I would love to see tutorials that explain the best way to arrange and use window, plugins, shortcuts etc for any given DAW to reduce mouse clicks and optimise efficiency.
Agreed.
One tip I have is, if you mix your own patches with third party patches, prefix your folders / files with a special character like _ or $, and it will bump them to the top of your file list.
I tend to arrange my material in terms of quick access when I am inspired. So I name things myself, so that I remember everything, and I pull out my most valuable patches / samples into a self-built directory (which is smaller so I host it on dropbox so I’ll never lose it).
Another tip is to save patches as you go, don’t hunt around in projects later for them. Many times you won’t remember which project you saved something in and it will take forever hunting through irrelevant material, which quickly kills your inspiration.
Another tip is try to use as few 3rd party plugins as possible, and when you do use a 3rd party synth and like a sound, save a few loops of it out to disk along with the patch. The wave files become more valuable later on as 3rd party synths + effects fall out of license, get upgraded or never re-installed, system configs change, dongles get lost, etc. In my opinion sometimes working with saved samples instead of the patch can increase your productivity, which is my last tip…
Choice is good up to a point, then it becomes destructive. You can easily become overwhelmed with choice and this will overwhelm you quickly. Settle on knowing a few things VERY well, rather than many things poorly.