Tools I Use: Keyboard Shortcuts

My post about creating a Touch Portal interface to use in my recording booth had me thinking about other tools I use to help make me more efficient and effective in and out of my recording studio.

Keyboard shortcuts have been a go to for me for…well, for about as long as I have been using a keyboard! Keeping your hands on the keyboard is way faster than reaching out to find your mouse, moving it around to find the cursor and then navigating to a menu bar and pull down to an item and then click.

Most folks are familiar with the basics – Click CMD+N for a new window. CMD+S for saving a file and so on. There are a lot more and it could be a good exercise to learn a few more and try to inject them into your routine.

But you do more than just work in your operating system (OS)

So, I love that my digital audio workstation (DAW) allows for custom keyboard shortcuts!

I use Twisted Wave and the developer has been very thoughtful in providing an “Edit Keyboard Shortcuts” option in the Edit menu. Using this allows me to build my own shortcuts that make sense to me. So, I can use CTRL+N to open my Nova EQ plugin. I can use CMD+1 to open the first stack of effects for processing. And so on.

You can also use a third party app to build more custom keyboard shortcuts that then expand text for you. That will be another blog post for another day! 🙂

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-keyboard-buttons-2882463/