FL Studio 6 Mixer...

[krakengore]

i just can live with a pink guitar. if i have an idea, not matter which coloured pieces i use. the idea is just the idea, it's a matter of feeling, technique, i make sounding takes not oil on canvas...

[jmh]

Speccyteccy I'm only questioning the amount of such an effect - coming from art school world I'm more than familiar with the issue (color psychology is an obligatory part of the studies, along with color theory), hence I'm trying to get it across that it's getting blown out of proportions if people start tossing around "facts" such as that the color scheme of one's application of choice dictates in some way the outcome.

I can't even think of an artist whose material I'm familiar with where one could start picking up clues about the artist's output changing due to switching to another application - quite the opposite, all the musicians I know personally write rather similar material despite switching from hardware to software and from one host to another... some of them to a degree that it really feels like they are pushing the boundaries of certain apps, coming up with such complex material that most users of certain apps would be rather impressed, even some of those seasoned "hardcore" users

And I haven't really encountered so far a phenomenon where someone's artistical output has changed into a happier direction as a result of switching to a host with a bright, colorful host, from another host with a dark almost colorless interface. Nor the opposite.

Regards,

JMH

[headquest]

no. actually if i have in mind to make a special sounding track i can start fl, tracktion, or nuendo... the same special sounding tracks is coming out, same bassline, same drumtracks, same mood. is not the colour of the mixer that affects my productions, but my productions affects my (and any other's) mood. change the point of view. "It's well known" for you but i'm a different person.

The key point there is that you start with your track already "in mind".

For my part, when I open up software without much already planned, and start to compose through experimentation, that's when aspects like colour scheme and - far more importantly - the overall layout and tools available - have more of an influence.

If I start a track in Live, Sibelius, Audition, Reason, Tracktion or the FL Studio demo, and I compose as I go along, they will certainly ALL turn out quite different.

(By the way, I really like the FL Studio look and colours personally - one of the attractions of FL as far as I am concerned)

[Stupid American Pig]

color may make a difference, but Ive made good tracks and shite tracks on every host I own, and none of the hosts bring out any certain theme from me. Most of the time Im staring at the piano keyboard or guitar fretboard anyway, so the color on my monitor is irrelavent...

[corman rapeblio]

It's not necessarily about your personal experience, it's the concept itself and whether it's at all valid even to a small degree that's interesting.. but you see you could be using FL but spend most of the time looking at the Kontakt 2 interface.. so it's more complex than you think.

[krakengore]

jmh: no things to add. you 100% hit the point.

headquest: that's another story. just know your tools. even experimenting if you don't know where direction are you going, you just lost in nothing at all. experimenting is like a chaotical interpretation of the knowledge you already have.
if i'm just experimenting (yeah me too take long time in experimentation) i'm more influenced by the TOOLS that are available, not the colour of that tools. i.e. if i had a PRE-POST button on the mixer and is coloured red, i just click on it when i want EXPERIMENT the effect of having a DIFFERENT SIGNAL PATH or DIFFERENT SOUND MODIFICATION, not because the button is red: for simple, i do not click casually on the application tools taking in account if the button is big and red or small and green. i press the button when i want chaotically experiment WHAT THAT TOOL OR FUNCTION DOES TO THE SIGNAL.
for that is important having good tools. not focus too much on the colour scheme. the layout is another story: if i want achieve the same results, and the tools is positioned correctly, is a matter of less clicks arrive to the point you want. but is a matter of less clicks arrive to no point if you don't know what function are and what they are useful for.

lou

[headquest]

I agree with you (krakengore) that the tools are the key factor, not the colour!

In the case of FL, for example, the paradigm of working with patterns rather than linear sequencing is the key influence on how I would be inspired (or not!).

Regarding colours, I think that it is useful to have the option of light colours (for studio use, perhaps) or dark ones (for on-stage, or for "late-at-night" composing). My main host, Ableton Live, has a range of colour schemes to reflect both situations, and I think that is certainly a useful option.

