TFA starts down an important path - identifying different categories of users - but doesn't really get this quite right IMO.
There are (at least) four categories of DAW users:
1. Professionals who are being paid to make music, and for whom time is essentially money. Tools that speed up the production of that music are both financially valuable to them, and also make their overall lives easier (if done right).
2. Musicians for whom making music is a creative act of self-expression. They are not being paid by the hour (of music, or of effort), they are not under deadlines, but they do want tools that fit their own workflow and understanding of what the process should look like.
3. People who just want to have fun making music. Their level of performance virtuosity is likely low, and the originality of what they produce is likely to be judged by most music fans to be low. They want results that can be quickly obtained and are recognizable musical in whatever style they are aiming at, and they don't want to feel bogged down by the technology and process.
4. Audio engineers in a variety of fields who have little to no interest/need for music composition, but are faced with the task of taking a variety of audio data and transforming it radically or subtly to create the finished version, whether that's a collection of musical compositions or a podcast or a move soundtrack.
The same individual may, at different times, be a member of more than one of these groups (or other groups that I've omitted).
The needs of each of these groups overlap to a degree, but specifically the extent to which the current conception of AI in music&audio can help them, and how it may do so, are really quite different.
We can already see this in the current DAW world, where the set of users of DAWs like Live, Bitwig and FL Studio tends to be somewhat disjoint from the users of ProTools, Logic and Studio One.
TFA acknowledges this to some degree, but I don't think it does enough to recognize the different needs of these groups/workflows. Nevertheless, not a bad overview of the challenges/possibilities that we're facing.
5. People who record, but have nothing to do with music whatsoever. For example, I have literally no musical skills whatsoever, but have at least 15k hours in my DAW. I'm a Voice actor, who worked hard to customize my DAW to get rid of as much music making stuff as possible from cluttering my interface (Reaper FTW)
It's a Digital AUDIO workstation, not a Digital MUSIC workstation
I use Ardour when I do sound design. A lot of the time you want to be able to automate volume changes, or add a reverb or an EQ(With real-time controls instead of the annoying batch "Change it, then test it" workflow), etc.
I'd be happy too,it's mostly templates: project templates, individual fx presets, fx chain templates for corrections, sweetening and mastering, export/render prsets, filename templates, And lots of keystroke macros that help me speed up my work. Things like specific keystrokes for punch and roll, quick edits and ripple delete. It's an amalgamation of lots of small optimizations. Reaper is also really good at UI customization, so you can hide grids, measures ,snapping, and really optimize things. ChatGPT is also reasonably good at writing Lua scripts for reaper called ReaScript that can leverage the API for automations more complex than what you can do with SWS additions to the immense actions list. If you have something specific, feel free to reach out directly. I love this stuff.
Any pointers on where to start with all that? I can grok Audacity (which is a handy but terribly basic program). When it came to Reaper, I found it very confusing, and never managed to do much with it. My needs are basically voice only.
Yeah, of course! But, this will be a thing that I hope doesn't get flagged. I have a totally free course for configuring reaper for VO at academy.boothjunkie.com. it goes through all my initial optimizations for reaper. If you're comfortable with your VST setup, this will go a long way in getting you started, and you can incorporate your VO chain.
If you want to take this out of HN and talk more specifically, my website is in my profile and I'd be happy to help however I can. If you want to dig deeper into anything specific, I'd be happy to share any experience I have.
NB: occasional self-promotion, particularly in context and with an appropriate resource is more than fine on HN. The fact that the course is free should count for something as well:
It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
Logic Pro X is the DAW I'm most familiar with and while not "AI", it's "Drummer" plug-in is uncannily good. So good it's indistinguishable from AI. I want more of that. Give me "Bass Player" and "Keyboardist" and "Guitarist", etc, with all the options that "Drummer" currently has, to select style/genre, kit sound, etc.
Another wish list item: Let me point the DAW to a 4/8/16 bar section of multitrack original music I've created, and suggest n number of directions to take it, spitting out each of the individual instruments on their own tracks, so I can mix/match/edit. My imagination is limited; that's where I'd like AI to help.
I would say that there's a pair of taxonomies, one being of audio content (social audio, radio, film, multimedia art, music, etc) and one being of the level of user (hobby/beginner, student, pro, academic, etc) and the problem with DAWs are that they generally gravitate towards where the money is, which are pro users in music and film.
