I have come to a point, I think, where “fuck this, I’m done” is the shortest, sweetest way to describe it.

For the last few years, I went down the rabbit hole of trying to build a sort of ‘island’ based setup, where I had the studio broken into a number of functional sub units, mostly focused on a “DAWless” approach to writing. This was appealing because I felt it would let me focus on smaller subsets of gear I loved and move me down the path of creating some good stuff. This thinking was absolutely wrong.

You see, there is a reason that DAW reigns supreme: Convenience. All the functionality I need to actually write, record and mix is right there, in that box that I, for whatever reason, was rejecting. And that’s fine…but without the DAW you still need all that stuff: You need a way to mix, record, route MIDI, add effects and just generally handle the loading and saving of all the project data. Without the DAW all those tasks become hardware tasks for specific devices. It gets expensive quick and it always ends up feeling like I’m just trying to re-invent the DAW.

I found that with my island setups I got lazy. I’d make a few patterns and call that a song, capture those into the DAW or just forget about them. If I went back to load them, I’d have to remember all those device routing and what have you again to recreate it. Find all those disparate files again and, honestly, I’m just not that organized. I was having fun and writing stuff, but I was finishing absolutely nothing.

At the beginning of October, I had my “Fuck This!” Moment as I was rebuilding the setup. I configured absolutely everything to go through the DAW. All MIDI, all audio, all everything has a straight forward path into the machine and it is the one ring to bind them all. Since getting it all setup, I’ve gotten 3 songs done or mostly done. It’s a breeze to capture everything in the DAW because I do that as part of the fundamental workflow. The Mix is even stored in the DAW itself (I’ve switched to Studio One..more on that later). My studio feels useful again.

I am not getting on my soap box to say that DAWLess is a failure for everyone. I actually still have a DAWLess setup (kind of) that I built around my iPad Pro and Roland SP404mkII. I know that for some musicians this is the only way they can operate and more power to them. For me, though, the DAWless setup is there for fun outside the studio when I want to putz around or have a light setup I could take when traveling. It’s not where the real work is going to get done.

The next question, however, is what to do with all that gear you amassed in the name of creating the ultimate DAWless setup. I’ve got a mountain of sequencers, mixers, routers, and recorders that I don’t need. I also bought a lot of outboard FX that really aren’t getting touched. Some of this stuff may naver get touched..

So it’s time to make the hard choice and cut the cord. I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to have that I don’t need to have and, I think, that’s really what the next year is going to be about in the Engine Room - downsizing out the extra crap.

This shall be a ride. Anyone want to buy a sequencer?