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No More DAW...


bendish

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I don't really understand why, if your bored with the predictability of a daw, you don't just lose the computer all together. 

money ?

 

As in making it, or affording hardware?

 

affording hardware, i mean i know there is cheap stuff out there but still if you are used to a daw where you have so many instruments.

 

God... the first thing I thought, and this is definitely my old cranky man kicking in, was "if you are used to a daw and nothing else, you don't know what real music making is!" 

 

But that's....an antiquated response. Anyways, people have been making music without daws, and without expensive hardware, for quite a while. With what's out there now, anyone can be doing what only a few could afford in the early 90's. Chain a few volcas together and you basically have an entire 90's mid-grade studio. 

 

I still think that the best thing a daw provides is an easily editable recording platform. 

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I love DAW music making with a passion,i make track with mouse only most of the time.I love it.

 

BUT

 

if you dont,you might want to try improvisation(which i love as well).

Adding impro parts give a lot more imprevisibility and wild things/ideas in a track imo.Can give a deeper sense of exploration sometimes.

 

So:Learn keyboard playing.

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Still not using Pure Data? What's wrong with you?

 

oH6yHvZ.png

 

On a side note. I've watched a few tutorials and seen many screenshots of Pure Data, Max, and other generative synthesis engines, and it's impressive...but good lord does my curiosity stop there. It just looks so UNmusical. Like, the opposite of music, to me. It looks like software engineering, but even more boring.

 

Laborious, precise, rigid, and monochrome. All things that go against my view of music, and what it encompasses.

 

Yet, I love some of the music that comes from it (Although, I hate a lot of it too). It seems like it is absolutely perfect for a lot of people that grew up on verified data, binary systems, and immediate satisfaction when it comes to answers and facts. 

 

Not hating, it just doesn't work for my attention span/reward system. 

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Just won

 

I love DAW music making with a passion,i make track with mouse only most of the time.I love it.

 

BUT

 

if you dont,you might want to try improvisation(which i love as well).

Adding impro parts give a lot more imprevisibility and wild things/ideas in a track imo.Can give a deeper sense of exploration sometimes.

 

So:Learn keyboard playing.

 

Just wondering, because I really dig your music, are you putting most of your drum hits in one-by-one on a midi roll? with a mouse? If so, you deserve some sort of award. 

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Still not using Pure Data? What's wrong with you?oH6yHvZ.png

 

On a side note. I've watched a few tutorials and seen many screenshots of Pure Data, Max, and other generative synthesis engines, and it's impressive...but good lord does my curiosity stop there. It just looks so UNmusical. Like, the opposite of music, to me. It looks like software engineering, but even more boring.

 

Laborious, precise, rigid, and monochrome. All things that go against my view of music, and what it encompasses.

 

Yet, I love some of the music that comes from it (Although, I hate a lot of it too). It seems like it is absolutely perfect for a lot of people that grew up on verified data, binary systems, and immediate satisfaction when it comes to answers and facts. 

 

Not hating, it just doesn't work for my attention span/reward system.

I will not lie, it is incredibly laborious regardless of your attention span. But it is also so immensely rewarding, unlike anything you've ever seen or heard. With simple DSP knowledge you'll be able to make anything you want. There are no limits. If you want the pitch of an FM operator to act as the LFO of a filter that runs a sequencer that decides the steps of a sampler that fourier transforms a subtractive synth's filter and decides a dozen other functions, you can. I am absolutely hopeless at math but managed to learn complex imaginary numbers thanks to PD tutorials. Nothing is so rewarding as the ability to make absolutely anything you want out of simple numbers and logic. I made a dozen tube emulations out of simple chebyshev polynomials that sound better than anything out the box, even Nebula modules, and most objects were pre-made. It takes a special mind to dive into this material, no doubt. But there is no digital environment that even comes close to the freedom available.

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How about an 8-track tape recorder and a compressor?

Personally i mostly use DAW's like they are a magical 8-track. I record everything from hardware and do the fine tuning on Cubase.

 

Same here.  When I got burned out on using computers in the mid 2000s I actually bought a Tascam 388 (back when tape machines were really cheap; also got a well maintained Otari MX5050mkIV for $20 around the same time that I still use to this day) and did everything on that for years.  It really wasn't until the last decade or so that you could get an interface that sounded as good as even a middle of the road reel to reel for less than the cost of a nice used car (if not more) but these days I hardly miss it, and I definitely don't miss it enough to make it worth the hassle of hauling it every time I move.

 

But I still pretty much use the DAW as a glorified reel to reel, and usually keep my track count well within the limits of what you could do on one (usually 15-20 tracks for a really dense mix, sometimes only a half dozen or so plus aux channels) and it definitely helps keep things from getting too cluttered and makes the actual mixing a lot more fun for me.

 

If you can get a really good with on 8 or even 4 tracks you're in good shape.  I'll get there eventually.

