Anyone notice the DAW affects the type of music you create?

[MarlaPodolski]

Have you noticed the music you create and especially songs sound different depending on what DAW you use?

I think a user should select the DAW best geared toward the music that user want to make, not the other way around.

If the DAW really changes the way you make music, or even affects what kind of music you're creating, you're doing something wrong.

Completely disagree. The reply statement has no basis in fact(s). It's a completely subjective remark. No facts offered as support, because as a subjective opinion there are none. It's not logical in any way, either.

Musicians and others who use DAWs are mainly all artists. To be an effective and high-quality artist, one needs to be sensitive to and able to be influenced by everything in one's environment , e.g. -- the paintings of an oil painter using a pallet knife only to apply the paint will look significantly different than the same artist using brush only. The tools used always affect the results obtained in some way, whether extremely obvious or not. This is such a fundamental law it is even true for chimpanzees using twigs to remove termites from mounds.

The DAW can also be considered and used as one medium (along with the more commonly thought-of media -- the musical instruments themselves) in the creation and delivery of the message -- the music.

Starting to sound at least vaguely familiar? Marshall McLuhan established almost 50 years ago that in our highly technological, post-modern age that "The medium is the message." So this is not even anything new.

Anyone with common sense would expect that anything used to help create any sort of product would have some degree of effect on the outcome and quality of the product. Considering that many of us DAW users have two or more DAWs for precisely this reason, along with certain other sometimes related benefits, one might be safe to assume that most of us figured out this odd physics thing called "cause and effect" before we spent hundreds more on further DAW software.

Maybe it's just my imagination, but I seem to find more and more goofy, oddball and just plain false information each time I swing by this place trying to find out about new products and items on sale. Either I've made some kind of realization or else I somehow never noticed most of this silliness before. Which could it be?

[fese]

Im in a bit of a rut at the moment. I've been doing non-linear production (Ableton) for under a year and I noticed my music doesn't have that continuity or push forward that a lot of stuff I hear on radio does, nor does it sound like the stuff I was doing before in Protools. I can do more in Ableton obviously but structurally and melodically the segments dont transition as well or the melodies have that loopy kind of vibe..ie lacking freedom, too focused. That's actually my main concern.

As a long time Cubase user, a couple of years ago i bought Live, because it was very refreshing and really easy to use for the most part. But a bit like you, I felt that the music i made was stuck in blocks, loops or, well, patterns. Which would be OK, as Live is kinda pattern based for a big part, but it didn't work for me, i am just not good at pattern based music production, or too inexperienced. And I didn't see the need to get deeper into the session view of Live as I already had that in Cubase and i liked that better.
So i sold Live again and focused on Cubase, which just fits better my style of working: writing songs and having a coarse layout before starting to record. I'm just a linear kinda guy
For jotting down ideas or jamming, though, Live was great, although nothing of that developed into a proper song.

[Googly Smythe]

The instrument you use influences your music, and a DAW with its synths,fx, sequencers etc is an instrument. (Technically its an electrophone in the standard Hornbostel-Sachs musical instrument classification system.)

The fifth top-level group, electrophones category was added by Sachs in 1940, to describe instruments involving electricity. Sachs broke down his 5th category into 3 subcategories: 51=electrically actuated acoustic instruments; 52=electrically amplified acoustic instruments; 53= instruments which make sound primarily by way of electrically driven oscillators, such as theremins or synthesizers, which he called radioelectric instruments.

No mention of Digital Audio Workstations... And I can't find any oscillators in Cubase's feature list...

Anyway.
Way back when, in the middle '80s, I used a Tascam cassette tape-based multi-track recorder. I had a DX100, a CZ101, a Copicat, a couple of digital delays, an Alessis digital reverb, a Sans Amp fuzz box, a Boss flanger, a Boss compressor, a 6 channel mixer and a Les Paul. The music I made then was not much different than the music I make now (Cubase, HALion, Waves, Brainworx, etc, etc).
Make of that what you will...

[Michael L]

^^^Good example of the importance of instruments. Nowadays, perhaps you carefully chose digital plugins similar to your old hardware, so nothing major changed? I think the OP is trying a similar thing-- to find the right match between music & instruments.

[Kinh]

Have you noticed the music you create and especially songs sound different depending on what DAW you use? Or am I just going crazy?

I think a user should select the DAW best geared toward the music that user want to make, not the other way around.

If the DAW "dictates" which music is made, it seems the user didn't know from the start what music s/he wanted to make

But that doesn't even make sense. Why would I not know what music I wanted to make?

Seriously? I usually know which music i want to make, or the sounds i create inspire me to do the music i make. The DAW really hasn't much to do with it. As i wrote earlier, if it does, you're doing something wrong.

