Monthly Archives: February 2007

thoughts on a free digital audio workstation

Posted by on February 21, 2007 No comments

a recent thread on the LAU list got me thinking. there were some posts to different blogs along the lines of “gnome and kde are dying!” “linux on the desktop is dead!” “nothing is moving anymore!” this was brought up as off-topic on LAU and folks started to weigh in on what the slowing of development on GTK+ and all that meant for the desktop experience on gnu/linux and the odds of us ever having an audio distro that works “out of the box.”

i should pause for a second and qualify some things. first off, i’ve been a professional windows programmer for just over 10 years now. i’ve been running debian gnu/linux since 1998 or so and i’ve had a powerbook with os x for around 3 years. i use what works for what i need to have done. and i’m not looking for some kind of “experience.” my computers are tools and i expect them to perform given tasks efficiently and reliably, but not without some level of expertise on my part. simply picking up an instrument doesn’t make one a musician, right?

and that’s where our first and most destructive assumption about any kind of audio appication on any platform enters. if i were to plop “joe geetar” in front of a 64 channel mixer and a DAT recorder would he expect to be able to push a button and start recording his album? i doubt it. but because joe can check his email and type up his resume should he assume that he can now click a button on his computer screen and master an album? that’s quite a leap. why? because checking email and recording a song are two entirely different processes requiring entirely different knowledge bases and having enitrely different system requirements.

i understand that the majority of folks are looking to walk up to a computer, open an app, point something at a microphone and record for a bit. that’s great! and that SHOULD be a safe assumption. it’s certainly an assumption one can make with garageband on any os x box. but i’m talking about “state of the art” level audio work. to me this means: low latency multi-track recording with non-destructive editing and the maximum amount of digital magic that can be forced into an application and run comfortably on a modern (2 year old) piece of hardware.

someone who is serious about using a digital audio workstation (DAW) knows that the more a user wants from an application, the more the application wants from its environment. if one desires low latency recording, one needs to be sure that the given hardware can handle it. an onboard sound chip and an off-the-shelf harddisk with the system and audio data stored on it won’t handle that (in most situations). an experienced DAW user
would expect that on any platform. that user would also know all about the performance of disks, how to partition them, what filesystems to use and how to configure the OS to maximize performance. and that’s on any platform. that user will also know that audio hardware is key. superior converters with onboard dsp means that there is more room to move on the system. more RAM helps as well. the user would know that having two browsers, an email client and four IM conversations open while trying to record or edit could damage performance.

but how would this user know all of these things? because anyone who is serious about working with digital audio will take the time to do a little research regardless of platform or software package preferences. the would be engineer who runs out and buys whatever is on the shelf at the local music barn is courting disaster and will get exactly what is deserved. think about it, a musician doesn’t simply buy any guitar. she buys the guitar that sounds and feels the best for her for the money she can afford spend. why should a DAW be any different?

it’s not.

i understand that learning the internals of a kernel and figuring out how to patch and recompile is an enormous roadblock. but that’s clear now from what i can tell. it’s easy to get a distro installed and have jack up and running with ardour in an afternoon (likely the same amount of time it takes to install windows and crack the light version of protools that was “borrowed” from a friend). with debian, it’s an apt-get away. maybe it’s my conservatory training talking here but nothing that produces worthwhile results is ever easy. practicing is never easy. learning a new instrument isn’t a simple affair. getting that first gig or finding a well suited collaborator doesn’t usually just happen. it’s work!

i’m not naive. i understand that we expect our computers to do more than one thing. we want a machine that will meet our DAW needs and still check email, browse the web, edit documents, layout flyers and keep our
finances. it would be pretty sweet if copy and paste worked across applications too. and if we could expect the desktop to behave the same way in all environments that’d be keen. these are all excellent goals and in most respects total no-brainers. that said, anyone who is serious about recording will likely be willing to give a little to gain a lot in terms of achieving his goals. when automating mixes in ardour using my midi faderbox of choice i seldom find myself wishing that i had a weather widget on my task bar.

there will be those who will say that simply going to os x or windows will solve those issues and that a user can have it all right out of the box, but that’s not true. after the amount of cash that gets laid out there is still a pile of configuration and tweaking to be done. the hurdles have different names, but they still exist. getting results requires education and work.

at the end of the day, someone who is serious about using a computer for something like digital audio needs to do some research and become educated in the use of the tool that she is trying to acquire. this is true of most things in the world and i’m not sure why computers and software are supposed to be exempt.

waiting game

Posted by on February 7, 2007 No comments

my musical output has been all over the map lately. the last few tunes that i’ve cranked out have been things that i really enjoy hearing over and over. and that’s unusual for me with my own music. i think i’ve transitioned myself to making music that i want to hear and play. something to experience. and i wonder if that’s a weird sort of feedback loop…or worse.

