Shouting Grounds

I was driving to a LAN party the other day with a friend and for some reason (no pun intended) we got on the subject of music and why we don’t make it anymore. I felt compelled to express a frustration that I’ve had with music software that essentially prevents me from creating anything these days. Every time I get the desire to open one of these programs I hesitate because of all the bullshit hoops you have to leap through in order to set your canvas and get something accomplished.

One has the power, through software, to accomplish insanely complex tasks that were impossible with prior technologies, but with this power comes an immensity of technical hang-ups that don’t exist when you have a 4-track and a guitar, for instance.

In my mind, workflow is largest barrier between me and my creating. Some people (including me, when I was a student and had time to burn) have no problem with a few set backs or technical glitches. They accept this as par for the course, or use these limitations to their benefit by finding creative workarounds. I really have no time for this kind of “dicking around” anymore. Through the years I’ve come to expect a certain amount of functionality to the applications that I use, and I’ve distilled these findings to the following list.

1. Drum Synthesis
2. Audio Recording
3. Self-reliance (doesn’t require additional software to be used to fullest extent)
4. Plug-in Support
5. Flexible audio routing
6. Backwards compatibility
7. Standardized file formats

I’ve learned that no program is perfect in respect to its workflow/features because not every program is created with the same musician in mind. That brings me to Reason 4 (or 3).

Reason 4 is built from the mindset of someone with an affinity for hardware. All software instruments and virtual “devices” within Reason are modeled from existing or imagined hardware devices. Inputs, outputs, signal flow, patch cables, bypasses, and even drawn-on power cables are featured, and perform as imagined. While this is “cute” and certainly helps those not familiar with abstract computer-based music software get their heads around the concept, it’s impossibly limiting! Wiring up a patch is just as arduous a task in Reason as in real life, but with the added “bonus” (see, handicap) of having to use a mouse to patch everything together. Everything about Reason screams “waste of time”!

For example, I’m a musician who, on occasion, likes to add vocals or a live bass/guitar part to a song. I also tend not to record my parts perfectly on the first try, nor do I set “live” parts in stone for a whole project. I tend to revert back to these recordings and either re-record them or cut them up. Ok fine, now, Reason costs about $400 for the latest version. It’s a bit more if you want all of the bonus content. You’d think that this amount of money will allow you to accomplish the above tasks without spending additional money. You would, of course, be wrong.

If you want to record vocal or other live instrument parts for use in Reason your only “real” choice (see my comments on Rewire below) is to record those tracks in an external audio editor and import them into one of Reason’s two sampler “devices” (three, if you count ReDrum, four if you count Dr. Rex and have deep pockets). Of course, by doing this you’ve “locked-in” that recording, so that if you had to re-record or make changes you’d have to go back into that external application and re-record, edit, export, then import all over again.

Like the Vocoder in Reason? Me too. Too bad you can’t reach the damn thing with a live input. What’s the point of a vocoder without a live input, you ask? Nothing, it’s just a stupid audio effect. Maybe there are tons of people out there that can imagine what their tracks will sound like with a vocoder without having to preview it ahead of time, but I don’t have time to record, export, import, map, then playback while playing another patched instrument as a carrier just to hear if I like a fucking vocoder added to my track!

Ok ok, let’s fucking forget the “live” features of Reason, as there are very few, and honestly it’s not meant to be a multi-track recorder or full-out DAW. Let’s move onto Reason’s bread and butter, namely electronic music production.

Synth drums?! Don’t get me wrong, people can do amazing things with samplers, amazing, but the days where you had to mixdown a software synth track to a sampler bank because you had seriously limited CPU power are quickly coming to an end. I mean, am I the only person that thinks sample-based drums are extremely limiting? What if you want to “create” your own drum sounds? Well, open an instance of Thor, Subtractor, Maelstrom, or what have you and start twisting, right? Well, none of these instruments are intended for drum sounds. Yeah, there are envelope options for it, but a whole device set aside for a single drum sound is pretty wasteful. Plus, if you wanted to add this drum sound from a Reason synth into one of the many sample devices (like ReDrum) there isn’t an easy way of bringing over your creations to these devices (despite the fact that you’re “locked” into a sample instead of being able to tweak a knob and pull a totally different sound into your mix). All I can think of is setting the sequencer to playback only a single note, mute the rest of the tracks, render to disk, then open in an external audio editor, clean up/trim the recording if necessary, then save this to disk and import it into Reason. What a fucking joke! Can it be done, yes. Will I do it, fuck no.

