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There are many computer applications that you can use to significantly improve your workflow, organize your workspace, and gain access to features not available within your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). This list contains 13 apps that you’ll find yourself using daily, and that will make the process of producing music significantly easier.

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a type of web feed that allows you to access updates to online content, in a standardized format. By adding the RSS feed of a website to an RSS reader, like Feedly, you’re capable of accessing multiple website’s newest blog content in a single, centralized feed.

The sense of hearing, otherwise known as audition, allows people to interpret the frequency, amplitude, timbre, and origin of sound waves. A sound wave is essentially moving air, but sound is capable of traveling through many other mediums such as water, metal, concrete, etc. Contrary to what you may think, hearing is a purely physical process. Sound requires a physical medium to travel through to reach your ear. There’s no sound in space because there’s no air or other physical medium for sound waves to move through.

EQs are used to control the gain level of different frequency ranges, known as bands; applying boosts/cuts to these bands allows you to shape the frequency response of your audio. An EQ is a vital mixing tool because it will enable you to fit together the different elements of your mix like puzzle pieces.

Mixing is a process that creates a space for the elements of your track to live in, and also creates cohesion between those elements. There are countless mixing tools available on the market in the form of plugins, but Ableton offers 5 exceptional tools that are capable of producing professional quality mixes all on their own. These tools include Ableton’s EQ Eight, Compressor, Saturator, Filter Delay, and Reverb, all of which are available in the Standard version of Ableton.

Mastering is a process that’s separate from production, as well as mixing; it involves preparing your song for distribution. Mastering requires a unique set of skills, and equipment, which is why people often choose to outsource a mastering engineer. Typically, a producer writes a song, and then sends it off to a mixing engineer who ensures all the elements of the song sound good together. From there, the mixing engineer sends the song off to a mastering engineer who applies buss processing (if required) and formats the song based on how it’s being distributed (CD, vinyl, streaming, etc.).