Petition: Should all hosts have "render to track" feature?

[rounser]

I would ask why have one bloated, creaking hulk of an application to do what can more easily be broken into a series of separate tasks. e.g. Grabbing samples from a sample disc or from a DVD movie or whatever is not something I would suddenly want to do in the middle of arranging a new song, its something I sit down and do in bulk. So keeping my audio editing out of my sequencer keeps both applications svelte and easy to work with.

Well, it's renoise (about 3.5 meg), so it's not exactly bloatware. It's not perfect (I resort to a step sequencer to control it for instance, and the filters are not up to much), but then nothing else is either.

Why f**k about multi-sampling something that can be more easily loaded and tweaked as a VSTi?

Basically because multiple interfaces do my head in....and it's relatively painless to multisample (with a keymapped template) because of the sequencer/sampler/editor all the same thing. I wouldn't be multisampling if it weren't for the "render to sample slot" feature, because then I'd have to flick between apps and deal with "save as"/"open" etc, which would indeed be too much f**king about.

Actually it seems to me, given the power of modern PC's, that people who find themsleves running out of CPU are probably just throwing instruments and effects at a project without thought or planning, simply because they can. Give those same people limitations and it is most likely they will find more elegant solutions to most of their little problems. That is why I like having only two effect inserts - if I can't get something sounding right with two effects on it, I figure I am better off looking for a more appropriate sound rather than trying to kludge it into a mix.

What you say here rather creepily echoes something else I read today:

And I must say, and I've discussed this with other ex-amiga musicians,that
it might really have been a blessing to grow up in an enviroenment limited to four channels and basic sounds , with no possibilty of getting hung up in sound-oriented stuff like eq and reverb and effects. It invited to focusing more on composistion. And it was fast to work with, so you could experiment a lot with musical composistion and try out a bunch of ideas in a fairly short time. You had no fancy effects to hide behind, so you simply had to concentrate on making good compositions instead.

Today I see so many beginners who seem to switch to the sound production part far too early in the process. Instead of working for days and nights on end trying to get the melodies and groove and placement of every snaredrum or base note as perfect as possible, like people were forced to do in the early times in order to get something sounding good, a lot of ppl nowadays seem to make a little groove and then try to make it better by experimenting with all sorts of effect plugins.

Not that I have anything against professional mixes, but in my view it should come as an extra bonus when the musical foundation has been established.

I know a lot of people who have commented that when FT2 came out,
most people started making shitty music. Instead of good melodies and simple arrangements that worked, people were now filling up 30 channels with drums and sounds and masses of strings that bleeded into eachother and a majority of the tunes just sounded like a mess.

My experience is that creativity often gets kick-started when you have to
work with limitations. That's why I dig the new trends with renoise mod-compos with definate sample-sets and size limits etc. It makes you have to try and do the best out of what you have, which can be really inspiring and intriguing, and also it brings back some of that healty competition and a feeling of community which was in the scene back then. : )

Food for thought.

[electro]

petition or poll?

[superddman]

PETITION!!! hehe
going straight to host developers.

[runagate]

Once again those who are opposed to this idea seem to be the people
who don't mind repetetive tasks because they can't conceive of coming up
with enough music containing enough ideas per song to understand the idea
of wasting time on foolishly implemented workflow. Unfortunately, making
boring music from templates is not the solution someone like me is looking
for.

I'm sure it's all well and good to say we have enough CPU power and use too
many effects when you're just copying someone else's pre-made genre/style.
Doing the same song over and over is, I agree, probably pretty easy to implement.

How have we come to this stage where someone advocates dumbing down creativity
and imagination on a music discussion forum? How can this possibly be an issue
that intrudes into otherwise intelligent conversation every day?!

To such all-too-comon flippany and mockery I point out that if you can't wrap your
head around the concept that creative people want tools to efficiently bring to
fruition what races and writhes within their imagination then maybe you should
look into a non-musician interest, like maybe being a club DJ.

