given task.

The aim of both of these is to hone your thinking processes and muscle memory so that, when back producing normally, rather than meta-producing, this leads to a greater ease, speed, and efficiency in your command of your chosen DAW.