Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Digital Revolution - Producing Electronic Music in 2010

Over a decade ago producing quality and professionally sounding mastered tracks meant expensive studio hardware, expensive computers that were custom built and even a mediocre set up could set you back thousands. Racks upon racks of machines like compressors, fx units, synthesizers, keyboards and analogue mixing desks were all the norm back then plugged into countless numbers of cables and not to mention the ring main and plug sockets needed to power them. So - how about in 2010?The 'Digital Revolution' came along and made a big change in the whole process of making music, DJing and even the way in which music was sold. Physical sales in music saw a massive decline in vinyl and CD's as music download stores sprang up all over the internet.In the world of home recording, the whole process of making high quality professionally sounding music has become more affordable for most people who want to learn. The immense power of computers has meant that a lot of hardware can now be emulated through your music creation software or DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and with software plug-ins which give the same kind of results. Does this mean hardware is dead? Not at all - Some studios still rely heavily on hardware units but these days digital and analogue work in tandem. Some engineers and producers still prefer the warm analogue sounds of their fx units over the digital sound and some will say that you still can't beat hardware in terms of sound quality or putting the finish on a track within the mastering stage.Of course you still need a good setup with decent audio monitors, a powerful computer, a decent screen and decent software but what is important today for the digital producer is the hardware used to tweak the virtual devices on screen. If you can't physically tweak dials, knobs and faders with your hands - you're changing these settings on screen with a mouse and one thing with this - musical expression and creativity really can go out of the window. Today there are a vast amount of MIDI controllers, keyboards and control surfaces out there which will do the job and are all designed to do different things. They all have the same thing in common which is that they don't send or receive audio signals and the only information they send is Midi (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data. Midi Keyboards are be able to play on screen virtual studio instruments, Midi control surfaces act like a mixing desk giving full control over track and the software mixers and other performance controllers can be used for tweaking all different kinds of plugins and effects on the fly.Recently we've seen a big increase of pro-audio manufacturers bringing out Midi equipment that's able to work right out of the box with most common music software meaning users doesn't have to sit and spend time mapping Midi commands to each fader and knob manually. With today's technology and a recent increase in the number of performance controllers - producers and engineers can really unlock their full potential and freely express their music creativity.

Richard Neville - Admin (Midi Control)[http://www.midi-control.net]For more Information on any of my articles or more information don't hesitate to contact me:info@

Related Posts :

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)