Uncomfortable truths about going DAWLESS // Is it even worth it?

Stream my Music: ►hyperfollow.com/lkmusic Other Related Videos: ►Discussion with Midlife Synthesist:https://youtu.be/J3a85i1m4H4 ►More about the Digitakt: https://youtu.be/SBnT9bfMH0I ►How to deal with GAS: https://youtu.be/PPtDW2f6aVM ►Pioneer RMX-1000 in action: https://youtu.be/OP2qYP-CxSA ►More about DistroKid: https://youtu.be/OGrT-jA-XPo

DAWless is okay, using DAW is okay, being productive is okay, not creating music at all and just collecting gears also okay, whatever bring happiness and pleasure to yourself through music or musical instruments 🖤

I used to make music in a daw, but my main issue with that was 'too many options'. I found myself going through endless presets and plugins without actually making something. Also, I have to stare at a computer screen all day for work. I don't want that when I'm decompressing from all of that. I love the limitations of a dawless setup. It forces you to commit to a set of sounds. Does it get me commercially viable pieces of music? No, but that's not why I'm doing this.

Camp 2 here... I work all day as an analyst in front of a computer with 2, sometimes 3 monitors all day everyday at a global manufacturer company. The LAST thing I need when I go home and relax in music making is a 4th monitor to watch. Dawless is my happy place, my state of zen, my refuge.

I played a small 4 track set for an event at my workplace a few months ago. It was my first gig, and do you know how many of the 200-ish people realized my music was original? Only 2, and they were other performers. Literally everybody else thought I was just spinning songs someone else had created. It made me realize the DAWless is more of a thing I do for me, rather than to impress others.

I like Bos take on this. Dawless should be about performance and playing live. I think of myself as a one man band, not a DJ or producer. I like to watch people perform dawless in the same way as I like to watch guitarists, bassists and drummers. Part of the problem is that electronic music is thought of mainly as DJ music and performance is not really considered outside people who are already sold on the dawless jamming thing.

I use both. DAWless is for enjoyment of making music. A DAW is for a targeted effort. My day job pays the bills more than adequately. Music is for a release. If it’s a job for you, do what you got to do. I spend enough time in front of a computer.

For me creating music is all about getting into “flow state”. It’s much easier for me to achieve that with tactile gear. The only DAW environment I’ve found that I can reliably find “flow state” with are some iOS apps in which I can live trigger and tweak on the fly through the touchscreen. I also see a pretty clear distinction between “creating” and “producing”. I mainly create in a DAWless environment and produce a finished product on a DAW.

The main drawback of dawless is the neck pain from looking down all the time. But most people who grew up with DAWs don’t have a full appreciation that music is an aural medium, not a visual one. It’s important to experience music without the visual feedback of piano rolls and audio clip timelines and spectral depictions of the frequency band. Your eyes often mislead your ears. So a sore neck and shoulders is the cost.

About making music more interesting and less loop-based, the easiest way I've found to solve that is to hum a song idea into a voice recorder first, like a phone or something, to work out the overall song structure and progression. Then use that as a framework on which to actually build the song. I end up with a lot of the song composed before I ever touch any gear, and this gives me much better results overall. Instead of a looping pattern, each section flows into the next and the song actually goes somewhere.

a 4-track recorder and a sequencer capable of sequencing full songs are two things that turned DAWless into a complete viable workflow for me instead of just a fun time-waster. My workflow is not very smooth by most standards, but with the right attitude what a lot of people might see as "friction" can actually give you "traction" in the music making process. also, beyond the technical limitations, the change in mindset required to accomplish anything with a tape machine has been helpful even when i do venture back into the DAW, like writing complete completely ahead of time before you record anything, and planning things out on paper before you start, and the general willingness to leave "mistakes" in and edit as little as possible.

"Going DAWless" is (generally speaking) just gear addiction. A never-ending pursuit to acquire the perfect setup. The perfect setup is always one or two purchases away. Until you get there and realize it's not perfect yet, and you start craving the dopamine hit that comes with buying a new toy again. First step to recovery is to admit you have a problem...

I'm an unapologetic noodler. I've spend tens of thousands of dollars over the last 3-4 years building a nice little home studio that I can mess around with my gear in. I enjoy it. I enjoy deciding to tear it all down and set it back up again in a different configuration. I enjoy the challenge of trying to come up with the "perfect" cabling setup that gives instant access to every device from the master device (currently a Force). I enjoy NOT having the pressure of finishing music, or releasing music, or being on a timetable to create music. I do not enjoy using a computer for any of this stuff. My day job has me in front of a computer for 10 hours a day, the last thing I want to do when I get home and have an hour to spare is to open a computer up. Home is a computer free zone for me. It wasn't always like that though. When I started making music ~99/2000, it was all on computer. Then I bought some hardware and used that via the computer too, but it never really felt right to be honest. It felt like I was wasting the hardware by pushing a cursor around a screen. During this period I became a qualified sound engineer, had some releases, did some DJing, and then grew to dislike the fact that if I wanted to do it for a living, I would need to go down the "creative for a living" approach with music, and I hated it, so I decided to look elsewhere for my career. Now I'm in a position where I can comfortably afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on gear that I use 3 times a month, and I get so much more enjoyment out of it than I ever did when I was releasing things and DJing. Some people spend that on booze, smokes, pot and working on cars. I spend it on providing myself with the opportunity to engage my tired brain in a different way, without pressure for results, and without a computer screen in front of me. It's worth every penny.

I never intended to go dawless, I've always been a guitar/bass player and it was a very gradual shift. First it was a synthesizer to record some keyboard parts. Then a couple years later it was e-drums so I could write drum parts. Then another year later it was a drum machine so I could jam on my own. Then I realized my old looper pedal had a midi input and could be synched with the drum machine. Then I realized I could connect the e-drums to the synth and arrange the pads as a controller. That's where the GAS really set in. Then it was a bass synth with a foot controller, a POLYsynth with a keyboard controller, a synth a disappointing synth with a vocoder (looking at you JD-XI). Then I got a dedicated sequencer which FINALLY let me pump the brakes. That's the main advice I can give a dawless jammer, get a dedicated sequencer and write SONGS. If you're just using the unit sequencers you'll be looping the same few bars forever.

Another thought provoking video. You are good at making us think. I just now realized that I have spent over 40 years (on and off) making music for myself as a way to develop various skills and give me a space to have absolute focus and control. My goal going forward is to ‘show my work’ more and skim the best bits to share. Thanks for another round of electronic music therapy! 😂 🙏🏾

The way how I see is that in the 'dawless' world you are essentially connecting everything with MIDI and/or CV. There is nothing wrong with these methods, but the "APIs" of the devices itself can be a limitation. In a fully integrated digital environment the level of control and integration of components is simply magnitudes higher.

However we express our sense of being alive, be it playing ukulele, a biscuit tin lid or soft-synths in Logic. Appreciate the miracle of the gear you have in your collection, we’re very very fortunate.

What a very nice discussion of DAWLESS topics and a great commentary from BoBeats. Excellent.

Dude, im really getting in love with the excellent audiovisual product you made. Jaja. I learned a lot from you. Thanks

Working with limitations is the greatest inspiration your ever get. One nice synth, one DAW.....pretty much all you need