I've been getting into making electronic music and figuring out a workflow that balances these constraints is really challenging.
The most powerful, expressive, flexible, and affordable way to make music, by far, is to do everything in a DAW inside a computer. Ableton + a few software synth plug-ins is a ridiculously powerful platform to make music in. You could produce albums for the rest of your life and never run out of inspiration. And the user interface for Ableton is just an absolute delight.
But it's so powerful that it takes me forever to get anything done. It's easy to spend three hours tweaking reverb settings and never finish anything.
The other approach is to do everything in dedicated hardware with real synthesizers. It's expensive to buy gear and a hassle to wire everything up. Decide that you want delay on your bass instead of the lead? That's five minutes of futzing with cables versus a single drag-and-drop in Ableton. Want two different reverb settings for the pad and the clap? Better shell out another $300 to buy a second reverb pedal. Undo? You're lucky if your sequencer supports it.
But because the set of options is so much narrower and the cost for rethinking choices is higher, the hardware environment pushes you forward and makes you want to finish things.
The tricky part is that, to a listener, the music made on hardware often just isn't as good in many ways as that made in a DAW. Listeners today are used to lots and lots of layers and very surgical production and mixing. That's easy (but time-consuming) in a DAW, but very difficult (and expensive) in hardware.
That is totally my experience with my hobbyist music making endeavour too!
I thought owning more plugins and getting better gear would mean I'd make lots and lots of music.
When I started out 9 years ago, I had Renoise, zero paid plugins (only free vsts like Synth1 and friends) and a cheap pair of earbuds. I didn't even understood basic things like translation, gain staging and etc, and I'd always wonder why my tracks wouldn't play correctly on other people's speakers (channels would clash frequencies, elements would downright disappear and etc).
Yet, my most creative, layered and musical (data amount, transitions and overall creativity) time was at that period. And I typed it all in using the computer keyboard. In a computer in the middle of the living room.
Now I have a huge desk with a pro usb audio dac, Yamaha Hs8 Monitors (excellent, btw), all plugged in with proper balanced xlr cables, 2 midi keyboards, an ATH-m50 pair of cans for when I can't be noisy in the Study (small kids), lots of paid plugins like Sylenth1 and Serum, a plethora of sample libraries scavenged and assembled painstakingly through the years... only the good stuff, categorized, ready to double click and peruse.
....It's been two years since the last time I actually used all this stuff
You guys are right. I need to get back to the basics.
What use is to be able to put 80+ tracks in your software because now you have a good pc that can handle that many if you can't even write the first part down because there are soooo many options and you're lost tweaking knobs.
Yes, I'm 100% with you. I've finished two tracks using Reason and Ableton with dozens of unfinished things laying around. And those two tracks took weeks.
Meanwhile, with my little Electribe 2 and a couple of guitar pedals, I finished three tracks in like a tenth of the time and enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.
But, on the other hand, those two tracks I made on the computer are, I think, much better songs for someone to listen to.
So a big part of this dilemma is how much do I optimize for my enjoyment of the process versus the listener's enjoyment of the product? The two are not purely orthogonal. It's hard to make something people like if you're miserable doing it. But they aren't entirely aligned either, as can be witnessed by all of the many many ambient modular jams that I'm sure were fun for the artist to make but are just pointless boring noodling to the listener.
I like it! The filter sweep on the drums is <chef's kiss>. The overall structure is really cool. So much electronic music just has nothing interesting going on in the arrangement.
I first got into making music like, uh, 20 years ago using PlayerPro on a Mac. I was way more productive back then. Trackers are fun. But also my music was a lot shittier, so there's a trade-off. Have you talked yourself into getting a Polyend Tracker yet?
I like putting it on YouTube because that feels less formal and less like a "release" to me. Though the downside is having to make some kind of video for each thing.
The most powerful, expressive, flexible, and affordable way to make music, by far, is to do everything in a DAW inside a computer. Ableton + a few software synth plug-ins is a ridiculously powerful platform to make music in. You could produce albums for the rest of your life and never run out of inspiration. And the user interface for Ableton is just an absolute delight.
But it's so powerful that it takes me forever to get anything done. It's easy to spend three hours tweaking reverb settings and never finish anything.
The other approach is to do everything in dedicated hardware with real synthesizers. It's expensive to buy gear and a hassle to wire everything up. Decide that you want delay on your bass instead of the lead? That's five minutes of futzing with cables versus a single drag-and-drop in Ableton. Want two different reverb settings for the pad and the clap? Better shell out another $300 to buy a second reverb pedal. Undo? You're lucky if your sequencer supports it.
But because the set of options is so much narrower and the cost for rethinking choices is higher, the hardware environment pushes you forward and makes you want to finish things.
The tricky part is that, to a listener, the music made on hardware often just isn't as good in many ways as that made in a DAW. Listeners today are used to lots and lots of layers and very surgical production and mixing. That's easy (but time-consuming) in a DAW, but very difficult (and expensive) in hardware.
Finding the right balance here is hard.