[LAU] Some thoughts on making electronic music

[allan]

On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 14:36 -0500, Brent Busby wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Jun 2009, Jostein Chr. Andersen wrote:
> 
> > I was much more productive in the late seventies and in the eighties: 
> > I used to record guitars and vocals and bounce the tracks between two 
> > stereo compact cassette recorders. When I had a little more money, I 
> > got a 909, FB-01 , a JX8P (wonderful synth) and a KORG SQD-1 
> > sequencer, but still into a compact cassette recorder or two. Not much 
> > of equipment and the record quality was poor - but it was more than 
> > enough for making demos and doing stuff. A local radio station in 
> > Oslo, where I lived at the time, was even playing 6-7 of my songs in a 
> > program in '88 or '89; still recorded with SQD-1 and cassette 
> > recorders. Even back then, the local radio stations did compress the 
> > music so hard that everything sounded like shit, so my equipment was 
> > sufficient for that too.
> 
> I'm still catching up with old emails, so sorry about responding to a 
> thread so late...but...this is so true!
> 
> I also was more productive with sequencing and recording in the 80's. 
> I worked with tape.  It never sounded like what you put into it, but it 
> also didn't sound bad when you did it right.  I got way more done.  To 
> this day, I don't sequence on the computer, and I have lots of hardware 
> synths, hardware drum machines, hardware rack effects, and I like to 
> play keyboard, guitar, and drum parts with real keyboards, guitar, and 
> drums.  When I do program drum machine parts, it greatly carries over 
> that I can actually play drums, and don't have to go begging on the 
> Internet for a library of "loops" or something.  I think that makes me 
> some kind of fossil.  :)
> 
> But still the computer demands so much attention, and it gets it too, 
> because it promises so much.  Computers are really diabolical that way.
> 
> > Today, I have everything (and much more) I dreamed of thanks to the 
> > myriad of wonderful Linux audio apps and gizmos, but the productivity 
> > is like shit. It's time to concentrate on #1 and #2 and just make 
> > music.
> 
> I remember when Ardour wasn't at v1.0 yet, there was a disclaimer on the 
> web site that said something to the effect that it wasn't ready yet to 
> be equivalent to much more than a stack of ADAT's.  I was like, "Oh 
> good!  I really don't *want* my recording platform to do much more than 
> a stack of ADAT's!"  I don't expect my DAW to do much with effects, EQ, 
> sequencing, sampling, or any of that.  It's a recorder!
> 
> And I still don't use most of Ardour's features...
> 
> (Of course it's nice when your audio card *sounds* better than a stack 
> of ADAT's.  ADAT ADC's are so *cold*!)
> 

Yeah.. I actually like the visual aspect in a DAW.. but I am also a
hardware sequencer and synth kind of person...