I’m full time with the kids and my wife works a lot of hours in the week, so the only time I get with my gear is about 30 minutes at night a few times a week, and I’m usually too knackered to get much done. But there’s all these gaps in the day (like bathtime, naptimes, meal times, times when the kids are chilling in front of the TV) that I currently fill up with browsing reverb or “optimising my setup” where I could be on a laptop getting shit done, at least a little bit, where I simply can’t be in the back room or lugging hardware about.
If it doesn’t work, no big deal, but the way I have things at the minute is doing my head in. I’m going to give this a go, see if it works, if not I’ll probably just take a break for a bit til the kids are both in school.
It’s worth a try ay - if I’m honest I think it could make your problem worse - but you know your problems better than I do.
Nout much faster than turning on a Digitakt and it’s ready to go in seconds, it even saves state without you needing to delete a bunch of your porn to free up space for your samples.
I think you just like the novelty of change, and trying new music stuff (no judgement, I do too). DAW might be a good way to achieve that without breaking the bank, but I wouldn’t expect it to fix the other stuff.
Do you think you’ll actually get anything productive done in 15 minutes here and there? I mean is the problem lack of time and exhaustion due to your situation rather than something that can be fixed with new gear or fine tuning your setup?
This is what I was getting at before.
Are you wanting to record/produce tracks? To release? Experiment/fk about making sounds? Both? Etc.
I think whether it’s ‘serious’ or ‘fun’ should be a big consideration of anyone’s setup.
Personally, I struggle to turn on hardware and only spend 30mins on it… I blink and an hour has gone… then coming back to that process and having to familiarise yourself with it again causes delays.
I have the same issue with Ableton, but at least coming back ‘save as’ projects is fast, and not singular like hardware is. (ie. you can have 100s of Ableton projects on the go at once and fully recall them fast…)
I think having one Elektron box, Ableton and a laptop ticks a shit load of boxes.
I just want to be able to work on stuff without feeling like I’m sneaking off.
I’m not thinking too much at this point about goals, I just want to see how it goes. It would be nice to have a go at producing something other than live hardware workouts, but I’m not expecting to suddenly be banging out highly polished tracks in a matter of weeks.
I imagine I’ll probably record some stuff with the hardware when the opportunity arises, then do a bunch of editing and arranging and the more boring stuff in the gaps during the day when parenting can be a bit more backseat.
Can’t you just buy a Zoom H6 or H8, do what you do now and then just move the stems to your DAW for final arrangement and polishing? Do you need to move that much ITB?
Like, concentrate on making music when you have time but don’t bother too much with the mixing or finalizing tracks OTB.
Have you tried the MPC live? I’m sure there’s another member that I recall (I think he’s from Sweden) on here that rates it for the workflow, and he’s in a similar situation with family commitments and little time away from the kids.
very good option.
also, Linux does not have all that overwhelming variety of commercially available plugins.
which is a good thing, as for me, because it narrows down the choice to something thinkable out.
PS. never managed to percieve windoze even as acceptable. too much regular/continuous hassle with a lot of things, and plainly ugly UI.
I tried to set up a Linux workstation but couldn’t get sound working at all. I’m no whiz when it comes to code or command line, but I did do what a tutorial said. Still didn’t work.
I think I was on Linux Mint or a similar big distro.
newest distros have Pipewire as default sound system, working more or less out of the box.
it’s a huge improvement comparing to quite recent ALSA-vs-JACK-vs-PulseAudio days.
Also, Linux can be an absolute clusterfuck when you don‘t know exactly what you‘re doing and you‘ll end up spending more time being your own admin than actually doing any of what you originally wanted to do. Been there, done that.
situation with windoze is exactly the same for quite a lot of people.
but since windoze is percieved as „default“ operating system, everyone is fine with that.
I and I bet most amateur musicians struggle with the same issues of lack of time and exhaustion from daily life, and I’ve found that the best way to get shit done is to separate creating music and mixing / mastering etc. technical aspects completely. I mean sure you do a fair bit of sound design while recording stuff, but leave everything purely technical for later. This way you don’t lose your flow and “waste” a session of fiddling with frequencies or technical, boring stuff like that. I’m ADHD tho, but jumping from creative mode to technical mode can really kill your momentum.
People say a daw can be a pain with all the options but after being crippled with options when I got into modular I’ll never see having 8 different reverb apps as a negative again.
Yes there’s many options but once you get to know them implementing them is pretty instant.
If I wanted to I could write, mix, master, upload and send off a track for feedback in a day while not moving off the sofa. Doing all those with hardware would be far more expensive and time consuming.
Yeah. IDK, more hassle than Windows and less options. I guess it’s worth it if you absolutely loathe Apple and Microsoft, but for anyone wanting an easy, hassle free solution definitely not.
Why exactly? Elektron triforce, record direct in line, fast mix finalization ITB and send out. Doesn’t take any more time than doing everything ITB. You don’t need the latest model MBP for it, nor an expensive DAW.
I second that. It’s an extremely robust, Unix/BSD based system with a mostly consistent UI running on a fairly uniform hardware platform. Sure, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns in Apple land, but it’s the only system that I feel doesn’t get too much in the way of what I want to do. Being Unix based with the endless opportunities of the command line is a definite plus.