{"id":36147,"date":"2016-12-21T12:53:47","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T17:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36147"},"modified":"2016-12-21T13:33:52","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T18:33:52","slug":"music-and-the-desire-to-improve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36147","title":{"rendered":"Music and the Desire to Improve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About two and a half years ago I published <a href=\"?p=24042\">Bad and Wrong Music Lessons<\/a>, a series where I explained the few scraps of knowledge I&#8217;d shaken loose from the world of music. I followed that up with <a href=\"?p=25458\">Project Button Masher<\/a>, where I tried to push myself into doing new things by imitating various videogame soundtracks.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t really had much to say about music since then. One reason is basic anxiety. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/296519539&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->If you&#8217;re new to a discipline, criticism doesn&#8217;t really sting. In the beginning, everyone is terrible. Your audience is tolerant of faults, and often encouraging. &#8220;You&#8217;re doing really well for a beginner!&#8221; But eventually you cross some sort of threshold and people start appraising your work more honestly. Eventually people expect you to <em>git gud<\/em>. You&#8217;re expected to produce something worthwhile. I feel like I&#8217;ve crossed that threshold. I&#8217;m no longer expecting a pat on the head for trying so hard, I&#8217;m expecting genuine criticism. And I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve noticed, but sometimes the internet isn&#8217;t really good at constructive criticism.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, I really enjoy composing. The up-front investment is lower. If a programming project runs into the ground, it usually means you&#8217;ve wasted weeks or even months of your life. But if an individual song goes bad, it&#8217;s not a big deal. You probably won&#8217;t sink more than a few hours into a composition before it&#8217;s clear it isn&#8217;t working. It&#8217;s easy to step back, realize you&#8217;ve hit a dead end, and hit the &#8220;New Project&#8221; button without saving your changes. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/295856298&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Also, it feels good to improve at something. I&#8217;ve been programming in one form or another since 1984 or so. It takes a lot of work to improve at this stage of the game. In fact, it takes a lot of effort just to <em>keep up<\/em> with the pace of changes. (Particularly now that it&#8217;s no longer my day job.) Meanwhile, I can get tangible improvement out of the hours I sink into music, and that knowledge isn&#8217;t going to go &#8220;stale&#8221; in the same way that programming knowledge will. <\/p>\n<p>All of this means that I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of composing, and I&#8217;ve been throwing 98% of it away without posting it and without turning my lessons into blog posts. This is not an exaggeration; About 1 in 50 of my attempts ends up posted to <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/shamusyoung\">my Soundcloud page<\/a>, and the rest are either deleted or saved into the vast directory of failed experiments as junk1, junk2&#8230; junk50, junk51, etc. I&#8217;m not sure why I bother saving them. I almost never go back to anything that&#8217;s more than a week old. <\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I&#8217;ll end up with a tune that just isn&#8217;t quite working. Maybe the basic chord progression and baseline work, but the rhythm is boring and the melody is too flat and\/or repetitive. Rather than re-working the problem areas, it&#8217;s usually easier (or more fun) to start a whole new project.<\/p>\n<h3>DAW Blues<\/h3>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/298205966&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. It&#8217;s the software you use to make music. For the last two and a half years I&#8217;ve been using Magix Music Maker, and I&#8217;ve really grown to hate it.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Window placement is driven by chaos theory and madness.<\/strong> Sometimes I&#8217;ll open a window to edit an instrument and it will be shoved off the top of the monitor. I&#8217;ve tried every windows shortcut and trick to bring the window back and nothing works. When this happens you have to close the entire program and re-start to get the window back. This is annoying because&#8230;\n<li><strong>The splash screen is system-modal<\/strong>. When the program starts up, there&#8217;s a splash screen to look at while all the crap is loaded. Fine. That&#8217;s normal. Except, some sadistic ninny made this window a fixed size, non-movable, and always on top. It sits right in the middle of my main monitor for thirty seconds, which means I can&#8217;t just switch to another window. I can&#8217;t use my computer while this program loads.\n<li><strong>No sidechain tools.<\/strong> Sidechain is where you link two totally different instruments together by linking the volume of one to the notes of another. The most common usage is to have an instrument &#8220;duck&#8221; its volume for a split second as the kick drum hits. It&#8217;s used all the time in electronic dance music and is one of the things that gives the genre its particular feel. It creates the &#8220;pumping&#8221; effect where an instrument will rise and fall in opposition to the beat. This is a fairly basic effect, and MMM can&#8217;t do it. There are general plugins for this, but they don&#8217;t seem to work right. If you close a project and re-open it later, the links between instruments will vanish, or even be reversed. I don&#8217;t know if I should blame the plugin or MMM for this, but it&#8217;s silly that something so simple should be so hard.\n<li><strong>A thousand interface irritations.