FAKTUM - Countdown Timer [Max4Live]

Setting yourself a challenge when making music is an excellent way to focus your time, maintain perspective and most importantly look after your ears. Faktum enables you to set a time limit on what your doing to maintain that focus, using your time knowingly and efficiently. It's useful for three scenarios:

Focus

We've all spent hours working on a piece of music and lost track of how long we've been adjusting the snare (for example) - now you have a limit, you can be more aware of how long you're taking on any element of your production - and use that time wisely.

Challenge

Want to make a track in 10 minutes? Set yourself a goal and see how you work when you need to get something done asap! Its amazing what becomes a priority in this situation, and pushing yourself to deliver is a fun way to get results fast!

Hearing

It gives you time to relax your ears - sustained loud music will damage your hearing over time, and affect your ability to really feel it like a listener will - with fresh ears. Give your ears time to recuperate, give yourself some head-space and step away from the track for a few minutes.

Faktum comes with an install text doc and is very simple to use. Set a time between 1-60 minutes and press go. The pacman pie chart will slowly disappear, and when the time's up, a pop-up window will appear on screen.