my hardware philosophy:
– either one groovebox + a couple of synths, or two grooveboxes
– setup should fit a backpack, better a regular city backpack.
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- buy everything that adds new colors, I don’t have already
- use only two boxes (synth + drum machine)
- use things as they are intended to used to be (synth as synth; drum machine as drum machine)
- speed is king! Four 64 step patterns for each in different combinations - improvise and record! No fancy arrangements that well never be finished
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I buy, therefore I am.
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It should do one thing really well. That’s the most important thing. I prefer easy-to-use interfaces, but some that I find easy are confusing to others (and vice-versa) so who knows.
It is more fun for me to get into the flow away from the computer.
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Seeing as I can create perfectly adequate songs on the Digitone alone, I have come to expect that any other device should be at least as fully-functioning.
I have experimented with DAW software. The experiments always ended in frustration and a sense of overwhelming complexity. I guess that means I favor hardware over software.
I am a good improvisor. I can transpose, at the piano, familiar jazz tunes into any key. When it comes to electronic music, however, I am composing, rather than performing. There is no real-time capture. I enter note data on the DN without an external controller.
I am intrigued by sequencers. After watching Jeremy’s review of the Pyramid Hapax, though, I wondered if we are living in the End Times. So many features, designed to arbitrarily mix things up. Random bullshit generators. When did our best piece of hardware stop being our brain?
Musical instruments should help us clarify our musical thoughts, rather than supplanting them.
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To me hardware is a way to concertrate on single of few elements in isolation, the way I would sit and write a riif with a guitar.
As soon as I have something I like I either pull up the PC or the Octatrack.
I have no interest in creating something with hardware alone for the sake of it, as once I have an idea I’ll add to it whatever I think necassary whether it be in hardware of software, but it’s much easier to access what I want to do with software. My entrance to making music was with physical instruments, but my entrance into recording and processing those instruments was through software. I don’t fear software as I’ve been using it for 20 years and only use what I need to use.
Where hardware falls short for me is processing and effects. It’s not just the money (although it IS the money) but eventually whether I be using synths/drum machines/live band, eventually it’s going into software.
Obviously once I have a set of stems I’m more than happy to pull those out of software and let the OT mutiliate them.
Essentially there is no boundary.