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Still not using Pure Data? What's wrong with you?oH6yHvZ.png

On a side note. I've watched a few tutorials and seen many screenshots of Pure Data, Max, and other generative synthesis engines, and it's impressive...but good lord does my curiosity stop there. It just looks so UNmusical. Like, the opposite of music, to me. It looks like software engineering, but even more boring.

 

Laborious, precise, rigid, and monochrome. All things that go against my view of music, and what it encompasses.

 

Yet, I love some of the music that comes from it (Although, I hate a lot of it too). It seems like it is absolutely perfect for a lot of people that grew up on verified data, binary systems, and immediate satisfaction when it comes to answers and facts. 

 

Not hating, it just doesn't work for my attention span/reward system.

I will not lie, it is incredibly laborious regardless of your attention span. But it is also so immensely rewarding, unlike anything you've ever seen or heard. With simple DSP knowledge you'll be able to make anything you want. There are no limits. If you want the pitch of an FM operator to act as the LFO of a filter that runs a sequencer that decides the steps of a sampler that fourier transforms a subtractive synth's filter and decides a dozen other functions, you can. I am absolutely hopeless at math but managed to learn complex imaginary numbers thanks to PD tutorials. Nothing is so rewarding as the ability to make absolutely anything you want out of simple numbers and logic. I made a dozen tube emulations out of simple chebyshev polynomials that sound better than anything out the box, even Nebula modules, and most objects were pre-made. It takes a special mind to dive into this material, no doubt. But there is no digital environment that even comes close to the freedom available.

 

 

Puredata (and Supercollider and Max/MSP and all the other high level sound programming languages) are great but personally I find that when m brain is in that zone the actual music I produce is just directionless garbage.  Other people definitely do amazing stuff with it but for me, maybe because I come from a live music background, it takes away more than it offers.  When I do use them (less and less by the year) it's usually to make sounds that I'm going to sample later.

 

It doesn't help that I'm in an art school town where it seems like every other electronic performance I happen to see is someone doing really unoriginal Max/MSP noodling that sounds like a lazy version of academic computer music from like 1975. No disrespect to people who use it, of course, there's plenty of amazing stuff being done with it out there.  Just not so much where I live.

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I really like the unexpected stuff that Forester can throw at you, even if youre using it very intentionally. Although I usually dont make tracks with it, it's a good exercise and you get lots of great material for chopping up at the very least. Step 1: create sample folder, Step 2: generate forest, Step 3: explore forest with mouse, Step 4: regenerate forest or randomize samples when bored. Repeat. Quite fun.

http://leafcutterjohn.com/?page_id=1767

 

Also on a similar note, Genesis Bending. Step 1: genesis emulator, Step 2: load rom, Step 3: save state, Step 4: load different rom, Step 5: load state... magic! Although some roms are bunk at this, and some roms seem to have endless possibilities

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Anyone got experience with using computers to make tunes but not using a DAW?

 

not sure about tunes, and this might only be good for drone or ambient stuff but I find it quite good fun to run (field)recordings or output from different standalone apps through hardware fx (eg; Korg Kaosspads) and zone out. Re-record the output for possible use later on in a professional daw made for professionals ;-) .

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PD, Max, Reaktor, Audiomulch... 

 

al these things can get you away from a timeline. 

 

i've used audiomulch for a ton of tracks but not so much lately. it's very jammable. has high level devices that you can load with samples.. then you can load 3rd party sequencers (vst etc) and sequence softsynths.. it's a bit of a mess at times and it hasn't been updated in a while but is totally capable of making whole tracks and performing them.. 

 

you can actually do similar stuff in max now that you can drag and drop max for live devices into a patcher window. and in max you can save the entire state of your patch and make snapshots of that.. so, take a bunch of your fav max for live devices and drop them in a max patch.. jam.. record.. save.. 

 

you can even multitrack your jam sessions and then organize them later in a DAW that you only use as a big editor and for mixing. 

 

but w/most DAWs there are ways to build a performance patch type scenario.  in ableton you can do a ton of stuff w/clips and midi and audio routing nad if you have max for live there's a bunch of wild stuff you can put in there to help.. so, w/some hardwork configuring a set up you can make it modular like and interactive instead of something that requires you to discretely make every change. 

 

also, five12 numerology if you're on a mac. modular sequencing environment.. all kinds of probability stuff and weirdness. 

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Just won

 

I love DAW music making with a passion,i make track with mouse only most of the time.I love it.

 

BUT

 

if you dont,you might want to try improvisation(which i love as well).

Adding impro parts give a lot more imprevisibility and wild things/ideas in a track imo.Can give a deeper sense of exploration sometimes.

 

So:Learn keyboard playing.

 

Just wondering, because I really dig your music, are you putting most of your drum hits in one-by-one on a midi roll? with a mouse? If so, you deserve some sort of award. 

I do.I'm a mouse guy.Most tracks is made with my hand,my mouse,and my computer and that's it.Not touching midi controller or nothing.

I put every notes in the midi roll.For melody almost all the time.Sometimes i will record live impro ,i tend to do it more these day but still its a rare thing.

