When operating our DAW of choice, we hear talk about ‘committing things to muscle memory’. I’ve always understood what it means, but it’s not a phrase I personally use that much.

If you spend your hours making (often repetitive) edits as part of your work, you’ll know exactly what this feels like, although it’s possible to be a committed user of your DAW and not fit this mould of time-served pro machine-gunning shortcuts into Pro Tools like a 100 words per minute typist! Everyone’s reliance on shortcuts grows over time, but it does so gradually, and it’s only when something changes that we realise how dependent we have become on these semi-automatic actions.

What Is ‘Muscle Memory?

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, by muscle memory, in this case, what I mean is the way doing something in a DAW turns from ‘and press Command, Option and B to open the bounce dialog’ to merely ‘and bounce’. The action becomes so familiar that the individual components of the action become automatic and sometimes forgotten. This is similar to the way a musician might struggle to explain exactly which notes are played in which order in a very familiar lick. They can play it more easily than they can explain it.

My background in teaching is probably part of the reason I’ve never really thought I’ve suffered too much from the negative effects of overdeveloped muscle memory. I know a lot of Pro Tools shortcuts and remember most of them because I spent years communicating them to others rather than just using them. I’ve constantly reminded myself of them as a result.

Taking Technology For Granted

But we develop muscle memory in all sorts of areas of our lives, and these possibly make the point more clearly than in our use of DAWs. This was illustrated to me by the recent purchase of an iPhone by my 88-year-old mother. I’ll admit I was initially surprised. After joking with her that she’d got it so she could build her following on Tik Tok (it fell flat, she had no idea what Tik Tok was), it turned out that actually, she’d bought it after discovering that she was missing all the messages from her Bridge group because it was all on WhatsApp. However, my amusement turned to resignation when I realised I’d have to teach her to use it. Remotely…

I use my iPhone a lot. More than I should. Basic control of an iPhone is based on gestures, so it is all muscle memory. How do you return to the home screen? Err, some kind of swipe. Go to search? OK, think I know this. Swipe from the centre down, but I’ll have to check. You get the idea. Using something with which you are very familiar very often leads to so much knowledge being assimilated to the point of being forgotten, and it’s only when something changes that we realise how much this affects our work.

From iPhones To DAWs

As for DAWs, I’m very familiar with Pro Tools. I know a little bit of Studio One very well, but as soon as I stray away from the basic audio recording I use it for, my competence and confidence fall off a cliff, and I just can’t use Logic, probably because I don’t use it - a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are at the beginning of your journey with your DAW of choice, you might be happily mouse-bound, using the rich visual feedback of a computer UI to guide you, and you might find the stark unfriendliness of keyboard shortcuts offputting. You don’t need to remember that it is Command+Option+Tab to toggle Tab to Transients if you can click the button with the graphic of a transient on it in the toolbar instead.

SoundFlow And Stream Decks

The best of both worlds - a fast-to-access shortcut with the visual feedback of a GUI is offered by SoundFlow, particularly when paired with a Stream Deck. This kind of solution offers the speed of a keystroke without the need to commit anything to memory. Although seeing SoundFlow as a keystroke replacement is to undersell its power drastically. I’ve been a little reluctant to engage with SoundFlow because it’s taken me so long to learn my Pro Tools shortcuts. I’m concerned that if I stop using them, I’ll forget them - The perfect example of DAW inertia.

An embedded vocabulary of fast, fluent actions supported by muscle memory is one of the things which really makes a difference to you as an operator. Strangely though, it can also constrain you. I know it does for me. Although the example of concern about neglecting my shortcuts, if I were to switch to a Stream Deck running SoundFlow, is probably a little out of proportion, somewhere it makes a real difference is in introducing a control surface into your workflow.

Control Surfaces Have To Compete With Your Competence

A Control Surface offers real, tactile faders; for those who use them, this is always a principal feature of their advantages. The difference even a single fader makes to automation passes is hard to pass over, let alone a bank of them. However, a good control surface, particularly those running Eucon, offers such deep control that things are simply better if you get fluent on it. The principal impediment for anyone learning a control surface is that if it is faster to do it in software using a mouse and keyboard, you’re probably going to revert to your old ways, and most of the time, the control surface becomes an expensive dust trap.

The faster and more fluent you are with a keyboard and mouse, the more difficult it is for even the best-designed control surfaces to compete beyond the control of faders and pots. This probably explains why Mike Thornton, despite trying multiple control surfaces, never found one that didn’t get ignored. He was probably just too fluent in using a keyboard and mouse to get fast enough on the control surface to be able to compete with his own fluency. This is one of the strengths of Eucon as it extends the software out onto hardware rather than the hardware offering an alternative to it. Your assimilated Pro Tools knowledge is still applicable.

An Example From Mike

It is Mike with whom I most strongly associate the use of the words ‘muscle memory’ to describe that kind of familiarity with a DAW, and possibly the best example I have of a muscle memory shortcut came from him. When I’m editing a podcast in Pro Tools, to select all the audio upstream of an edit and move it to close the gap created by cutting unwanted audio, rather than using the All Group or something, I just select the first upstream clip beyond the gap with the Grab tool while holding Option and Shift. This will create the edit selection across every track. Then, while continuing to hold Option and Shift, hit Return. This extends the edit selection to the end of the session. I now have all the upstream audio selected and ready for moving to close whatever gap my edit created in two keystrokes.

If that very useful shortcut is something relevant to your work, then try it. It’s great. However, if it isn’t relevant to your work, the fact that I had to open Pro Tools and double-check this shortcut, which I use endlessly, actually proves my point perfectly. Is it any wonder that I can’t explain to my elderly mother how to use an iPhone down the phone?