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I've found that the DAW itself wasn't the problem for me. It was using the same computer and space for work as I did for creativity. As soon as I set up a ded

I've found that the DAW itself wasn't the problem for me. It was using the same computer and space for work as I did for creativity. As soon as I set up a dedicated laptop and corner for music, and ran the DAW full screen, the distractions went away. I use a combination of hardware and software.

brudgers 4y ago
For me, dawless seems to smooth over several points of friction at the expense of things I don’t care about right now. One is the dedicated configuration. I turn on a 36” power strip and everything is ready to go in less than a minute. An important part of that is everything is ready to go every single time. There are no patch Tuesdays. No semantic versioning. The process is rock stable except for how I change it. A second affordance is that I can make tradeoffs around the specific capabilities I think I want. An example is my 1980’s Yamaha QX5 sequencer will record Sysex. Ableton Live Lite — came free with my first controller — won’t. It is an upgrade or finding another daw or running another piece of software and managing sysex outside the daw. The QX5 was fifty bucks and has a well engineered interface because Yamaha knew what it was doing. I don’t care that the UI is dated because so am I. A third affordance is dawless means line level audio can be the dominant signal path. That makes it easier for me to reason about my setup. There are a some of this is just what works for me caveats. Mostly I just want to put on headphones and make noise because it brings me joy. I am not trying to make an album and if a song comes out of it that’s just a bonus. I am doing it all on the cheap. The $999 for Ableton’s top package represents a lot of gear I would rather spend money on. I’ve fallen into the Turing tarpit enough times to know what mine looks like. Mine looks kind of like a daw.
- krnlpnc 4y ago
  For me it was approaching the DAW as a digital tape machine that worked for my flow. I run Ableton, but only record audio in from my looper and instruments. And just use the middle edition thats $300ish I still haven't embraced the bottomless pit of software instruments, but do use a few nice plug in FX. A lot of my ideas come up from looping, and the DAW is basically just “rolling tape” to capture that jam in a linear way. Maybe with some adjustments afterwards
  - brudgers 4y ago
    I get that. I guess I wound up toward the dawless end of the spectrum because I didn’t buy an iPad or another laptop…electronic music requires hardware either way I think. Where I am at right now, it helps to remove software from the picture. If the DAW solved audio and midi signal routing, then it would be a friction for friction trade off. But the daw doesn’t eliminate cables and configuration…VST’s excepted. I have a Tascam DP 006 and the QX5 for recording. The QX will loop, transpose, and rechannel MIDI too. Basically, I can do everything I think I want to do without a laptop. That could easily change of course. Dawless is an engineering design choice not an ideological hill I would die on.

brudgers 4y ago

For me, dawless seems to smooth over several points of friction at the expense of things I don’t care about right now. One is the dedicated configuration. I turn on a 36” power strip and everything is ready to go in less than a minute. An important part of that is everything is ready to go every single time. There are no patch Tuesdays. No semantic versioning. The process is rock stable except for how I change it. A second affordance is that I can make tradeoffs around the specific capabilities I think I want. An example is my 1980’s Yamaha QX5 sequencer will record Sysex. Ableton Live Lite — came free with my first controller — won’t. It is an upgrade or finding another daw or running another piece of software and managing sysex outside the daw. The QX5 was fifty bucks and has a well engineered interface because Yamaha knew what it was doing. I don’t care that the UI is dated because so am I. A third affordance is dawless means line level audio can be the dominant signal path. That makes it easier for me to reason about my setup. There are a some of this is just what works for me caveats. Mostly I just want to put on headphones and make noise because it brings me joy. I am not trying to make an album and if a song comes out of it that’s just a bonus. I am doing it all on the cheap. The $999 for Ableton’s top package represents a lot of gear I would rather spend money on. I’ve fallen into the Turing tarpit enough times to know what mine looks like. Mine looks kind of like a daw.

krnlpnc 4y ago
For me it was approaching the DAW as a digital tape machine that worked for my flow. I run Ableton, but only record audio in from my looper and instruments. And just use the middle edition thats $300ish I still haven't embraced the bottomless pit of software instruments, but do use a few nice plug in FX. A lot of my ideas come up from looping, and the DAW is basically just “rolling tape” to capture that jam in a linear way. Maybe with some adjustments afterwards
- brudgers 4y ago
  I get that. I guess I wound up toward the dawless end of the spectrum because I didn’t buy an iPad or another laptop…electronic music requires hardware either way I think. Where I am at right now, it helps to remove software from the picture. If the DAW solved audio and midi signal routing, then it would be a friction for friction trade off. But the daw doesn’t eliminate cables and configuration…VST’s excepted. I have a Tascam DP 006 and the QX5 for recording. The QX will loop, transpose, and rechannel MIDI too. Basically, I can do everything I think I want to do without a laptop. That could easily change of course. Dawless is an engineering design choice not an ideological hill I would die on.