<\/strong> The note editor zooms out by just a bit when you open the window. So if you&#8217;re switching between many instruments very quickly, the notes will get smaller and smaller and I have to keep stopping to correct this. Mixing requires you to have three different floating windows open at once. The play \/ pause \/ stop controls take up a huge chunk of screen space and can&#8217;t be resized. Normal windows shortcuts (like ALT-F to open File menu) don&#8217;t work. The automation tools (stuff that enables you to change volume, panning, cutoff frequency, etc) is so rudimentary it&#8217;s basically useless. There&#8217;s a button that I need all the time to switch between editing different note effects. This button is REALLY tiny. Worse, the button opens a drop-down box what will instantly re-close if the mouse button is down. So you have to hit this tiny button really FAST. It&#8217;s just&#8230; how did this pass testing? Why has this obvious problem persisted through the last 3 annual iterations of MMM? Amazing.\n<li><strong>Wait, where did my favorite instrument go?<\/strong> I&#8217;ve been buying the yearly versions of MMM. Each edition comes with a collection of new instruments and samples. I&#8217;ve had to re-install MMM several times over the last couple of years. I had to migrate hard drives a few times. Also, upgrading Windows always causes chaos with MMM that obliges me to re-install. No matter how many times I re-install MMM, I never get the same collection of instruments in the same order. Instruments vanish. Or end up duplicated. Or get tucked into odd sub-categories. Sometimes it will complain about licensing. In the end, I never know what I&#8217;m going to have available or where it will appear.\n<li><strong>The program is slow.<\/strong> Just scrolling horizontally through a project causes the machine to chug. I have no idea what&#8217;s going on or what it&#8217;s doing to my poor CPU, but this is ridiculous.\n<\/ol>\n<h3>The Search for a better DAW&#8230;<\/h3>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/262603197&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Every few months Magic Music Maker will annoy me enough that I&#8217;ll go shopping for a new DAW, and I always run into the same rut. Either something is way too expensive, or it&#8217;s really focused on real musicians and not so much on hacks like me that &#8220;play&#8221; by arranging notes on a grid, or the workflow is confusing and incomprehensible. I hate MMM, but it seems to be the only DAW that can do what I want in my price range. <\/p>\n<p>Most DAW&#8217;s cost $300 or more. That&#8217;s reasonable. This is specialty software for professionals. It&#8217;s complex software. It&#8217;s the kind of software that &#8211; assuming you&#8217;ve got the skills &#8211; you can use to earn a living. $300 or even $800 (not uncommon) is not too much to ask for that sort of thing.<\/p>\n<p>But it is more than I&#8217;m willing to pay. Even if Bill Gates showed up at my door and said, &#8220;Shamus, I really enjoy your fresh jams that you make on the computer. Here is $800 for music software.&#8221; I doubt I could bring myself to spend it on a DAW. I&#8217;d probably buy a graphics card, some games, go to the movies with the family, and then come home and start complaining about Magix Music Maker again.<\/p>\n<p>I am not going to earn a living with this. This is a hobby, and at my skill level I don&#8217;t need half of the available features. What I really want is something less than $100, although I might be willing to go for $200 if I found something that was really nice.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve downloaded many demo versions of various DAWs. By far my favorite is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.steinberg.net\/en\/products\/cubase\/start.html\">Cubase<\/a>. I was able to jump in and use Cubase without even reading any tutorials. Everything made sense and felt just right. However, Cubase has some obnoxious DRM that I just can&#8217;t stomach. You need to download some special licensing driver. Which&#8230; <em>fine<\/em>. That&#8217;s dumb, but fine. But you also need a USB dongle. Which <strong>you have to buy yourself.<\/strong> It&#8217;s like one of those old videogames that required a code book to run the game, expect the code book was sold separately. <\/p>\n<p>No. Just&#8230; no. This is too stupid. I&#8217;m not going to pay for a USB device<span class='snote' title='1'>Also, I&#8217;m out of USB ports. I&#8217;ve got this horrible nest of USB cables feeding into a daisy-chain of USB hubs, and the whole thing is so heavy it barely stays plugged in. I&#8217;m not eager to add more crap to that mess. Particularly not for such a stupid reason.<\/span> so I can install a special driver so I can ask the USB device for permission to run my own damn software. I&#8217;ve made a lot of compromises regarding DRM over the years, but I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ll ever be willing to tolerate something that stupid. <\/p>\n<p>STOP!<\/p>\n<p>I was all set to list a few more DAWs and the frustrations of my search, but as I was researching this post I found a couple of new ones that I overlooked the last time I tried this. I should probably split this blog post so the navel-gazing at the start is in a different post than the DAW rant, but to be honest right now I just want to post this now and go download some DAWs. <\/p>\n<p>I may not be getting better at music, but the music seems to be lowering the quality of my blog writing. That&#8217;s gotta count for something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About two and a half years ago I published Bad and Wrong Music Lessons, a series where I explained the few scraps of knowledge I&#8217;d shaken loose from the world of music. I followed that up with Project Button Masher, where I tried to push myself into doing new things by imitating various videogame soundtracks. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[468],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}