BUT for the drums,

I use artillery looper on the drum bus to spice things up,have a beat looping at different speed and mess with the beats ;) 

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Also i think MAX/MSP looks a lot more intuitive than Pure Data.

I have just bought the monthly MAX and still have to try it properly yet but at first sight looks a lot better than PD imo.

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For a couple months I've been semi-seriously considering doing an EP entirely on an original Playstation with MTV Music Generator sometime this year.

 

 

I'm kind of joking but you can load your own samples into it, so no reason you couldn't make it work.

how does it save the samples? i'm guessing it uses some smart algorithm to cut down on size but even then with only about 2mb of ram?

 

 

I'm not sure, I know it uses PS1 memory cards for sample RAM but I don't know if you can save and reload or if you have to resample every time.  I haven't actually used it, it's just an idea that has been bouncing around since I wasted some time last month seeing how feasible it was  for someone with no coding ability to figure out how to use the reverb in a Nintendo 64 on external audio.  Didn't figure out anything about that (nobody seems to be interested in using that generation of consoles for music) but I discovered that program.

 

I think the trick would be hacking an ISO of it to replace the stock samples with your own, but that's probably more work than it's worth, especially if you don't know the first thing about how to do it.

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When I have too many ideas about what to make I always go back to what makes me happy. Retarded tape jams with old gear. 

 

YES

 

Although usually not literally on tape these days, I save that for special occasions because sooner or later I'm going to run out of it.

 

Another thing I do every once in a while is just stick a microphone out my window and record 5-10 minutes of the sounds of my neighborhood and then build the track up over that.

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I used to launch standalone exe synth with sequencer (VAZ) , record it with windows sound recorder, then play recorded file with audio player in background and sequence new synth part on top of it, then record both playing at the same time, load that new file in player, record with new synth sequence etc rinse repeat.

Opening daw put too much pressure on me at the time but I still had an itch to do something creative so this helped...

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Shit I think I remember VAZ. It was beyond my level back then but if it's what I'm thinking it is I remember getting some crazy crazy crazy sounds out of it.

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Shit I think I remember VAZ. It was beyond my level back then but if it's what I'm thinking it is I remember getting some crazy crazy crazy sounds out of it.

Yes, it`s semi-modular and has a pretty cool sequencer that really opens things up, it was the first synth I really had fun with (without any idea of substractive synthesis) and I`m still using it, mostly standalone version, although now i have a vst version too but sequencing directly in synth is way more fun that sending midi from daw.

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I really like the unexpected stuff that Forester can throw at you, even if youre using it very intentionally. Although I usually dont make tracks with it, it's a good exercise and you get lots of great material for chopping up at the very least. Step 1: create sample folder, Step 2: generate forest, Step 3: explore forest with mouse, Step 4: regenerate forest or randomize samples when bored. Repeat. Quite fun.

http://leafcutterjohn.com/?page_id=1767

 

Also on a similar note, Genesis Bending. Step 1: genesis emulator, Step 2: load rom, Step 3: save state, Step 4: load different rom, Step 5: load state... magic! Although some roms are bunk at this, and some roms seem to have endless possibilities

this is the sickest programm ive used in a while ! i was searching for something like that for a while, so thanks a lot !

 

just made some loops like this

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1c4kDC15kWI

 

 

 

 

 

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Also i think MAX/MSP looks a lot more intuitive than Pure Data.

I have just bought the monthly MAX and still have to try it properly yet but at first sight looks a lot better than PD imo.

Max has decent features and a sleek interface but looks are overrated. PD is free, fully open source and you can make whatever objects in C and easily insert them. The minimal graphics interface has its appeal, object connections in PD force a good workflow instead of the program automagically sorting it for you. Recent max editions are great but PD is fully capable

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Just won

 

I love DAW music making with a passion,i make track with mouse only most of the time.I love it.

 

BUT

 

if you dont,you might want to try improvisation(which i love as well).

Adding impro parts give a lot more imprevisibility and wild things/ideas in a track imo.Can give a deeper sense of exploration sometimes.

 

So:Learn keyboard playing.

 

Just wondering, because I really dig your music, are you putting most of your drum hits in one-by-one on a midi roll? with a mouse? If so, you deserve some sort of award. 

 

 

how long does it take to left click your mouse 300 times? who cares how you enter the notes/data, the important part is making it sound good.

 

the difference between steinvord and go plastic is this, not the gear used in the progress.

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Also i think MAX/MSP looks a lot more intuitive than Pure Data.

I have just bought the monthly MAX and still have to try it properly yet but at first sight looks a lot better than PD imo.

Max has decent features and a sleek interface but looks are overrated. PD is free, fully open source and you can make whatever objects in C and easily insert them. The minimal graphics interface has its appeal, object connections in PD force a good workflow instead of the program automagically sorting it for you. Recent max editions are great but PD is fully capable

 

 

Yeah, PD is (to some degree) Miller Puckette's next-generation version of Max/MSP.  It's fantastic, even though it's not personally my thing.

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