Well the evidence would suggest otherwise. Im not talking about the plugins I use, Im talking about the 'process'. I dont know what DAW/s you use, maybe you just use one so you dont have a comparison but Im more interested in opinions from people who actually use both and have noticed that difference rather than people who just use one and have a 'theory'. Thanks anyway though.

[dupont]

I think the daw you use has an effect on your music.

When I work with logic X, the automation editing is so bad I prefer not to use it for accurate plugin instrument editing.
Within Studio one, the automation editing is more user friendly than in LPX so I use it to shape the sound an other way I would have done with LPX.

Also the stock plugins and sound are differents from daw to daw so the music process will not take the same direction.

It was the same with analogue gears, the instruments affected your music, TB303 was born for acid, TR909 for techno.

[pdxindy]

I think the daw you use has an effect on your music.

When I work with logic X, the automation editing is so bad I prefer not to use it for accurate plugin instrument editing.
Within Studio one, the automation editing is more user friendly than in LPX so I use it to shape the sound an other way I would have done with LPX.

Also the stock plugins and sound are differents from daw to daw so the music process will not take the same direction.

It was the same with analogue gears, the instruments affected your music, TB303 was born for acid, TR909 for techno.

Sure, a DAW has some influence... but I think it is not nearly so much as hardware used to be. A 16 track recorder had far more difference to a 4 track recorder than one DAW to another. Every DAW can have essentially unlimited tracks (besides some cheap/free lite versions where you can still do loss-less bouncing), every DAW has unlimited FX, unlimited polyphony, hosts plugins, automation, total recall, etc. There are very few hard limitations in any of the modern DAW's today.

Plenty of people use Live without ever making/using loops or using Session View. Live does not force you to use loops. It is a choice. So I would say that choice has more influence than the DAW itself.

[VariKusBrainZ]

So I would say that choice

= lack of imagination / creative thought

A creative type controls the tool not the other way around

[nickamandote]

I don't think it does. What it does are: music theory, sounds you are using, mixing and mastering.

[thecontrolcentre]

Anyone notice how the pen you use to write notation affects the type of notes you write? No? Me neither

[Googly Smythe]

Anyone notice how the pen you use to write notation affects the type of notes you write? No? Me neither

The point I was making in my previous post.

[MarlaPodolski]

Anyway.
Way back when, in the middle '80s, I used a Tascam cassette tape-based multi-track recorder. I had a DX100, a CZ101, a Copicat, a couple of digital delays, an Alessis digital reverb, a Sans Amp fuzz box, a Boss flanger, a Boss compressor, a 6 channel mixer and a Les Paul. The music I made then was not much different than the music I make now (Cubase, HALion, Waves, Brainworx, etc, etc).
Make of that what you will...

'Make of that what you will ...' Okay: Dense.

Today's rather complex DAW (especially compared to old tape recorders and hardware) is a very different animal than what you describe using in the '80s.

And comparing a DAW to a pencil? I'm going to guess that your posts were a joke, correct? If not ...

[whyterabbyt]

Maybe it's just my imagination, but I seem to find more and more goofy, oddball and just plain false information each time I swing by this place

That's pretty ironic. Whether the message is the medium or not (and from the rest of your comment, I really dont think you actually get what McLuhan means by 'medium' or 'message' in the first place, kinda lacking that context of, you know, implicit shared social vocabulary between artist and audience that attaches itself intrinsically to the medium etc etc ) the tool used to work in a medium is most certainly not the medium.
Nor, in fact, is a given instance of that medium. 'Film' is the medium. A 'film' is an instance of that medium, but it is not the medium. The camera is a tool used in forming the instance of the medium, but it doesnt not form the medium.

I mean seriously; you just fallaciously conflated 'the tool inextricably influences the instance of the medium' with McLuhan's observation and then tried to pass it off as 'physics' on top. Like I say, ironic.

The pencil isnt the prose, nor does it intrinisically dictate the type or quality or direction of the prose. The camera isnt the movie. The DAW isnt the music.
And they sure as hell aint the message either.

[whyterabbyt]

And comparing a DAW to a pencil? I'm going to guess that your posts were a joke, correct? If not ...

Yes, comparing a tool used to form an instance of a medium with a different tool used to form an instance of a different medium. In exactly the same way, neither tools are the instance of the medium, nor are they the medium, nor are they 'message'. They are both tools, and, intrinsically, no more than that.

[whyterabbyt]

I think the daw you use has an effect on your music.

That wasnt the question, though. The question said 'type of music'. He asked whether the tool informed the structure/context of the work.
And a given tool might do, for a given individual. It isnt in any way intrinsic or unilateral though.

It was the same with analogue gears, the instruments affected your music, TB303 was born for acid, TR909 for techno.

So you're suggesting that people in general would have gone into a store and bought a 303 for no specific reason, then when they picked it up they would all think 'oh I have this I must do acid'. Rather than folk buying the 303 because they already wanted it to make acid?

Not quite convinced.