A fairly intensive introductory explanation of the intricacies of Digital Audio Workstations for the baffled, whose sole aim is to get more geeks making music.

Look it, If I can do this — Thistle Pinch — then there is surely hope for all!

D-A-W

You’ve seen that acronym before, haven’t you? (perhaps at the top of this page). A DAW is a dedicated piece of software built solely for recreating a professional recording studio in your computer. Go to any online music shop and type in “music recording software” and anything from 12 to 190 different options appear. Digidesign‘s Pro-Tools 7.3 (HD and LE systems), Ableton‘s LIVE 6, Steinberg‘s Cubase 4, Propellerheads Reason 3, Apple‘s Logic Pro, Cakewalk‘s Sonar 6 — I would like to go on and on and on as the options are boundless, and the only limitations are your software platform and your wallet.

A DAW is the mastermind behind controlling and recording audio. It works just like an old-fashioned tape-based 4-track, only with the capability to record as many tracks as your computer can handle. Your DAW will also handle its own brand, as well as third party plug-ins (effect units, Soft synths, drum machines, samplers, and engineering tools that operate from within your computer). It also (yes, also) houses the ability to control all your MIDI-based musical instruments, MIDI outboard effect units and, create and manage sequences. Not bad, eh?

Essentially, a whole recording studio can now live in your computer, giving you unprecedented and quite magical musical powers. What currently costs around $500 and is readily available to download from the Internet, ten years ago would have set you back $15,000, required a sound proof room, a lounge suite, an air conditioner, an engineer, a spaghetti junction of cables, a very understanding and patient partner (assuming you have the ability to procure one in the first place), a Lava Lamp, and a candy vending machine!

Let me assure you first and foremost, composing music is something very personal and quite special. This wonderful creative outlet relies on things no software can give you. Words like talent and gift come to mind here. That said, if you have even a marginal idea of what your composition wants sound like, have an instrument, or just a microphone, then you should have no qualms in spending some time getting your head around the DAW. Check out Kidbeyond for proof of the “just a microphone” scenario.

As you can see, writing music with these devices is not very difficult once you’ve learned some simple rules for handling audio, watching levels, and most importantly, navigating the preferences to tailor the DAW to your needs. Here is a break down of some important things to think about.

As we all know and love, the death of the average computer comes more or less 3 years after you buy it. Planned obsolescence is the bane of every geek, but “SUCK IT UP” I say (loudly), it’s a large part of geekdom. What was the fastest-baddest thing 4 years ago is now in your studio struggling to run iTunes and 140 gigs of Black Sabbath and Yes.

Still, the performance of your DAW relies on a few key ingredients.

• CPU the Central Processor Unit. The Core. Be sure to check the minimum requirements of your DAW before you buy any software.
• Audio Engine. This can either come with your computer or be a separate application. Hardware audio interfaces sometimes have their own proprietary software for integration into the computers audio engine, or they may be configured to access the computers audio engine. It is worth checking the preferences of these and see how they handle the millions and millions of tiny packets of data that is your audio.
• Hard Drive. 5400rpm or 7200rpm? The ‘clock speed’ of the drive refers to how fast the disc in your hard drive spins, and as with most other things in your computer, faster is better. If you have an external hard drive, you have to think about the information flowing to and from it. Firewire 400 or Firewire 800 or USB or USB 2 or whatever else you have as a means for connection, SCSSI? You see, placing your “audio pool” on an external hard drive at the end of a long USB cable that is connected to a Hub, shared by a webcam, and who knows what else, will seriously impact ‘latency.’
• Latency Eew (eew). Latency is the delay that is inherent in any path of audio, you hit the string, the microphone turns the waveform into electrical pulses that go through many phases of change and then are turned back into waveforms in your headphones for your beautiful ears to resonate into your brain. The amount of processing that is going on in the milliseconds before you hear the sound is mind numbing, and the machines of today have such small latency issues that it is hard to hear at all. Carefully study these areas of the dreaded manual to learn where you should store the files created with your DAW within the hierarchy of your folders. These issues are very important and differ with each application and operating system.

Engineering sound is an area of the music industry that can lead to many different careers. The goal for us is to get a good sound right from the start. Plus, recording audio will take the bulk of your computer power so it pays to be frugal. Lay off the effects, decide if you want a stereo track or a mono one before you begin, and do not actually record huge amounts of soundless space in between your choruses.