I think that another axis to take into consideration is the extent to which audio will originate outside the computer. The needs & desires of people recording actual performances on some kind of instrument (even an electronic one) are going to differ significantly from people working, as they say, entirely in the box.
>> problem with DAWs are that they generally gravitate towards where the money is, which are pro users in music and film.
Is that the case though?
Ableton and such don't charge per revenue as far as I'm aware. They charge same whether you are scoring a $500mil movie or fooling around after hard day of coding.
And I feel in sheer numbers, latter outweighs the formers by several orders of magnitude. All forums I've been to are filled by, at best, "enthusiasts". Thousands upond tens of thousands of us with some disposable income we give to synths and software to tinker with :-).
I think that's a solid observation. I just like to add a 3rd dimension to the taxonomy, which is the relationship of the user to the finished work (is it for money? is it for anyone else? is it for fun? is it meaningful?) because I think this impacts the user's relationship with the tools.
Take a look at Reaper. It's a professional quality tool, but easy enough to get started with for kids too, its license is very friendly and the trial version isn't limited in any way. The Windows version always worked for me under Linux using WINE with very low latency, but they made a Linux port which is great.
If you use the Linux port, you may want to use Yabridge to load Windows VSTs in a transparent way.
I'm a heavy Reaper user since I love the experience of editing with it, but when I'm fooling around writing songs, I use Garage Band specifically because it has so many great instruments and sounds, and also because I find I interact with it much differently than with Reaper or Pro Tools because of the simplified interface and I don't get sucked into fiddling with the details of what I'm making.
Before Garage Band, I used Tracktion (I think its now called Tracktion Waveform Free) in the same manner. It's been ages since I used it but if you're a Windows or Ubuntu user I think it'd be worth checking out.
Ableton has like a 3 month trial and honestly the stuff it comes with out of the box is way more than enough to determine if you want to continue with such a hobby or if it's not something you'd be interested in long term. The tutorials are plenty and easy to follow as well.
I use Reaper as well, but it takes a while to get that "useable" for modern(ish) music production. The benefit is there's plenty of free virtual instruments/VSTs to download. All of them have downsides though as does reaper itself. In Ableton I can make an EDM track relatively fast given the out of the box presets - especially synth drums - but in Reaper using a free VST like HELM makes it kind of a pain to use. YMMV.
No matter what you choose, I do HIGHLY recommend downloading Spitfire LABS though - the free instrument packages are massive and highly customizable. It's truly amazing.
EDIT: oh also trying to master a track in Reaper with free plugins is frankly pretty bad for a beginner vs Ableton's preset limiters and other utilities. The Cuckoos plugins are messy to deal with in my opinion.
Don't undersell kids. If they get interested in something they can learn it scary quick.
But having said that, sometimes the thing that grabs the interest is recording your voice in the windows built in recorder then playing it back backwards. Try audicity?
Some cool (albeit pricey) devices to toy with are the AIRA compact series by Roland[0].
In the same vein, the Novation Grooveboxes[1] offer some expanded capabilities that don't require a computer. Second-hand pricing is quite reasonable for both.
I always find GarageBand to be an easy-to-pick-up app that can be used to generate fun sonic blurbs in a short amount of time. It has its own limitations, but the lack of complexity contributes to its ease of use.
When I was trying to figure out something on GarageBand I ended up on YouTube looking for tutorials and was astounded to see what people are doing with GarageBand on their phone. They play the DAW itself like an instrument and build songs in realtime. It was very humbling to see.
Absolutely, REAPER. While it may be a little obtuse to learn, it is absolutely as powerful as the big guys in music production such as ProTools. Plus it works on both Windows and Mac, unlike Logic.
There is a big community around REAPER also, and tons of YouTube videos around it. Plus, you can download it and work with it for free, but after a while, it will want you to pay for it, which is only $60...but you can keep using it if you don't (though I would encourage you to pay for it if you like it).
Reaper works on Linux, but a warning to anyone thinking of trying that, DAWs are all about adding and using plugins. And you'll need to confirm your favorite plugins run on Linux as well.
Check out Korg Gadget![0] It's got an Ableton-Live-style clip launcher that's easy to compose in, and a variety of "gadget" instruments that produce different kinds of sounds. If you balk at $30 for an app, it goes on sale for half price a good 3-4 times a year, usually around holidays. You can hook up any midi devices (BLE midi or via the USB camera kit adapter, if not on a usbc iPad). If you've got an iPad with a headphone jack you can pick up an iRig clone for <$10 that gets you line / mic / guitar input, too.
