Recently, I have taken a great deal of satisfaction in sitting down in front of a piano. There is something very musical about it. There are no electronics, just me and this wonderful invention. OK, don't get me wrong. Believe me, I am not going acoustic but I do like hardware.
My Korg M3 for example. I turn it on right away the M3 logo comes up and in a few minutes, the main menu screen. The press of a few buttons and I can be playing a piano or have a whole symphony at my fingertips. Not once did my M3 ever say things like Firewire extensions not available.
My Moog Voyager takes even less time to boot up and with a few twists of some knobs I can have mellow analog sounds or harsher FM and synced sounds coming from my speakers enough to wake the neighbors and the dead. But no messages about drivers and rather than raising my blood pressure, I find delight in playing music.
Funny thing is that I used to program computers. It was part of my job and when I first started to get involved in synths I like the idea of synths that I could program. But as I got older, I found that complex programs were often noisy, confused, not all that musical. Simpler, more suble variations like those I could get with my Voyager seemed to appeal more to me. Or having the ability to layer sounds on my Voyager.
So when I was anxious to get my Macbook working and I get this annoying driver message that I suspect has to do with Firewire 400 and 800, I really am irritated. I frankly don't care about why something works or whether its Firewire or USB or 400 or 800. I just want to make music and record it so I can share it! All of this computer stuff is taking me away from music because I have to find new drivers and re-install software and talk to tech reps that I get a busy signal for.
A while back, I thought about getting a digital multitrack and someone said to me, why do that? Software DAWs are much more powerful. Don't get me wrong, I have Live and you know what, eventually I will get me software and hardware to make nice to one another and I will upgrade my Live and my Komplete and all will be well but the idea of having a piece of hardware that can burn a CD for me and create read made MP3 files right from a single piece of hardware, no interface needed. Well, that has appeal as well. So who knows, a multitrack might still be in my future while I try to get my software to behave. In the meantime, I can create music.
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