• Templates. I cannot stress enough the value of spending a long and careful time setting everything up exactly how you need it and saving it as a template for all your future writing. I am certain that most of the DAWs out there have template facilities. Cubase has a “Save as Template” option which gives you as many different setups as you want, depending on your needs. Reason also gives you the option to re-save over the “default song” so you can have whatever you want in there when you load up — 5 mixers, 18 effect units, 12 drum machines, 200 synths, a sampler or 18, 15 REX Loop players — who cares! It is a great idea to organize templates as it saves valuable time, which none of us has.
• Sample Rate. Scour your DAW’s preferences for the sample rate and the format for the recorded audio (WAV, AIFF, MP3 etc). Research what your equipment is happier using, as these options rely on the power of your CPU, your storage capacity, and external or internal hard drive speeds and connections.
• Levels. Always check your recording levels. Start at the raw instrument and make it as loud as you can without it distorting (unless that is what your looking for). Then work your way back to the DAW channel, making sure your levels are almost hitting the red bars at every stage.
• Bleed. Turn off your speakers and use headphones when you record using microphones in your studio. If not, the microphone will also record the amplified version of what you are performing (coming from your speakers) on top of what is recorded. This is called bleed, most of the time this will degrade your virgin recording with ugly artifacts from the amplifying process that taint your wonderful performance. Adding effects will further amplify these sounds and can add up to some crappy sounding recordings by the time you layer these up with 5 other tracks recorded the same way.
• Space. Give yourself a couple of bars intro before recording. If you are like me, you are the engineer, the producer, and the performer. I have to run across the studio to the drum-kit to record any beats, so I need at least 4 bars! Also, it is highly likely that you may want to add more of an intro later or juggle audio around as the tune progresses, so having some space up front helps.
• Click Track. If you are going to be using MIDI in conjunction with live instruments, it is extremely helpful to write in time with the click track. Choose your desired tempo and find the software’s built-in METRONOME. It will be in there somewhere with many options. I have mine set very quiet, but with the first blip about 4x louder than the rest, so I get a nice loud 1 and then 2, 3, and 4 are quiet.Later, cool automating tricks with panning, volume, and effect settings are made simpler as you can work to the grid on your timeline — which is a visual representation of the metronome click you hear. Yet another software preference will show you said grid and allow you to set it up how you prefer. Sometimes even down to the color scheme.
• Marker Points. Familiarize yourself with markers and marker points. You can set these up to act as your engineer if you want to drop in a guitar part, but can’t use the mouse while your preparing to play the part. They can also earmark various sections of your composition for ease of navigation.
• Deleting Audio. At times you will have large spaces in between audio takes. Delete these chunks when you are cleaning up your piece as your computer will be trying to process the empty space, which wastes valuable CPU. Plus, any added noise while you are standing there waiting for the next verse (the lady upstairs flushing her toilet, the fridge motor kicking in, or more than likely, the fan noise from your computer) will end up on the recording. Cleanliness is next to Steely Dan when it comes to silence while the instruments are and aren’t playing.

  Remember to make sure you have deleted the deleted audio from your hard drive, too. (What – delete the deleted audio? – YES! ) A nice safety net with most DAWs is the fact that deleting audio from your sequencer still leaves the actual file intact on your hard drive. Great for accidental deletions but after a while, these neglected audio segments can add up to a serious amount of wasted hard drive space.

A sobering note on purchasing Audio Interfaces:

This is a real specialist area. Depending on what you want to record, your computer, your wallet, and other issues, it’s best to consult with a professional. Don’t rush into getting an audio card, as most computers come with a pretty decent sound card installed straight out of the box. Or at least enough to get you going while you research the right interface for your needs. But make no mistake, you will find that three weeks after you make a big decision and purchase said decision, a newer, faster, smaller, lighter one will come out.

“Hear that Mr. Anderson, That is the sound of Inevitability…” — Agent Smith.

Effects, synths, samplers, woah!

Most DAWs come equipped with a few standard ‘plug-in’ applications. A plug-in is a separate little beast that attaches to your DAW, giving you more and more power (or less and less, when you are talking in CPU cycles — remember that). The DAW manufacturers will often supply you with a few basic plug-ins to “get you going.” Simple tools like a synthesizer, drum machine, and a whole slew of effect units.

For anyone with experience in the analog world, effect units are little black boxes with flashing lights on them — reverb, chorus, delay, distortion, etc. These plug-ins almost always are designed to look like their historic analog contemporaries, so finding the pan knob on your reverb is not at all like looking through the preferences section of your Internet browsers for cookies or application assistants!

The real power of these beasts comes into play when you get into the extra abilities that DAW software gives you. Let’s pretend that you have managed to actually record a guitar part into your DAW and you want to apply an angry, squelchy, fuzzy, chorusy thing to it. This is as easy as clicking on the track, attaching the angry, squelchy, fuzzy, chorusy, plug-in where you need them (there are so many audio routing possibilities that I am not going anywhere near telling you where!), then up pops your effect and instantly your guitar part sounds like Scott Henderson played it.

What is great about it being inside a DAW workspace is that all of the plug-in settings are editable, saveable, and easily re-writeable. By that, I mean I can record the movements of the amount of squelch (for instance) as I am listening to the track, and change it all over the place as my creative whim lets me, with a flick of the mouse. LOVIN IT!

External sources ahoy!

Nowadays external devices are becoming less and less of a need, a simple MIDI ‘Controller’ keyboard with a few sliders and knobs on it gives you so much power, and, as re-mapping the functions of all these knobs is relatively easy or often already mapped for you and available as a download, you can soon have it all set up how you want, and streamline your creative process with ease.

I am myself slowly departing the land of “I NEED MORE OUTBOARD GEAR” but relish having these relics around. My KORG 01w synth, my squelchy “phat” Korg MS2000 synth, and my grandaddy of a sampler, the Ensoniq ASR-10 “Advanced” ( for 1992) Sampling recorder. Although these dinosaurs have little place in the Studio-in-a-bag style of today, I just can’t let go of the awesome keyboard feel and great, now-classic sounds.

Having a USB MIDI expander for all these outboard behemoths means that my CPU does not have to kill itself to run the amount of sounds I want. PLUS!!! most keyboards and effects units now, no matter how old they are, will have MIDI information posted online so that your DAW can talk to them in todays language.

If you are lucky, you will find a software operator for them — this will make your MIDI device look and act like a plug-in on screen but not use any CPU. You can simply mouse all the controls and record data changes within your DAW without even breaking your back to lean down and fiddle with the knobs and switches on that little black box at the bottom of the rack under the amp.

So there you have it. It may seem more complicated than need be and to be honest, if you did not read this I doubt it would have a huge impact on your ravenous creativity. It may make things a little clearer and cleaner though, that’s for sure!