When DAWs were not a black hole

[Essent]

The good old days, when DAWs were not a black hole and didn't inspire you to write graveyard music.

[waxtrax]

Back in my day, we had to walk in the snow uphill both ways just to use a DAW! Kids today will never know the pain that I had to go through just to sequence some music!

[Bombadil]

Luxury. In my day, I used to have to walk across a bridge over a raging St. Lawrence River, then another 15 miles to my friend's place, where his father would curse us if we were lucky. Having cannibalized the livingroom piano for guitar strings, we made a couple of mics from tin cans and string, so we could record using the x-y config. We recorded onto wax cylinders, so it was one take or it got very expensive. When we played back our music, reactions ranged from utter indifference to an emergency room visit.
But, ahhh, we had it good in the old days!

[Voxon]

Paradise. In my day, we only had mud to make music. But it didn't matter because we had no ears to hear it with. Then father used to murder us every night at nine because we were worthless. But at least we were happy.

[jens]

Back in my day, we had to walk in the snow uphill both ways just to use a DAW!

And without any boots or shoes!

[eLawnMust]

Kool thread... Yup, same applies to most anything, look at all the vehicles you can't tell what is what... "Is that a new Jeep Cherokee?"..."NOPE, It's a Mercedes!" gone are the bold design crafters of old where cars were built to look like rocketships complete with 'bulging flame tailight lenses' quite prevalent in the 50's...

So yes, modern GUIs suck hardcore... When was the last time you saw 3D GUIs like with Samplisizer-




Utrano Dreamer-

[eLawnMust]

Devine Machine Incarn-X 2... Probably the most alien styling... This is not the plugin but the earlier standalone, very powerful even by today's standards... When they made Guru & Geist for FXpansion they were but a specter of what this could do-




One of my favorites still use regular, only sequencer/tracker/DAW to be completely crash-free plus only a 460 KB directory in size... I have saved song files over 200 MB no problem... Ingests mono or stereo 16-24 bit WAV any size ... Tried a 32bit to see if that would crash it, nope it just refuses to accept it!

[Bombadil]

I find Logic’s black soothing. My eyes don’t like staring at bright white for hours.

[eLawnMust]

Yes, Darker can be better but what is even better than that is darker with style, like mixing logic's soothing black with a vintage harley-davidson...

Skale Tracker is kinda dark but there's styling as well-




Skale sounds real good too...

I think it has the most stylish slider parameter area for GUI-less plugs-




Some clever stuff in many a tracker... Skale has a rotating 'round robin' sort of note modulation using 1 or 2 curves modulating what parameter you want... everytime you trigger a new note on the instrument it triggers the next curves inline so things don't sound quite uniform boring pressing C4 throughout the tune-

[jancivil]

That white is blinding, it literally hurts.

[kritikon]

WTF is graveyard music?

[seangm]

del

[jamcat]

Inspiration for my graveyard music is what I look for in a DAW.

[jens]

WTF is graveyard music?

I could show you - but then I'd have to kill you...

[CrystalWizard]

The easy life! Back when we was kids mom would dress us in light jackets and shorts, pockets full of barbiturates and a backpack full of whiskey, we had to climb a mountain in the freezing cold with no shoes, no hats and no map. Ice would form from our breath. When we got to the top it was a jungle of patch cords, 12ga power line extensions, 1/4 tape and Mackie mixers. The heat was so intense we would keel over from dehydration (the whiskey being no help). The walk down the other side was a nightmare with monsters such as record execs, A&R vampires, and "mangers", thieves who talked out of the sides of their mouths. If anyone survived and made it to grandmas she served up chocolate topped FM synths and Electro Harmonix pedals with poison filling. Few lived to tell the tale, and fewer could remember.

Kids have it easy these days.

DAWs were not a black hole

I never realized how powerful my rockets boosters were that got me back after a session.