The Scoring Samurai is a blog about what it actually takes to do serious orchestral work at a professional level—not just the craft, but the whole ecosystem. The tools that remove friction. The habits that protect the hours. The philosophy that keeps you at the desk when nothing is urgent and everything feels far away. Written by a working orchestrator for anyone who takes the work seriously.
The Ten-Second Tax
I picked up my MacBook Air the other day and went to save a file. And I froze. The Save dialog dropped me somewhere generic, and to get where I actually wanted to go I had to click my way down the whole path—folder by folder by folder—like it was 2009.
Something was off. It took me a second to realize what: Default Folder X wasn't running. One quick update later it sprang back to life, and just like that I'd shaved a solid ten seconds off every Open and Save dialog on the machine.