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Comment by gizajob | Hacker News Reader

One of your main issues is describing art and music as “content”.

Ableton Live at least is a phenomenally powerful tool for arranging and recording music in a way that is completely elastic and transformative. I’ve been using it for over twenty years to make records and every time I’ve wanted it to do more, somehow those features have been magically added on every version without me having to ask.

The thing with any tool is that one has to know what result one wants rather than focussing on the method.

Your post reads like you should maybe think about doing creative things other than music. And I’m sure we’d be all ears for the improved DAW that you never got round to writing yet.

Apple also made that tool for six-year-olds and their guitars. It’s called GarageBand. Some of those six-year-olds have made albums with it.

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I'm game: give me the steps it takes to get a kid with an electric guitar and an appropriate USB connection to A) start making noise with the guitar in the software, and then B) start filtering that noise to sound like electric guitar distortion.

My post reads like a person who has tried every DAW I know of and ended up with at least 10 steps (usually involving "sign up" and "log in" for no fucking reason), when there should only be 3: Plug in, open app, pick guitar.

I've mastered enough CONTENT to know that Ableton is great! Not just at MUSIC but at sound effects, at atmospheric/environmental engineering, too. But Ableton is still an engineer's software, not a musicians.

Again, I'm not complaining that the good things work good at what they're good at. I'm complaining that no one seems to be working on different good stuff for different kinds of people.

The people that made Ableton were musicians - see Monolake. I’ve used it for making psyche rock albums and I’m pretty sure I could use it for producing pretty well any kind or genre of music. I’m a musician primarily and not an engineer, so I’ve no idea what you’re talking about saying Ableton is an engineers software. Some of your point about Pro Tools is right because that’s completely hamstrung and backward due to it being from the era of Amigas and MacOS7. But modern alternatives exist that overcome that. It really sounds like you need to buy Ableton - it really is turn on, plug in, make music.

Again, I have Ableton. It's great software (for audio-engineer-inclined people).

Whether the people that made Ableton are musicians or not, or whether you're a musician, or not, is all irrelevant. They made software that is a thin layer over the literal functions of the machine because that's how all DAWs are made. "Don't fix what ain't broke." It's a great way to run a business. You learned their way of working, either from the software itself, or from other DAWs, and you like it. Great! Literally every musician for the past 2 decades has come to work with these DAWs, so it's not like working in a format for audio engineers is incompatible with being a musician. I'm quite certain it helps, actually.

But, again, none of that speaks to the complexity of using the software as someone who doesn't know anything about DAWs or modern audio software. I know a guy who can play the guitar beautifully; yet he can't figure out Ableton. I've sat him down multiple times and showed him some really cool stuff that he really liked, but he has never once not called me when he tried to use the software. Some people just aren't built like that. He is thinking about music in one form, and the computer wants him to formalize it in some different form. And he just can't or won't make the bridge.

And you may say: "well, fuck him; he should learn Ableton or be doomed to live without its benefits". More power to you. But I just wish there were something ELSE that would speak to him in his language.

I think the deeper process here is this: if you're a musician and you start using a DAW, pretty soon you'll be an engineer, whether you intended to be or not.

In the days before DAWs, the role of musician and engineer were both critical for recorded music, but also mostly distinct. DAWs have changed that fundamentally because there's very little capital outlay required for the engineer's tools these days.

We've seen this over the years in Ardour. A musician wants a big red button and an application that will find their device signal all by itself. Two weeks later they want to use an EQ. Two months later they want to be to arrange whole sections. Two years later, and they don't like the pan power law and have some criticisms of the automation interpolation.

> I think the deeper process here is this: if you're a musician and you start using a DAW, pretty soon you'll be an engineer, whether you intended to be or not.

There's a bunch of stuff like that happening in that industry as the equipment evolves. I've been doing software/networking/hardware for coming up on 30 years now. My wife's been doing mostly live audio/production with some recording for about the same amount of time. Starting about 10 years ago she had to start learning about networking. It started simple with things like setting up routers/WiFi access points for controlling consoles with iPads. Now with AES-67 she's had to learn a whole bunch about RTP, PTP, QoS, VLANs, DHCP, subnetting, etc. It's working out well for her, she's incredibly sharp and many of her peers come to her for advice/consultation when things aren't working right, but it was definitely not something she expected to need to learn. When everyone's stumped they give me a call... I don't know much at all about the audio side of it but a little bit of Wireshark can usually explain what's broken in their systems.

What are you on about at this point. It’s just a rant. Buy a tape machine.

You told a guy complaining that DAWs are too complicated that he should stop being a musician, and now you're telling him to use a tape machine. The entire point was that a program that's a drop-in replacement for a tape machine (or even simpler pieces of equipment) should exist, because it's not that complicated of a concept (even if you can make it complicated by nitpicking details of the execution).

They do exist…

10 steps are very few. The right combination of hardware and software allows plugging in the guitar and playing, but only after an unavoidable adventure in "computers are complicated" land.

The difficulty is essential: compared to plugging the guitar into an analog amplifier, you have a minimum of three devices (ADC with guitar-compatible input, computer including DAC, speakers), the user interface is virtualized, you need to find and install the right software (including device drivers).

So your kid with an electric guitar should either use analog amplifiers and effects, or borrow a good setup from some "engineer", or take advantage of their youthful stubbornness and enthusiasm to learn enough about the technical aspects you dislike.

Still waiting on a “copy time” function to magically appear

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