I ask this question every day. This is so important for me. Maybe for you too. For example as a keyboardist, you're dealing with lots of hand lessons that are actually useless in working with DAWs and vice versa. I am not talking about practicing (of course a tool like a midi keyboard is necessary during practicing). I am talking about your goal, perhaps your future job. I think they are two separate realms. What's your idea? Does it depend on genre or what?

If you'd want to select your way as a instrumentalist or a DAWist, which is your number 1 and why?

 

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Both are kinda the same but different at the same time.
Just to put it in few words, if you wanna be the 'star' then go for the instrument and fight for reaching the top, otherwise go with the DAWs, at least I see it that way. Like, I see so many geniuses behind the scene around the companies but they seem to be nobody for the media (the kinda TV media I mean specifically), unlike so many 'artists' that move masses daily but suck so bad.
So if you want that 'glory' then I think you should go for the instrument instead, but still there's no guarantee you're gonna make it because we're currently in times where if you do some good shit you don't usually get the deserved recognition I think.

 

Where has the dumb rating disappeared?! Oh, Don!

 

I practice keyboards and guitar and bass almost on a daily basis. I'm not that great at either BUT
There's something in me that gets more satisfaction of recording real playing.
Its just more natural and organic.

A big question is do you enjoy it. is it therapy? I never intend it to be my job and I'm not sure its a healthy way to look at it.
Cool things come from accidents and spontaneity and interaction between people. Its alot of whats missing in modern EDM music
Its you that needs to decide whats feels right. Screw what other people think and be yourself.

If I have any goal at all its to try to cross the bridge between 60's rock and roll and Psychedelia using todays EDM tools HA .. I come up with some PF stuff at times

And to quote Glenn Fry "In your lifetime you will never run out of ideas.. You will just run out of time."

 

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I've chosen the middle way, someone who can create music and handle the technology, but I am neither a musician or a producer. For me playing the same songs over and over is boring, and spending 18 hours a day in the studio is tedious. I would rather be the director and facilitator of ideas. I have always admired the Motown way of doing things, assembling a team who possess individual strengths and skills.

 

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Thanks guys for sharing your thoughts. To be honest I'd enjoy both of them but when I listen to the pure electronic musics I usually don't see any subtlety that would need the proficiency of a keyboardist and when I listen to the live plays, I don't see the creativity and mixing that would come out from playing with the midi or samplers.

Btw, Eiffel had the similar question too. I mean being an artist or an architect and finally chose the architecture. As @Sonny Crockett said they may seem the same but as @Voo quoted, time is so important. When you dig deeply into any of them you're getting lost in it and because of the natural limits in human memory and brain I simply forget or can not find any place for the techniques that I have learned in the other side.

Let me not to talk more and just listen to you.

 

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I prefer to create interesting and challenging music concepts. As a former member of several bands, I don't miss the "bitchy", self-absorbed and petty personalities of some of the musicians that I have worked with. Nowadays, I am quite comfortable (headache-free) of having to spend my time bickering and fighting with others (like myself). <lol> Now I know why Howard Hughes was so content being a recluse (insert ? here). All joking aside, once I became somewhat adequate working with a few DAW's and many accompanying plugins, I miss those dudes (and gals) less and less. Peace and tranquility at last! My wife thinks I'm definitely more sociable (and loving) and far less cantankerous...

 

This is an interesting question posed. here, as it sort of echoes previous posts in which the poster was inquring as to whether there might be software to find the "right" chord or to make decisions on the "right" note in a melody. I regard your question a lot more highly, as it spreads the matter out a lot more: real-life musicianship versus virtual virtuosity.

So, more questions:
What does one gain, and how is one's life enriched, by mastering, or just playing for fun, a musicall instrument?
What about that might be outweighed by the gratification of entering and assigning values and sampled to notes on a "piano roll" editor in a DAW, thereby yielding a recorded "performance" of virtual instruments?

I myself cannot choose a preference between playing a real instrument and using a DAW with software instruments. If all the electricity were to disappear from the world tomorrow, I'd know how to survive – which includes knowing how to make music.

 

To be honest, I am not aware of a single one "virtual virtuoso". All the people I know who can program DAW music that has a virtuoso/"traditional composer" quality to it are also able to play at least one real instrument.

Haven't heard any "pure DAWist" (someone whose only musical instrument is FL Studio for instance) doing anything comparable to what someone with real life musicianship can do. Not saying it is better or worse, just very different. DAWists usually hold on to a minor key for hours with very minimalistic (and repetitive) musical tools, they are typically more focused on the sound design aspect.

 

I personally have not heard this level of masterfulness in most of the electronic tracks even from the big DAWists. As kouros said just minimal musicality:

A genius keyboardist

 

What?

 

I have chosen to be a player.
I like to feel the real traditional instruments in my hands, be it a guitar, a piano, a keyboard or a rhodes.
I see a DAW only as a tool to record my band, or myself when writing new songs... I leave the mixing and mastering to the pros, because it takes too much time for me, and I don`t enjoy it as much as playing.

 

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These are the best song writing tutorials that I have seen (pop&Rock). You can see the song writer, drummer, guitar&cello players, vocalists and a also a professional DAWist (with pro tools & logic) are collaborating from the starting point:

Ask Video-Songwriting

The DAWist is also an engineer too that provide every thing they need. This kind of DAWists work on the recorded materials and arrange them together and do not interfere in the group's tasks. He is just an engineer with mix and mastering skills. Let's say he would not need much midi but just audio files.

There is also another kind of DAWists that their job is all inside the piano roll. Let's call them electronic artists. I by saying the DAWist mean these ones.

 

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This is a particularly interesting thread to me, for I became a ´DAWist´ as long as I can't play anymore because of disease. But somehow I've been lucky, twenty years ago, when none of this technology was available I was a stage man with not much taste for that. By 2000, when home studios began to get stronger, I wasn't sick yet, but I fell in love with DAWs and computer production and mostly dedicated to it.

So, for the moment, I'm 100% into DAW stuff for necessity but also for pleasure, and I'm happy that the resources available today allow the creativity to flow in many forms. But after all, it's a matter of taste and feel.

Use what makes you feel more comfortable and creative. Tools are there at your disposal, and no need to waste them because of pre-concepts. Don't worry about others' opinion, in fact. Do what makes you happier.

 

Bless you! I did not notice from that angle.

 

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Thanks, pal. I really did not write from a victims standpoint, in fact is the opposite, life's been good to me, if I were only a player I'd be really **** up :D

I just wanted to tell you honestly to use whatever your favorite tools. In the end, what matters is the sound you produce and the pleasure (and eventually the income) it gives you.

P.S. Ouch, my english is bad nowadays, hope I was clear enough.

 

And best of luck in your choices

 

for me it s all linked

take the biggest artists, in the middle of their carreer you begin to see pics in their studios

if you care about your sound, you develope the DAWer that is inside of you

just my opinion

the 2 things at the same time can be too much for somebody, thought
sometimes real natural performers don t really have to deal with technology
it depends on your personality

 

After more years than I care to count on the road, I like having the ability to relax in a studio and compose. All the composition I did while in a band was hurried and mostly arranging more than strictly composing. Now I can take my time and really dig into what I'm trying to convey musically.

But, having said all that, when the band is hot, the room is right, and the people are jumping, I can't think of a cooler feeling than making music with my crew. I still read the band ads in case there's a gig that looks like it'd be fun.

 

Going off on a tangent, this concept is quite interesting - Was musical memory the secret to Brian Wilson's genius?