[jens]

yeah... - it wasn't worth it for me to even just reply - dudes like us get isulted by someone like Bones as being mindless idiots who don't know what they're doing because we're running out of cpu - oh the irony...

[rounser]

How have we come to this stage where someone advocates dumbing down creativity
and imagination on a music discussion forum? How can this possibly be an issue
that intrudes into otherwise intelligent conversation every day?!

To such all-too-comon flippany and mockery I point out that if you can't wrap your
head around the concept that creative people want tools to efficiently bring to
fruition what races and writhes within their imagination then maybe you should
look into a non-musician interest, like maybe being a club DJ.

They're saying that too many features and too many tools leads to the software equivalent of channel-surfing, and that you often end up frittering time away on trivia, drowning in options, mastering nothing. I'm inclined to agree in many cases (see the Fasttracker reference above, and then imagine how bad it must be these days when we're neck deep in audio toys).

Limitations breed creativity. On the other hand, limitations can also lead to boring and unnecessary workarounds, which can also kill creativity. Rather than both sides of the argument making mass generalisations and both claiming they're right, all the time, I think that these things need to be considered on a case by case basis.* e.g. 100 synths when 1 would do bad, one extremely powerful feature that opens up heaps of new avenues for productivity good. But bloatware is also bad, so you can't keep adding such features forever or the user starts getting lazy (and therefore unproductive), begins drowning in options, and never truly masters the program because it's so complex.

*: Note that I'd never make it in politics - fencesitting and "consider each case on it's merits" is nowhere near as snappy and attractive as a simple ideology which has decided what is right and proper every time, painting the world in black and white.

[runagate]

On the contrary, rounser, fencesitting and waffling are prerequisite in
politics.

Trotting out the bugaboo of "extremism" is also a predominant trait of
politicos nowadays. Bravo.

You can limit yourself voluntarily should you desire.
Whereas we who strive to craft what resides in our minds cannot
un-limit our tools.

[superddman]

How have we come to this stage where someone advocates dumbing down creativity
and imagination on a music discussion forum? How can this possibly be an issue
that intrudes into otherwise intelligent conversation every day?!

To such all-too-comon flippany and mockery I point out that if you can't wrap your
head around the concept that creative people want tools to efficiently bring to
fruition what races and writhes within their imagination then maybe you should
look into a non-musician interest, like maybe being a club DJ.

They're saying that too many features and too many tools leads to the software equivalent of channel-surfing, and that you often end up frittering time away on trivia, drowning in options, mastering nothing. I'm inclined to agree in many cases (see the Fasttracker reference above, and then imagine how bad it must be these days when we're neck deep in audio toys).

Limitations breed creativity. On the other hand, limitations can also lead to boring and unnecessary workarounds, which can also kill creativity. Rather than both sides of the argument making mass generalisations and both claiming they're right, all the time, I think that these things need to be considered on a case by case basis.* e.g. 100 synths when 1 would do bad, one extremely powerful feature that opens up heaps of new avenues for productivity good. But bloatware is also bad, so you can't keep adding such features forever or the user starts getting lazy (and therefore unproductive), begins drowning in options, and never truly masters the program because it's so complex.

*: Note that I'd never make it in politics - fencesitting and "consider each case on it's merits" is nowhere near as snappy and attractive as a simple ideology which has decided what is right and proper every time, painting the world in black and white.

But how would your average renderering lead to creativity?
We are not talking here about "One-Button-Hit-Song-Maker" but just automating tasks that lots of us need to do on constant basis. In this scenerio, I just can't agree with your creativity aspect.

[rounser]

Trotting out the bugaboo of "extremism" is also a predominant trait of
politicos nowadays. Bravo.