in any case, i really like this new one. it’s been stuck in my head for at least two weeks and now that i have a halfway decent recording of it (though still quite rough around the edges) i’m quite pleased with myself and i can move on to re-recording an older tune that never quite gelled due to the arrangement, i think.

so here it is: waiting game.

i like it and i’m thinking of expanding it to a full fledged duo for guitar. so i’ll treat this as a song/sketch for now. i do like it.

the working title for the new collection is testing 1…2…3… mostly because i know i won’t use it and it helps me organize things on my ipod.

and speaking of the ipod, i’ve decided that it is my most useful tool. i keep my sketches and nightly excursions on it. whatever i do in the evening, i mix down quickly in ardour and throw into audacity. there, i trim in up and turn it into an mp3 so i can pop it on the ipod. then i can listen to it in the car or at my desk. low quality car audio with noisy traffic and headphones at the office are the new concert halls. i also get it mixed in with other tunes so i can get a feel for how people will “find” my music in eclectic collections.

kind of?

Posted by on February 2, 2007 1 comment

i’ve become terribly dependent on podcasts. i absolutely hate the radio and on my 45 minute commute to work, it’s hard to come up with constantly fresh playlists that work for me. in fact, when i listen to music i really *listen* to it and that isn’t conducive to driving or working. it’s really a bummer that the thing i enjoy most is the one thing that i have to do exclusively.

the point of this is that i have subscribed to a gaggle of podcasts to fill my morning commute. one of those is the studio 360 podcast. on my way to work this morning, there was a piece about miles davis and his masterpiece “kind of blue.”

the piece itself brought a number of things to my attention: i don’t own a copy of “giant steps” by john coltrane; i didn’t know that ornette coleman really introduced free jazz in 1959 (the year “kind of blue” was released); and that people can honestly judge music by the person who made it.

it’s that last bit that really caught me unawares. it was a really tiny part of the story, but it derailed my train of thought.

i won’t claim to be an expert on the life of miles davis, but from what i understand he had some very undesirable traits as a human being. he beat his wife. he was a pimp to make money for drugs. he did some bad things. again, i’m no expert, so i’m going strictly on what i’ve gotten from excerpts and interviews like the one i heard this morning.

does that affect how i hear “kind of blue”?

i’m a big biography reader. i especially love reading about composers, writers and painters. i like drawing the parallels between their lives and the works that they produced. autobiographies and journals are even more fun for me as i get a peek inside the head of the creative individual through their own filters. when i came to the biographies on john cage, i was quite aware of his work. looking back, it was fascinating to connect the dots. the same goes for harry partch and edward abbey. i wonder how it would have colored my views of their work if i had known their life stories in advance. would i have been more sympathetic? more put off? i can’t say. i do know that all too often i will hear a story about this author or that band and go off to experience their work and feel let down by the quality of it for one reason or another. in a way, it’s de rigeur to get a promising story about a creator only to find that the work itself is less exciting than the story of who made it and how. but i don’t think i’ve ever heard a horrible story about someone and then gone on to really fall in love with a work by that same person. is that because i don’t seek out the work of those people?

but i wonder if it matters.

we know nothing about the individuals who make our clothes or cars or meals, yet we make use of them daily. would i send back my steak if i knew for a fact that the chef beat his wife? would anyone? i honestly wonder.

but music is different, right?. it’s something that we take so very personally. i would argue that there are few things that are taken on a more personal level. saying that you hate someone’s favorite song is almost akin to saying that you despise a very specific part of what makes that person who she is. maybe it’s because we identify with certain pieces of music so deeply that we desperately want the people who made it to be good and kind. the way we might imagine ourselves to be. in essence, we want to recreate the people who make this highly personal music in our own image. when reality clashes with that, it can prove to be too much.

so i think about miles davis. would i have enjoyed drinking with him? i don’t know. he sounds like he was an edgy man who liked making people uncomfortable. i find that amusing most of the time, so i might have enjoyed his company very much. i’m sure that i would despise some of his behaviors, but would that affect the music?

as a composer/writer i try to put a great deal of myself into my work. but do i want people to judge my music based on my loose and frequent use of four letter words? whether or not i go to church? how i treat my wife?

i guess not. because to me, it shouldn’t matter. i don’t know that i believe in absolute music in the purest academic sense. i think that music does bring something to a listener. but i don’t know that it’s the heart and soul of the person who made it.

music is interpreted by the listener and great music allows the audience to bring pieces of themselves into it. so at its best, music is a joint venture between the creator of the sounds and the receiver. the way that the listener applies the music in her head is independent of the creator and his life story.

i have had dear friends whose music didn’t move me one whit. and i’ve know people that i branded as jackasses who could do amazing things. maybe miles davis wasn’t a good person. am i defending the pimp? no. i’m saying that in the context of his music, it doesn’t matter to me. perhaps there would have been less soul had he not been what he was: deeply flawed just like the rest of us.