A New DAW Yesterday
I record my music on a digital audio workstation or DAW, as they are often called in the vernacular of contemporary recording. A DAW is a fully functional multi-track recording environment built around a computer or two, or with somewhat more limited capability, a keyboard/sequencer/CD burner combination.
Today's tecnnology provides myriad solutions to the recording question, so one should be advised that every configuration will be at least slightly different. I started using a DAW in 2001. My reasons were many, certainly not the least of which was the fact that my studio suffered a direct lightning strike in August of 1999, resulting in the serious damage - if not the outright destruction - of several components critical to the studio's ongoing operation. This event well and truly knocked me off the rails. I had expected to release a new disc in the first quarter of Y2K, instead I found myself desperate and despairing, unable to move the project forward without massive headaches and wholesale changes in the ways that I had grown accustomed to working. With much trepidation, the decision was made to switch to a DAW. It had been my plan to seriously upgrade the studio after the next disc anyway, so in that respect the lightning strike simply forced my hand. Little did I know that my problems were just beginning. I lost the lion's share of a year simply waiting for emerging technologies to deliver on their promises. Without a working studio I was hugely unfulfilled as a musician and a human being. Terribly concerned that my nearly finished but still unreleased music was withering on the vine, I began playing drums up to four hours a day to kill the pain. My friends started calling me "Dr. Death".
By March of 2001, I had procured and assembled a collection of hardware and software that I was confident could supply a viable solution to my studio requirements. After several frustrating problems involving corrupted software, I was able to get things up and running. I learned as I worked and it wasn't always fun. As the weeks and months passed, system performance stabilized and productivity gains were becoming increasingly obvious. The music that had been left in limbo was, over time, almost completely reworked and re-recorded. In fact, it is the basis of the DARLING disc "D2R".
Was the switch to a DAW a good idea? In a word, yes. My particular experience was probably not that much worse than most. After all, it was not the fault of the DAW that a lightning bolt left my old studio in smoking ruins. From my point of view the principal advantages are full and painless automation, minimization of sync issues, MIDI and audio together under centralized control, the elimination of large cable runs and patchbays, and improved ergonomics. On the downside you have rather harsh learning curves for application programs, computer configuration issues, extension conflicts and the above mentioned corrupted software. I never want to return to traditional methods, but then I'm so anal retentive about my music that I don't even mind mixing with a mouse. Any advantage I gain through the embrace of technology is... well, for lack of better words, an advantage.
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