So you like to cut-up drum loops, eh? Well bend over, douche-neck. Reason 4 (as in Reason 3) features a phrase-sampler, Dr. Rex, that sounds great on paper. It allows you to playback cut up loops and re-sequence them at any tempo. Too bad the format that the “Rex Player” accepts (the .rex format) is only able to be exported from one particular application. If you guessed that this program is called Reason, then you owe me $200 bucks. Actually, you have to purchase ReCycle from propellerheads for $200 bucks to attain the capability of exporting Rex files from your own loop content. Kinda defeats the utility of such a “device” when you need to buy more software to use it properly, IMHO. And what is so special about ReCycle? Well not so goddamn much, at least not anymore, or not special to the degree that they couldn’t include the app’s functionality into Reason. The program is practically unchanged from when it was originally released in 1994. (we’re only on version 2.1, 15 years later, guys? …guys?) I’ve never wanted to buy the software because it seems so rarely supported or updated, that I figured that it would eventually be dropped due to lack of interest. I’d then have a dead-app that I couldn’t guarantee would function on any later OS X or Windows versions, so what’s the point?

I thought I could work around these plainly noted limitations but as I’ve tried to use the software I always, and I mean “always”, hit these walls one time or another in a project. Yes, I can add a lot of this functionality by tying Reason to a full DAW via Rewire, but if you’ve tried this out yourself you’d understand why this isn’t even a fucking option in my book. Using Rewire to connect Reason to Logic or another app is no different in my book than going back to using hardware instruments.

Using Rewire, you now have to make sure that your apps are opened and initialized in the right order (just like using a hardware synth where you have to load the correct bank before playback). You also have to worry about having two project files to save, manage, and backup, just like when you have to worry about saving a bank from a hardware synth to make sure you have a copy for future use, or for when you run out of internal memory. When I was using Reason in Rewire mode in Logic 7 there was a limitation where Reason would only play through as a single stereo track, not individual outputs. Which, even if this was a setup issue on my part, or a limitation that was resolved by the release of version 4 (I was using version 3 at the time) it’s still a pain in the ass to setup.

If they want to encourage the use of Rewire then they should build in a series of presets for outputting multi-channel to outside DAW’s, otherwise fuck off.

Would it be too much to ask to add your existing virtual instruments into Reason, like the modules from Rebirth? Why even have a software connection to Rebirth from Reason on OS X if ReBirth isn’t a OS X native application? That’s like a casket with a satellite dish. Foist your abortion-ware on someone else.

Like I said, I thought I could ignore these limitations, but in following the virtualization of hardware model they virtualized almost all of the limitations of hardware as well (minus the most important, instantiation). There is so much promise to an app like Reason, but I fear this promise will never be realized unless they dump some of the “hardware baggage” and think about the totality of service that’s expected by their customers. Make it easy for musicians to create music with this technology not in spite of it.

I know I’m a little late to the game in discovering this, but I couldn’t be more excited. Back in the late 80′s and early 90′s (and I suppose still to this day) there was a music phenomenon of sorts that allowed any computer user (that wasn’t an adept programmer) to create full musical compositions via a sample-based utility known as a tracker.

The early tracker application “VicTracker” for the Commodore Vic-20.

Trackers come in all shapes and sizes but they have evolved from utilities that meet the “bare minimum requirements of music making” to full blown powerhouses of sample and virtual instrument manipulation. The tracker that I started with back in 1996 was Impulse Tracker. Seen here in all it’s glory.

I liked Impulse Tracker at the time because it was all I knew, but having inherited a hardware synthesizer from my father I started to want more MIDI implementation in my software. Plus, at the time, there was a sort of chic-vacuum when using trackers. Probably from my inexperience in using Impulse Tracker I assumed that things like Groove Quantization and virtual instruments were not possible with a mere tracker. I also had discovered that I could load samples into my Sound Blaster 64 AWE and sequence them in Calkwalk with full-blown DSP effects! I started moving away from trackers thinking that I would be much better off using Calkwalk then eventually Logic for all my music making.

I have to admit that I’ve been able to do a lot with the much more expensive software packages like Logic. Multi-track recording is obviously suited for the bigger apps, but since I primary make electronic/dance music, multi-track recording is usually unnecessary. Enter Renoise…

Renoise has re-lit my appreciation for trackers like I never felt possible. It creates a bridge between what I wanted from a digital audio workstation (DAW) and what I need as an electronic musician. Sure it doesn’t have a full multi-track recording interface but it allows you to export all tracks into a DAW should you want to throw in some real instruments. Or you can just sample. There’s a sample editor, recorder, and generator built-in, including the ability to cue up any portion of that sample at any speed, direction, or repeat-rate.

It’s really liberating to have a tool that allows me to compose while within the limiting constraints of a train seat with only my laptop; nothing else. I’ve been searching for a really small MIDI instrument to control my other apps, but now I have the perfect input device, the computer keyboard. Sequencing is a dream when you’re just a keyboard shortcut away from any feature.

I was hesitant to use Renoise because of my prior experiences with Trackers, but Renoise is built for electronic music, has VST/VSTi support, is PC and Mac compatible and is actively developed. Yes, it’s not as Free as Impulse Tracker was back in the day, but 90 bucks is a steal for what this will do for your creativity.

I’ll be sure to post some samples of things I’m working on, but right now I’m just happy to be creating again.