If you've got an iPad that's probably the best start (it'll run on any iPad 2 or above). It will run on iPhone's but it's a bit harder to play. There's also a Nintendo Switch version (it's more limited, eg no audio recording or export), and a mac version (but it's pricey). Annoyingly, the Mac and iOS versions are separate, but at least the iPhone and iPad versions come together as one purchase.
GarageBand - it's super quick to throw something together, has a wealth of virtual instruments and the user interface is in the same vein as professional DAWs, so there's a growth path if this is something kids enjoy and want to pursue further.
And how'd that work out? The end result was a piece of music called a module ("mod"). Strangely enough, I can't find exact (or even approximate) numbers. A snapshot of the MOD archive from 2007 had 120k mods:
I commented elsewhere, but my goal is to hide the DAW as completely as i can and give them a midi keyboard, Korg nanoKONTROL2 and some background config or automation that lets them choose synth sounds and record themselves play. As someone who played piano to a decent level up to my teens, I've always felt that throwing up a DAW just gets in the way of making music. Especially when I'm getting back into it after a long break. Complicated interfaces just sap my time and energy and I eventually find that I've wasted a lot of time without striking a key on the piano.
I believe BandLab is being used in schools to teach music making now. It’s web based, I’ve not used it much myself so can’t comment on how good it is but may be an easy starting point
Sadly, its the group I pay the least attention to. I suspect that today or next week, something browser based might be the best choice, but I can't tell you what. Apologies.
Depends. For mixing it barely matters. For performance, if you're playing a MIDI controller live, then perhaps not (though browser latency is not that bad these days). But if you're working with clips & samples, it isn't likely to matter much.
Related question: any suggestions on what to try next after LMMS?
I was planning to try Reaper or FL Studio.
My biggest complaints with LMMS are: doesn’t support VST3, can’t see notes for multiple tracks at the same time (although I saw a “ghost notes” patch someone was working on for this scenario).
Honestly, try the trial for both. Give Ableton and Bitwig a go if you have time as well. Or at least check out all 4 on youtube and see if a particular workflow strikes you.
Unfortunately the open source DAWs don't hold a candle to any of the paid ones. But once you're paying they're all pretty solid. It's like asking if you should move to vim or emacs or jetbrains after starting with Notepad++. They're all good and everyone will have their own favorite. Many people also use multiple DAWs the same way people use multiple text editors. Personally I use Ableton and Reaper
Thanks! Yeah, it's subjective, but I thought the chances of someone making the same progression (LMMS to ???) on HN were pretty high. Of course, I left out tons of context that might have helped (e.g. some people want to make music live--I do not).
Really, it might make the most sense to just find music similar to what I've made (or want to make), and then ask/research what they're using. Edit: I think that's how I originally found FL Studio and Reaper, come to think of it!
Anything "free", Cakewalk, Garageband, Waveform, MPC Beats, or whatever license that comes with your midi keyboard. All these are already crazy powerful for a hobbyist.
There are (at least) four categories of DAW users:
1. Professionals who are being paid to make music, and for whom time is essentially money. Tools that speed up the production of that music are both financially valuable to them, and also make their overall lives easier (if done right).
2. Musicians for whom making music is a creative act of self-expression. They are not being paid by the hour (of music, or of effort), they are not under deadlines, but they do want tools that fit their own workflow and understanding of what the process should look like.
3. People who just want to have fun making music. Their level of performance virtuosity is likely low, and the originality of what they produce is likely to be judged by most music fans to be low. They want results that can be quickly obtained and are recognizable musical in whatever style they are aiming at, and they don't want to feel bogged down by the technology and process.
4. Audio engineers in a variety of fields who have little to no interest/need for music composition, but are faced with the task of taking a variety of audio data and transforming it radically or subtly to create the finished version, whether that's a collection of musical compositions or a podcast or a move soundtrack.
The same individual may, at different times, be a member of more than one of these groups (or other groups that I've omitted).
The needs of each of these groups overlap to a degree, but specifically the extent to which the current conception of AI in music&audio can help them, and how it may do so, are really quite different.
We can already see this in the current DAW world, where the set of users of DAWs like Live, Bitwig and FL Studio tends to be somewhat disjoint from the users of ProTools, Logic and Studio One.
TFA acknowledges this to some degree, but I don't think it does enough to recognize the different needs of these groups/workflows. Nevertheless, not a bad overview of the challenges/possibilities that we're facing.