Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] DAW Dillema -- Seeking Advice
From: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki (rzewnickie_AT_rfa.org)
Date: Fri Oct 01 2004 - 00:08:09 EEST
On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 04:54:57PM -0400, Peter Lutek wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-09-30 at 14:02, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> > Ok, but bear in mind that at present and probably for several more years
> > I am not attempting to make music at all. I'm really just playing with
> > sounds to hear what might be possible.
> > .... lots of stuff snipped.......
> > Then, eventually I'll sit down to lay out a more structured
> > composition. For this final stage I agree that ardour will be a better
> > suited tool. Perhaps this last type of work is most like other people's
> > work flows.
> ok, thanks, eric. this clarifies what we're talking about here. the
> process of "playing with sounds" is something which i am also interested
> in and which is, for me, a task totally unsuited to a multitrack
> recorder/editor like ardour. there are lots of other linux tools for
> that sort of compositional exploration -- they are rich and varied, and
> that is precisely what i love about linux. when most people say "DAW",
> they are talking about an environment for production of audio recordings
> (i.e. serving the record/edit/master cycle somehow). the subject line
> and greg's original post led me down THAT particular path, perhaps
> mistakenly. anyway, i think we've come to an agreement (based on the
> paragraph quoted above) that, for an editing and assemblage situation, a
> tool with a workflow like ardour's is probably appropriate. this does
> not, of course, diminish the value of many, many other tools with
> different paradigms for creative, compositional activity. the
> record/edit/master process is, after all, a very specific and small
> subset of all the things people might want to do with sound.
Yeah ... I guess I went off a bit yesterday. I still think that a lot of
what people want to do with ardour can be done in ecasound, or ecasound
plus ECI scripts/applications. Your mention of record/edit/master
process brings up another topic of discussion, though.
I've never worked in that process. I don't know anything about it
outside of what I learn in these forums from people who are looking to
duplicate the commercially available tool chain with free software. My
impression is that it is a holdover from the commercial CD market, which
should die and go away, IMO. I understand that that market is still how
many people perceive the act, focus and goal of music making. But, I
don't think there is any reason that has to continue as a dominant
paradigm. I will never sell a CD of my own work.
Mastering, from what I understand, implies that you are focused on
creating some finite product on some mass produced and distributed
physical medium -- That what you work on will somehow be completed,
finished, done and in the can at some point. I think that just because
that has been the dominant channel for the "media" business, that it has
limited so many people to thinking of their work as something that has
to fit into the confines of the prescribed medium.
That's an unnatural limitation to my mind.
I may never actually finish a completed work. I may only ever publish
snapshots of the stream of my compositional processes. Perhaps
eventually I will publish only continuous streams, who knows. Rather
than viewing each finite track, song, .ogg file, whatever, as something
concrete and fixed to be listened to repeatedly, I'm thinking it is
possible to work in a much more fluid, and to my senses and
sensibilities, a much more natural way.
I control my own means of production, and now my own means of
publication as well. The internet is, as far as I'm concerned,
unlimitted. There is no need for a production to be limited to any
finite duration and no need for it to ever be declared completed.
There may be times and certain material that I want to present within a
more traditional type of framework with a introduction, development,
recap, resolution type of structure. I don't deny that there is a
satisfaction to something that starts and ends. But, I don't think it
has to be the only way to experience sounds.
anyway ... I've been babling on all week. I appologize if I've seemed to
be incoherent and out of step with the topic the rest of you are
discussing. I'll stop brain dumping into this thread now. I need to get
focused and get my head together ... I have so much more energy lately
than I've had for a very long time. It's wonderful, but at the same time
I feel very scatter-brained and somewhat disoriented.
-Eric Rz.
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