clinton wrote:I think you're right Andrew. One more question. Am I being lazy here or should I suck it up and learn how to record on a PC?
Malcolm Boyce wrote:Another thing to keep in mind is if you find options to be daunting, for example, trying to decide which of 179 snare drums you want to use, something simple can help you avoid that trouble. If not, detailed is the bomb.
Different strokes for different folks.
Malcolm Boyce wrote:Another thing to keep in mind is if you find options to be daunting, for example, trying to decide which of 179 snare drums you want to use, something simple can help you avoid that trouble. If not, detailed is the bomb.
Different strokes for different folks.
macrae11 wrote:clinton wrote:I think you're right Andrew. One more question. Am I being lazy here or should I suck it up and learn how to record on a PC?
Well that's a large question that's pretty tough to answer. Here's my perspective though, and you can tell me if I'm wrong. You're a musician not an engineer, and I'm guessing that's the way you'd like to keep it. In an ideal world you'd hire someone like me, Matt, Malcolm, or Sean Boyer to sit behind the computer/console all day while you focus all your energies on being creative. That's probably never going to be a feasible solution. In my mind the next best solution is to work at home on demos with whatever type of recording equipment you have, then take that product and flesh it out in a proper studio, again with someone else handling all the techno jibber jabber so you can create and perform to the best of your abilities. I know(believe me I know) that this often isn't feasible either, and you've also gotten accustomed to being able to record and create at home at your leisure.
The problem with this approach is that you're always splitting yourself. Everybody has a finite amount of time available to them, and the more time you spend on tech matters the less you have to put into creative endeavors. Now sometimes diving into the tech world can be a creative reprieve, which can lead to renewed creativity and new ideas. More often than not though I see it as a stumbling block for artists who end up getting frustrated with the issues that they aren't equipped to solve. I really think this is part of the problem with modern music, that artists are split to many ways and end up being less effective at artists, which is what they're meant to be, due to the competing interests they've been forced into just to survive. So much for the democratization of music production eh?
So that's the negative.
On the positive learning to do this stuff in a computer, or a proper studio with a large format analogue console, can be very much like learning a new instrument, with many of the same rewards. However, as you know, there is time and effort required to reap the rewards. It's certainly my instrument, but it's not as simple as learning banjo when you can play guitar. It's more like learning music theory from the ground up.
I disagree with Matt and Malcolm that it would potentially take as little as a few days or hours to really "get this working". Yes you could be making some sounds, but nothing kills a creative vibe faster than having to go and change buffer settings because there's a delay from what your hands are doing to the sound your hearing. And that's assuming you recognize what the problem is and how to fix it. Now hypothetically if you had someone build a working system and show you the basics of how to use it, you could get to work right away and build from there. Basically the equivalent of learning G,C, and D(which is maybe all you'll ever need)
macrae11 wrote:The problem with this approach is that you're always splitting yourself. Everybody has a finite amount of time available to them, and the more time you spend on tech matters the less you have to put into creative endeavors. Now sometimes diving into the tech world can be a creative reprieve, which can lead to renewed creativity and new ideas. More often than not though I see it as a stumbling block for artists who end up getting frustrated with the issues that they aren't equipped to solve. I really think this is part of the problem with modern music, that artists are split to many ways and end up being less effective at artists, which is what they're meant to be, due to the competing interests they've been forced into just to survive. So much for the democratization of music production eh?
macrae11 wrote:I disagree with Matt and Malcolm that it would potentially take as little as a few days or hours to really "get this working".
clinton wrote:what I was hoping for would be that you guys would say "buy this, it has this and is all you need. It's like 60 bones and is easy to use". Figured that was too simple.
clinton wrote:what I was hoping for would be that you guys would say "buy this, it has this and is all you need. It's like 60 bones and is easy to use". Figured that was too simple.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:clinton wrote:what I was hoping for would be that you guys would say "buy this, it has this and is all you need. It's like 60 bones and is easy to use". Figured that was too simple.
I had a dream a while back that I bought this plugin that controls your DAW and you simply played the track as a loop and every pass it made improvements to the mix until the mix was perfect. The program would listen to the mix and make judgement calls bordering A.I. and it only cost $500. Everyone on gearslutz wanted one, since it took the guess work out of mixing. The next day the entire recording industry filed chapter 11.
Then I woke up.
macrae11 wrote:clinton wrote:what I was hoping for would be that you guys would say "buy this, it has this and is all you need. It's like 60 bones and is easy to use". Figured that was too simple.
Way way too simple. While I'm being all negative I should point out one major negative point to the hardware route. If you want to work with drum loops and tempo based sounds, you will have to either sequence everything in whatever synth you end up buying(they all suck at sequencing to varying degrees), or print your first tempo based sound and then try to frig with everything else to get it close. This is one of those problems that you don't even have to think about with a computer, but can be a showstopper when dealing in the analog realm.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:Disagree with malcolm all you want but leave me out of it. I never said hours... I've done enough MIDI in the past 5 years that I'd never say such a thing. Days to get the swing of it, weeks to get comfortable, and months to get sublime with it is reasonable if you work at it.
clinton wrote:okay, okay
macrae11 wrote:I still disagree with you too, just maybe not quite as much.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:macrae11 wrote:clinton wrote:what I was hoping for would be that you guys would say "buy this, it has this and is all you need. It's like 60 bones and is easy to use". Figured that was too simple.
Way way too simple. While I'm being all negative I should point out one major negative point to the hardware route. If you want to work with drum loops and tempo based sounds, you will have to either sequence everything in whatever synth you end up buying(they all suck at sequencing to varying degrees), or print your first tempo based sound and then try to frig with everything else to get it close. This is one of those problems that you don't even have to think about with a computer, but can be a showstopper when dealing in the analog realm.
Mosts synths have an absolute piece of crap multitrack sequencer built into them that can help with that.
macrae11 wrote:Mathieu Benoit wrote:Mosts synths have an absolute piece of crap multitrack sequencer built into them that can help with that.
Fixed it for you.
macrae11 wrote:If Clinton's going to get into sequencing in a synth, he might as well get into computer recording because the learning curve will be almost the same, and at least that way he'll still have his fingers and eyes from not having torn them off and gouged them out respectively.
Christian LeBlanc wrote:macrae11 wrote:If Clinton's going to get into sequencing in a synth, he might as well get into computer recording because the learning curve will be almost the same, and at least that way he'll still have his fingers and eyes from not having torn them off and gouged them out respectively.
I'll disagree here, as it really depends on the hardware and how it handles sequencing. Some devices are real user-friendly and intuitive, although I'll acknowledge that the other 99% of devices out there are creativity-prohibitive.
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