[soma]

You guys are missing the point!

(GUI's are not only colors either. There is a fine art to enabling a user to accomplish tasks through graphical interfacing, not just switching a picture or a color.)

It's also a matter of what do you want to look at for 4-8 hours a day? A terd or hot girl? If you had the choice You'd make it.

[krakengore]

eheh... switching colour scheme is an interesting TOOL for my mixer. i have to tell MACKIE to make a COLOUR SCHEME switcher for my 16 tracks analog mixer... you know... i can't work with a black mixer when i'm mastering tracks with bands in my studio...

just kidding

lou

[james0tucson]

Any guy here who could live with a pink guitar?
myself, I'd be grabbin a spraycan almost immediately...

I'd play a pink guitar, sure. On stage even, why not? I have a "don't fwck with me about my pink guitar" kind of overall affect, though.

[Hink]

Any guy here who could live with a pink guitar?
myself, I'd be grabbin a spraycan almost immediately...

I'd play a pink guitar, sure. On stage even, why not? I have a "don't fwck with me about my pink guitar" kind of overall affect, though.

my Kramer Ritchie Sambora is pink

[Hink]

You guys are missing the point!

(GUI's are not only colors either. There is a fine art to enabling a user to accomplish tasks through graphical interfacing, not just switching a picture or a color.)

It's also a matter of what do you want to look at for 4-8 hours a day? A terd or hot girl? If you had the choice You'd make it.

Sadly it may be true that some ars missing your point...but you're missing a whole lot more...if it wasn't for all the talk about gui's I would have to look and see what color they are. Sorry I dont buy the excuse that the color of an app changes your music...I know the arguments for room color and such, and that I agree with...but the gui? C'mon you're clutching at straws...at least imo...see I'm not looking at the gui, I'm looking at the music with a second vision. My music, every note I play has a color to it. It's a common way of relating to things. When I'm writing in an app I am seeing the musics color, the color of my computer or software has absolutely no effect of any type on me. The color of the music does, the textures are represented often in my perception by different shades of colors...but that's when I'm playing as well. Seeing how playing my instruments are usually where my inspirations come from, when I'm playing guitar I don't "see" much. I gaze off into space, but I'm seeing the music in my mind...in color.

But you know what? It's been this way for me for 34 years of different guitars, recorders, amps, studio set-ups, daws...but yet the "color" of my songs are those that I choose to compliment the song and the software just has nothing to do with it...

[james0tucson]

Skinning isn't just about color -- it's also about controls, their proportions, their shape and form, that sort of thing. It's really complicated for a developer to provide the kind of flexibility to the end-user that's needed to implement such a configuration, and it's not always necessary.

I wish I could run my host headless. Or have an interface that is workable on a small LCD panel with a few controls on a midi surface. So I could put a PC in the rack and not need a keyboard and a mouse and a display. Yeah, I've heard of Receptor. I wish there were a dozen other things in the class of Receptor, and a general purpose means of doing computer music with the computer more as a dedicated audio device and not the desktop PC idiom.

[Hink]

basically I'm very nuetral on skins...if they're there I'll ckeck em out, in AA I like the black one....but I doubt I would ever intentionally look to see if it's skinable before I purchased it, but I could discover it with glee while exploring new software and use any skins I like...

[jmh]

In my dream world apps have either a vector based UI or otherwise done so that not only can you decide for yourself the colors of things, you're in charge of shapes, sizes and position as well. I'd settle for full bitmap-based skinnability though, but that's just me, not everybody is interested in photoshopping a couple of days to make an app suit his/her taste and workflow.

Not that I'm criticizing FL with this comment, for my taste and workflow it's still one of the more appealing ones, to the degree that it looks nice to me. And I do understand Gol's stance in keeping it non-skinnable.

(And then the obligatory bit about not owning it just in case someone wants to make an observation about it )

Regards,

JMH