I edited that out on purpose because it has, as you imply, offensive connotations that the other person is unreasonable. "Extremism" was meant by me in that context to mean the human tendency to fixate on a rule of thumb, and assume it's right in every case. Everyone does it because the world is a complex place, and if a rule of thumb is right most of the time, it's easier to assume that it's right all the time. That's very reasonable, because we need to get through the day.

I disagree that politics is about fencesitting, at least in the public eye; that fails to excite voters in the 10 second soundbytes that politicians get, and most of the time when a politician makes me flabbergasted at their decisions is when they're following party ideology down a path where it's best not applied in that specific circumstance (e.g. the "privatise everything" ideology applied to industries that automatically descend into monopoly in the free market because of the need for massive amounts of infrastructure, such as the telecommunications and airline industries).

[rounser]

But how would your average renderering lead to creativity?

I can't speak for "average rendering", but "render to sample slot" has unlimited possibilities. It's extremely powerful for bouncing, layering, re-edits and multisampling.

[runagate]

May I point out that, while this is hijacking and we should probably stop, that
in the country where I live what you just said would be considered extremism.

So what about the fact that you can limit yourself voluntarily yet we
cannot un-limit our tools. An analogy would be to auto safety:
Not having seatbelts & airbags could, theoretically, encourage safer driving.

By that argument we could be making more tracks and better utilize our
creativity by shedding that pernicious midi-functionality from our DAWs.
Both arguments are obviously untrue given a moment's thought.

[rounser]

May I point out that, while this is hijacking and we should probably stop, that
in the country where I live what you just said would be considered extremism.

I'm curious; which bit?

Seatbelts is a good example - the law says always use one, but I'm sure you can concoct certain emergency scenarios where it's more important just to get someone somewhere (such as a pregnant woman in labour who's too big for a seatbelt, and an ambulance can't get there) rather than follow the letter of the law. The law doesn't like to admit this because everyone deciding what is right to do on a case by case basis leads to anarchy. It's better to just force everyone to conform all the time...but we're not talking about law enforcement when we're talking features on software.

[superddman]

Trotting out the bugaboo of "extremism" is also a predominant trait of
politicos nowadays. Bravo.

I edited that out on purpose. "Extremism" was meant by me in that context to mean the human tendency to fixate on a rule of thumb, and assume it's right in every case. Everyone does it because the world is a complex place, and if a rule of thumb is right most of the time, it's easier to assume that it's right all the time.

I disagree that politics is about fencesitting; that fails to excite voters in the 10 second soundbytes that politicians get, and most of the time when a politician makes me flabbergasted at their decisions is when they're following party ideology down a path where it's best not applied in that specific circumstance (e.g. the "privatise everything" ideology applied to industries that automatically descend into monopoly in the free market because of the need for massive amounts of infrastructure, such as the telecommunications and airline industries).

Ahh, I think we must be getting old, talking about politics as part of host developement.

I, for instance, the faster I can transfer my ideas into my song, the more creative I am.
The slower I can transfer my ideas into my song, the less creative I am.

[runagate]

(e.g. the "privatise everything" ideology applied to industries that automatically descend into monopoly in the free market because of the need for massive amounts of infrastructure, such as the telecommunications and airline industries).

I happen to agree with it, but it'd be labeled extremist around these parts.
Class warfare, communist, whatever.

I disagree that our habit of seeing issues as two polar opposites
between which is the reasonable course makes any sense, however.
Rarely do ideas and options string themselves on a linear continuum
that we are lead to believe comprises all of the points of view about
an issue.

*edit* sorry you've got enough hijackers on your post - I'll stop now.

[rounser]

I happen to agree with it, but it'd be labeled extremist around these parts.
Class warfare, communist, whatever.

Just to be clear, I mean that I think privatising monopoly industries doesn't work; I think that monopolies which society needs should be taken over by the government, because that's a lesser evil than a corporation that destroys or absorbs all competitors and fleeces the public because it has no competition. But that's another rule of thumb for making sense of the world, so there are probably circumstances where it would be wrong.

But yeah, end of tangent.