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Comment by jdontillman | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you can separate music, or any art form for that matter, from the artist's craft, skill, expressiveness, resources, and materials.

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Digital isn't inherently bad, but...

If the ENTIRETY of your music production is done on a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) app, with its available tools and plugins, that's gonna have an effect.

And I think that's what we're seeing.

If today's music producers used the DAW only for recording, and stayed away for composing, arranging, and becoming proficient at playing instruments, things would be much better.

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Sure using a DAW has an effect, mainly in providing more tools, but the idea that one of its effects is no more key changes makes... just utterly no sense. DAW's handle key changes just fine, they don't do a single thing to make them more difficult or lead you to forget about them.

It makes as much sense as saying the popularity of young-adult novels is due to authors using word processors instead of writing by hand. The two have nothing to do with each other.

"More tools" is not necessarily a good thing. Music, as any art form, thrives on limitations. And without complaint.

"The Blues" is a very limited form, yet it has provided about a century of wonderful creative music.

If I'm writing a string quartet, I don't complain that a particular note can't be sung by a gospel choir instead of a cello. Just as a painter doesn't complain about the canvas being 2 dimensional.

Of course DAW's can handle key changes.

The issue is that working full time in a DAW environment seems to have a tendency to displace a number of important musical sensibilities.

> Music, as any art form, thrives on limitations.

Music, as any art form, thrives on new possibilities.

I agree.

And I'm a huge fan of new possibilities.

BUT most of the musical operations we see in the digital world are not "new possibilities", but rather cheap imitations of previous work. Samples, drum machines, simulations, emulations, modeling, etc.

And especially the separation of the musician playing the instrument from the sound making mechanism. That's a biggie. It's a kind of alienation, and that's going to have a dramatic negative effect.

And this is consistent with the original complaint about modern pop music not being very good. Sure, the key change might not be the best example, but the point still stands. If there are so many new possibilities, why does the music suck?

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