Unpopular Opinion: All DAWS suck (for playing live)

[docbot]

I'm a bit amazed how little concern goes into DAWs when it comes to performing music live. It's nearly impossible to perform electronic music live (multiple tracks) without rending everything to audio. So while older VSTs like Sylenth1 at least have superb preset implementation, meaning you can switch presets by simply sending a midi program change message as you would/could do on a hardware setup, it's not possible to do this with any native devices of any DAW, whenever you want to exchange a rack on your synth track in Ableton live you are forced to use the mouse and interact with the gui/laptop and it's resource wise impossible to just load all your tracks in groups next to each other (who has that kind of laptop capable of doing that??).

And it's not just DAWs, VST devs have also become lazy and just started ignoring proper preset VST implementation, so while older synth like Dune, Synth1, Sylenth1 let you switch presets on the fly via Midi Program Change, none of the fancy new wavetable ones will let you do this. Again you are forced to interact with the gui to make any changes to you project while in a live setting.

It's maddening that none of the developers aren't putting more thought into how to perform electronic music live with a DAW while still keeping the tweakablity of synths present and not forcing you to load new sets by hitting pause or having you drag thing around with your trackpad/mouse.

[aMUSEd]

Have you tried Using Hollyhock? It was designed with live performance at its heart

https://www.brainmodular.com

[W23]

The problem with DAWS is that they tend to offer several different ways to do something, and they’re not always straightforward. With Live, for example, you don’t necessarily need a mouse to change programs, but you do need to learn a thing or two about Groups and chains, dummy clips, clip launch commands, etc. If you really want to nerd out, you can get into controller scripting, and that’s where it gets impressive. None of it is easy. All of it is fairly time consuming, and you may go for a while without playing a note. I think once you find a comfortable workflow, the trick is to grow and expand on it. Hollyhock, Max/msp, Bitwig, and Logic Mainstage are all pretty good live rigs, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. Like anything it’s about exploiting their strengths and working around their limitations.

[jinotsuh]

Have you tried REAPER?

[fedexnman]

Have you tried Your Mom ?

Fixed that for you

[melomood]

Unpopular opinion

Instruments were meant for performing live and sequencers were meant for the studio

[tooneba]

Even ableton doesn't have jump marker"s" which automatically jumps to previous maker while it's claiming it is for Live. It has just a loop brace. No way to do : ||, ||:, D.C, D.S, To Coda. So I think No daw has reached to the degree of perfection in live usage.

[THE INTRANCER]

That's why software will never replace hardware based synthesizers...

[BONES]

There is only one feature of my hardware sequencers that my PC-based sequencer lacks that would make it perfect for live performance, and that is the ability to tell it which song to load when it gets to the end of the current song. With my Korg Trinity, I just had to load the first song and press play to get it to play the whole set, in the correct song order. After I pressed play that one time, I didn't have to go near my synths again, I could spend the rest of the set in the middle of the stage with my keytar strapped on, doing my job of entertaining the audience.

I'm a bit amazed how little concern goes into DAWs when it comes to performing music live. It's nearly impossible to perform electronic music live (multiple tracks) without rending everything to audio.

I think that very much depends how you want to work live. We've been managing just fine for 20 years without having to pre-render anything. Not everyone who uses a computer for music production does dance music and, for many genres, any DAW software will do the trick.

The biggest issue I have with using a DAW live is how long it takes to load each song since we moved to 64 bit. With 32 bit software it was really quick, just a second or two, but now it can be 30 seconds or longer, which is a long time to be standing up in front of people scratching your balls. So we've had to create little interstitial pieces we can play on our hardware while we wait for the next proper song to be ready. It's kind of annoying but you just learn to deal with it.

[kev2525]

Bones, Presonus studio one just introduced a new feature called the show page which is not far off what you want.

[Psuper]

I'm always trying to get a good peek at Cat Grey's setup on Lets Make a Deal (I have it DVRd for breakfast) Don't laugh, the guy knows his shit and not many people know about him.

Few years back insider:

[anttimaatteri]

Unpopular opinion

Instruments were meant for performing live and sequencers were meant for the studio

i was about to post the same ^^. now i can leanb ack eat my popcorn and watching the usual mudwrestling

[BONES]

Bones, Presonus studio one just introduced a new feature called the show page which is not far off what you want.

That actually looks pretty good. It seems to be a bit complicated but I think that's because it is trying to be a lot more flexible than just queueing up your songs, one after another. I've been a bit curious about Studio One for a while now, mostly because I like the really clean interface and layout, now I am definitely going to have to give a good workout and wait for a half-price sale. Thanks heaps for the info!

[THE INTRANCER]

BONES didn't know about the 'Show Page' in Studio One 5 ? The mind boggles, given the press coverage and topics here and across the web...

[BONES]

I'm a very happy Cubase user so why would I even bother to look at what Presonus is doing? Even if I saw "Show Page" somewhere, it's not a name that would trigger any interest from me. It wasn't there when we were looking at our options and, having made a decision to go with Cubase, I haven't really paid it any attention since.

As for "press coverage", it hasn't made the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald so it's not likely I'd have seen anything about it in the "press". I stopped reading Future Music and Computer Music about 20 and 15 years ago, respectively.