yup, reaper seems to be a winner there.... i "write" in ableton, and definitely NOT that......

 

Cheers @Rhodes, popular sayings do have wisdom. And I agree with your point on finding your identity as an artist through your own appropriation of the creative process, it's the only way to be You (and thus unique) in what you create.
There is a real danger to not be able to express anything personal and true through your creation if you just copy and repeat other people creative process. It's a "dangerous" path, specially in the beginning : the risk being to lose yourself before even having begun to define who you are artistically.Then get stuck in a routine, which the creative process shouldn't be.
It's unexpected but through technicality and work process we put a huge amount of determinism upon our head. You can't avoid it but it's something to take into consideration when choosing how to organize yourself for your musical creations, in order not to be overly influenced by it without being aware of it.
But I understand what you mean @jeffglobal you check what others do and through that you might build your own method, your personal approach on things, it leads to that discussion we are having, questions on methods, and it's a good thing.
DAWS are a great tools but they have time-lines, grids, etc, they are an invitation to concrete work, beat building, not necessarily to creative iterations and sonic dreams.
Which Bidule is perfect for, and with what you wrote in your OP, I thought I would underline it. The modular thingy is a bit weird to get used to I agree with you (I first used DDMF metaplugin for that but it's not stand alone), I was put off by that too first. But you can do anything with that thing (well except using it to do a whole beat, not automation for example, but rewired or inside your daw as a vsti with multi out it's perfect, it works flawlessly with reaper in both configuration). You can loop and record waves and midi, there are spectral tools, infinite midi modulation, configuration possibilities, you can setup all you midi hardware and controls all from one central to every instruments and effects you have in your patch, you have mixers, panners, gain controls, matrixes...My post is already long, and I could write three pages about Bidule, but you can make incredible sonic things in there, before you even start to think about the production process, the daw and all that.
I get very inspired by sound texture and things like that, they always draw melodies for me when I like what I hear, and Bidule for getting things rolling without any sweat with buses, auxilliary, tracks setup and all that, for me, it's just the best.

 

@Talmi Ok, it's just I'm reaching my brain's limit learning in no specific order: Unity 5, Zbrush, Maya, V-Ray, DazStudio, Photoshop, After Effects, Adobe Premiere, PT, Cubase, Reaper, over 35 plugins just for dynamics and sends like reverb and delay, Kontakt, Absynth, FM8, Massive, Zebra 2, Sylenth, then learning how to play the piano better, DP (cinematography), song writing/scoring, foley, storyboarding, ... let alone making stuff more than just with a girl holding a big stick, a fearful black man running from his masters, and a son killing his father, aka, JJ Abrams. When you look at movies from a symbolic deconstructionist paradigm, like I learned to use to analyze politics, it's horrifying.
--------------------------------------------
Enough of killing the Ubermach in effigy like the death of Superman recently, or, a movie like, "How to Be Single" as a fantasy made for women to have solace while alone, barren and pushed aside by society (since they figured out the Sex in the City act was bs), even if they did some 50 shades of Grey Boredom like that actress did. yuk. Idk if actors know, but they've been obsolete for years, only kept relevant because of the need of politicians to use both men and women as symbols for propaganda.
============================

I know I'm missing something in my never ending list above but, my goal is Machinima that looks real.

UE4 is doing it in realtime now:

I take a much longer time:

This picture has virtual actors and scene only. Nothing is real, not even Photoshopped. Just think, if a man in a room can do that, (and get that emotional reaction from you, obviously getting passed the uncanny valley) wtf can the govt do with render farms, or real computing power in real time! Watch the news recently, you've probably seen their work.

You see Trump, or Putin saying something that's probably a lot of cow manure, this is the type of tech they used. Beware. This youtube was used to directly threaten Trump, pretty unveiled threat too.

 

Last edited: May 15, 2016

You have a bunch of goals it's great, I think maybe just don't spread yourself too much at one time. For the Daw part for example learn on one the basic functions which are common to every daws (midi and wav editing, mixer, routing, automation, etc), then it will be easy to learn on others. Learning on three at the same time might be a bit confusing, specially if you also learn a lot of other softwares in other fields.
But it's nice that you know where you're going, learning in a precise direction is a good way to go imho.

 

Well, I've found I need about 3 different tutorial explanations of the same thing to understand it, or those 3 times uncovers the information that they all should have said but, eliminated for time individually. I watch even things I think are totally bs basic, because in PT you have to press record-record-play when you don't have to do so in Cubase or Reaper for that matter and it took me a couple of days to figure that out. Fk reel to reel mechanics, we no longer use them, mofo.

But, strangely, learning multiple DAWs or anything like that (different texture programs to do the same thing like Zbrush's 4x shders and Substance Painter's method, learning Maya after 3DS Max, V-ray after MentalCrap-Ray --sry Maya, etc.,) has given me a better understanding of each DAW or software type (or I conflate just amount of time in specialty with learning different ways to do the same thing).

I forgot to list Substance Painter (PBR texture program) and Substance Designer (which is also a node based thingie but must have been made by physicists, cause everything is harder than it should be...) and for now Progue's Budile is too raw for me to spend the time to learn something easier to do in Reaper (said from being ignorant of Budile (bidule? if I can't pronounce it, it's hard for me to remember...)

I'm pretty happy with Reaper, for playing around, though the ugly as fk vsti interface at first scared me, idc now. It's all about making music.

All I was happy about yesterday, was I noticed my left hand was doing it's job way easier over the keys than before. I said good job, left hand.

 

Last edited: May 15, 2016

If anyone has an example network(s) for Bidule I'm still curious. I'll play with it as time permits.

 

I agree with you on the fact that exploring different daws enlarge your horizon and allow you to work better. I use Reaper and Samplitude mostly - and Bidule but it's not a daw - but I've travelled from Daw to Daw a while before settling.
Actually for just playing an instrument Bidule is easier than reaper. In the setup option in stand alone you have to enter your vst/vsti folder, but then you're good to go, you can set up a complicated template (three vsties with arps, midi sequences, spectral tools like a vocoder and a home made synth) or just a simple thing with an instrument to jam a bit. But even without vsti and vst, there are already made instruments in Bidule which you can start from (in the Group section in the browser) and a few effects.
Included for basic stuff the most important is the audio looper (audio file category), the synced transport (in the category misc), midi recorder and midi player (midi file category), and if in stand alone your audio interface of course and your midi controller/keyboard. My basic patch in stand alone opens with a transport, a midi rec, my audio interface, my keyboard and Zebra2. You hook your keyboard to the white pin of the synth (the midi pin) and from the synth to your audio interface the two blue pins (audio pin, if there is a third one it's for latency information, you can hook delay lines on it). Then I start sound designing, if I have ideas I start recording, than I can loop what I recorded, I open Geist in Bidule (you can sync every new instrument to the transport you created), and I'll throw in a basic drum loop. Then it depends I can add an instrument or start playing with the sound itself. If so I add a mixer with several ins, and mix unprocessed signal with signal processed by my vsts or Bidule effects...It's just an illustration of course, you can do about anything with it, it depends what you want to accomplish.
Once you get somewhere you can start from to make a beat you save you patch as a group, this way you'll be able to reopen it and hook it as you like inside bidule vsti in your daw.