Thank you very much!
The overarching message is to find something that suits you, feels good and easy to do, but also offers nice challenges and still tickles your curiosity. If you’re constantly bothered by your configuration, you should remind yourself that you’re not bound to it and that what works for some, might not for you.
Also, be kind to yourself, going fully hardware should mean expecting to invest at least as much time as for learning any other instrument. You wouldn’t start learning the guitar and expect writing Beatles songs in the first months or even years. But the machines work so well from the get go that we forget that some things still need to be learned, full hardware means learning the techniques and movements that allow for good performances, and this takes time and tedious repetitions of exercices. As electronic musicians we very often forget that, and judge our music very harshly when we are just learning and shouldn’t expect incredible results.
Finally, remember that, apart from being a hashtag for easy likes, dawless is just one of the many manifestations of the “limitations as sources of creativity” concept, it happens in every artform (“one camera, ones lens” challenges in photography for example). It is very interesting, can feel liberating, but if it doesn’t work for you, you’re not married to it, try other challenges that are more stimulating, there are so many you can think of: only use one synth, set time limit constraints, number of tracks, only use samples, only use ONE sample, only use sounds you hate, make music with only melodies/rhythms, etc… The concept is (ironically) limitless, and it doesn’t have to involve buying/selling expensive gear.
And always remember Four Tet:
