This is really interesting, all, thanks.
A few thoughts. The Deluge is a device I love and know pretty well. I think its workflow for generating single phrases is absolutely brilliant, both for generating ideas, and iteratively developing them. I know people complain about the Deluge in general, because it’s a bit different to other grooveboxes, so there is an entry cost of memorising shortcuts etc. That entry cost is completely worth it for the single phrase workflow, in my view. But for arrangement, it’s hard to learn, and the payback isn’t there. Tou can record things in, but going in and amending it is much harder, and visualising an overview of the song, for example, is really problematic. The Deluge designer brought true creative brilliance to the single phrase workflow, it provides a fertile setting for creative use by users. The arrangement mode is there, it’s more than nothing, but it just doesn’t have the profundity, the creative spark, of the rest of the workflow.
By contrast the M8 is very different: the same thoughtfulness that drove the rest of the device also goes into a creative song mode that’s usable and fertile. You can create brilliant permutations, re-use things, fork them, transpose some things but not others, sequence effects, and so much more. The OP1, you can create and lay out clips of different length, in different orders, in different permutations, and record long vocal or solo takes, etc. I don’t see this kind of creative approach to song mode in other devices, but I do see huge creativity from the sector / industry around creating single phrases. The standalone sequencers are probably great, but I like standalone devices with sequencer and sound generator, for sofa, and travel. (I also hate DAW because to me a computer is my workplace, not my funplace).
I don’t think it’s just that song mode is undesirable in a hardware device, or harder to do in a hardware device. I think there might be some tacit beliefs at play which, if they were ever valid, are less valid today than before.
Specifically, there seems to be an idea that the computer DAW is the place where you “finish” something. I think this is left over from the days when creativity with electronic music was always focused on creating a perfect mastered product for commercial release, and I somewhat agree that this kind of perfectly EQ’ed, perfectly compressed, perfectly mixed diamond is best done in a DAW.
But I don’t think that perfect release-ready diamond really is the final destination any more, for many or most of us. Most people I know make music for their own pleasure. So, you might obsessively master in a DAW for pleasure. But lots of people just want to make a nice piece of music, 2-10 minutes long, to share with their friends, with a beginning middle and end. That workflow is not well served by devices that are made for fun at home, by brilliantly creative people who’ve innovated hardware workflows that are often very different to each other, and incredibly well thought through when it comes to producing 1-4 bar loops. I think that relative neglect of 2-10 minute song layout from that creative community of innovators might partly be because they’ve not tried, because of the tacit beliefs I’ve described above: that DAW is the only legitimate place to “finish a thing” because a finished thing with a timeline must be perfect, in a way that only a DAW can deliver, rather than just… fun and adequately produced.
