The DAW is dead

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
mickmike
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The DAW is dead

Post by mickmike » Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:52 pm

Techno is an alive organic entity. Not to be formatted on a spread sheet.

H20nly
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by H20nly » Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:59 pm

history begs to differ.


convert spreadsheets to MIDI here;
http://www.gnmidi.com/handbook/english/csv2midi.htm


tutorial for making music from spreadsheets here;
http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1209/paper_13.pdf


Google search results with many more examples here;
https://www.google.com/search?q=song+on ... preadsheet

beats me
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by beats me » Fri Jul 08, 2016 11:09 pm

You had to go with Techno? Possibly the most robotic genre of the EDM family. If any genre could be done on a spreadsheet it would be Techno. :lol:

Angstrom
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Angstrom » Fri Jul 08, 2016 11:42 pm

When I started making techno in 1990 when it seemed like an amazing futuristic forward looking music. It was new, it was fresh. it was something exciting.
twenty six fucking years ago.

By '93 it was cooking up nicely.
https://soundcloud.com/jipe-2/david-hol ... al-mix-n-2

that was 23 years ago. half my age ago.

I stopped making techno in '98 when it seemed totally played out, completely over saturated and utterly devoid of ideas. Totally dead in the water.

Here we are 23 years later and the rotten zombie husk of techno still haunts the earth. Hasn't had an idea since '94. It's the equivalent of session music pop. It's the Monkees without the soul and the integrity. It's Roy Orbison with out the sex appeal.

twenty fucking three years a corpse

in 1993 it would be like me claiming "John Lennon is the future of music".

tragic. fucking tragic.
Last edited by Angstrom on Fri Jul 08, 2016 11:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mickmike
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by mickmike » Fri Jul 08, 2016 11:46 pm

Not original techno which was almost like freeform jazz. Repetitive beats comes from the earliest primal drums. Pointing and calculating with a mouse in front of a screen it wasn't.

mickmike
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by mickmike » Fri Jul 08, 2016 11:46 pm

Angstrom. You get my point then

Emanresu0891
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Emanresu0891 » Sat Jul 09, 2016 12:41 am

I thought Jon Hopkins last album was really good. He is techno right?

savyurrecords
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by savyurrecords » Sat Jul 09, 2016 4:25 pm

I think one should be able to make music/art any way that works for them. It doesn't have to work for everyone. Diversity is good.

yup yup
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by yup yup » Sun Jul 10, 2016 12:57 pm

:roll:

Forge.
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Forge. » Mon Jul 11, 2016 9:47 am

Angstrom, I feel more or less exactly the same, but I don't think it's fair. I'd be surprised if you've combed the vast underbelly of the Internets and heard even a tiny fraction of what's out there, and neither have I, it's impossible. In fact maybe a year ago the amount uploaded to Youtube every day was something like 65 years worth. It might be double now. That's just one streaming platform among a growing many. The problem is saturation.

But Occasionally I hear something and have that genuine "I wonder how the fuck they made that sound". But as I don't have the time or inclination to dig that deep any more, I don't hear that much. I think that has more to do with me and the amount of time I have to survey the vast abyss of "content" out there.

Angstrom
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Angstrom » Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:37 am

Well, I'm not too bothered about innovative sounds so much. I can still listen to a red hot acid track with just the basics - and it totally works for me. Similarly I can listen to a grungy old Q65 track and still get off on the dirty energy.

Sure I agree that amongst the 10,000,000 techno tracks released each day there are some which are actually good and danceable. The problem comes with the authenticity of making it. We are on a music making forum here.

When Techno first hit it was like uncovering Tutankhamen's tomb. We revealed it little by little until we all said "holy shit this is amazing". It was the honeymoon period. That discovery of tribal technological music. It was vital and felt totally new. It was a brief time. The TB303 was produced from '82 - '84 and languished for four short years before we had the likes of Stakker producing Humanoid with it in '88. When a TB303 was as "old" as a copy of Live 9 is today. It was all new. When I started in about '89 I thought I'd missed the boat!

From '88 to '95 we had 7 years where it blossomed into a whole new set of genres. Everything from psychedelia to punk was reinvented in this new form. Electronic thrash, electronic dub. It was futuristic and forward looking. It was "progressive"

It was also contentious in a way that hadn't been seen since Punk. it was a source of anger in the music world that this trash even existed!
Between '90 and '98 I was interviewed by the UK music mags Melody Maker and NME. They had a war going on internally about even reporting on this "non music". The guys we got interviewing us either hated having to do this "electro crap " and wished they were doing a Nirvana piece, or they were feverishly religious about it all. This shit was important to them, it was new, it was the future. By '98 that had died off a lot. It became accepted more and more.

Techno and that style of dance music still exists FOURTY YEAR LATER and is enjoyed by millions, but it exists like Elvis Presley music exists. And creating that music is like being in an Elvis "1950s" tribute band in the mid 90's. It is not fresh.

Techno fans will have a good time as punter and that's totally OK, perhaps that's all there is. But making it? It's a pastiche. It's the Disneyland Eiffel tower. It's been done before and you are just following a well trodden path. It's the difference between painting and paint-by-numbers. It's played out.

sure it's fun to paint by numbers. But is that enough?

Forge.
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Forge. » Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:52 am

I was about to add, it's all about context (thanks for the Essential mix btw!). I caught Carl Craig a year or two ago and I've always listened to his tracks on Beatport and thought they were a bit too deep, but hearing them in the club reminded me how it sounds in the club with the subs when everything's properly represented... and you're in the 'right frame of mind'.

I think it just gets harder to be impressed by the music without that full experience, and most of us aren't Bez and can't keep it up into our 40s.

I occasionally have moments where I end up somewhere and hear something great. I have no idea what it is, but it's more about the experience of being there and hearing it where it's meant to be played, and I think that's the best we can hope for. So in a sense the OP is an interesting point — I know people who are getting into just hardware sequencers. Problem then is getting it sounding new, because it can start to all sound like Drexciya and UR. Depends what hardware you have though I guess.

Forge.
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Forge. » Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:58 am

mickmike wrote:Not original techno which was almost like freeform jazz. Repetitive beats comes from the earliest primal drums. Pointing and calculating with a mouse in front of a screen it wasn't.
this is kind of what I'm getting at. I think the down side of electronic music became that making it could be come very hermetic and solitary, but music should be shared with other humans, and the absolute best bit about it is being in the right moment and into it with loads of other people into it as well. There is nothing that can beat that. But we try, in various artificial ways.

But the point about primal drums is right — if you go to a good night of african drumming, you don't care if they are playing the same rhythms as last time.

Machinesworking
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Machinesworking » Tue Jul 12, 2016 7:33 am

what isn't played out? that's the bigger question.
I can't truthfully say I've heard anything groundbreaking or truly new in years.
Mostly once new innovations in hardware happen some new music comes out, after that it's just sub genres of the same old. Then imo what matters is whether the song itself is good, not the genre etc.

Forge.
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Re: The DAW is dead

Post by Forge. » Tue Jul 12, 2016 7:38 am

Yeah right to the end Lemmy maintained he just played rock and roll. A lot of the best still just say house or techno. It's not necessarily about doing anything new or groundbreaking, just has to do what it says on the tin.

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