Re: Replace Live with hardware?
Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:06 pm
i started making electronic music in the 90s using a cheap second hand yamaha synth, a roland zip drive multitracker and an akai s900 sampler that i bought from a DJ who was using it for radio jingles.
Looking back, i must have had infinite patience, nothing was intuitive and i spent weeks learning midi basics just to get the damn boxes to communicate with each other. The music i made was simple enough but hard slog. I didnt even have a sample library to call upon, i msde my own from whatever sources i could find on hundreds of floppy discs.
Now with Ableton and before that Protools, I have so many possibilities just from a laptop and a big old hard drive but it can be like being a kid in a candy store sometimes, there are so many options, if i need a violin sound, i call it up in seconds, if i need an effect, its there in Ableton somewhere.
In a way i do miss the simplicity of my old system but i would not swap what i have now for what i had then. With the right controllers i have the hands on feel that was missing when i switched to PC music creation. I also recently bought a field recorder and its so much fun taking random sounds and making music from them like i did with my old akai sampler.
We are all very priviledged to be living in an age when we have so much technology easily available but it doesnt mean it has to be complicated. Learn to use the equipment you own inside out and its no harder than any hardware system and far more flexible IMO.
To me, a laptop is just another piece of music hardware, sure it might take a little longer to fire up than a dedicated bit of hardware but then i would need 100 connected bits of hardware to achieve the same results. And a lot of swearing!
Looking back, i must have had infinite patience, nothing was intuitive and i spent weeks learning midi basics just to get the damn boxes to communicate with each other. The music i made was simple enough but hard slog. I didnt even have a sample library to call upon, i msde my own from whatever sources i could find on hundreds of floppy discs.
Now with Ableton and before that Protools, I have so many possibilities just from a laptop and a big old hard drive but it can be like being a kid in a candy store sometimes, there are so many options, if i need a violin sound, i call it up in seconds, if i need an effect, its there in Ableton somewhere.
In a way i do miss the simplicity of my old system but i would not swap what i have now for what i had then. With the right controllers i have the hands on feel that was missing when i switched to PC music creation. I also recently bought a field recorder and its so much fun taking random sounds and making music from them like i did with my old akai sampler.
We are all very priviledged to be living in an age when we have so much technology easily available but it doesnt mean it has to be complicated. Learn to use the equipment you own inside out and its no harder than any hardware system and far more flexible IMO.
To me, a laptop is just another piece of music hardware, sure it might take a little longer to fire up than a dedicated bit of hardware but then i would need 100 connected bits of hardware to achieve the same results. And a lot of swearing!
