Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

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> They dwell on the origins like here but gloss over what I believe to be a cambrian Explosion brought about by DAWs/plugins from the 2000s

That's a bit like saying history about CSS1 is irrelevant because now we have CSS3, they're just different parts of the same history.

Same with electronic music from hardware and electronic music from software. They're a part of the same history, just different parts.

Of course, the latter probably wouldn't exists without the former, most music software emulates what we already were doing in hardware after all, albeit a lot more flexible.

It's also way more fresh, even I as a youngster (~30y) can remember that, compared to all this initial hardware innovation where I wasn't even around to experience.

That said, I'm sure there are plenty of articles about the history of DAWs and plugins, is there not? If there isn't, sounds like the world is waiting for someone like you to put it together :) I for one would read it for sure.

It is certainly not irrelevant, and it certainly is at the basis of most DAW/vst stuff. But, there are still a lot of new ideas around. And you do find some historical articles [1]. No books I know of, though; I wish I could write one :)

I suspect the high complexity and decentralization of the community's evolution leave scholars disoriented. It is the same story for the music being made (with these same tools) itself; the genres exploded around 2000, and most popular music histories speak more of the Beatles than the last 25 years.

And a final point: these new tools (and again, the resulting music itself) are sometimes brushed aside as 'low brow' in academic electronic music circles.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38864623

I don't think there's much that's particularly innovative in the technooloy and working metaphors of the DAW/VST stuff. It's 95% emulations of a conventional pop/rock music studio from the 60s/70s/80s.

Musically there's been quite a bit of innovation, but nothing like the incredible step from pre-war music that was 100% acoustic and hand-written, to post-war electronic music that was synthesized from scratch, assembled from found sounds, and sometimes computer generated.

Computer music - in the sense of music made using code tools, not software as an emulation of hardware - is still under-explored. There's been plenty of it in academia, but most of it isn't that interesting. The only real stand-out piece I can think of is the THX Deep Sound.

I think there will be an explosion of code-generated music eventually - with or without AI - that also has emotional and visceral impact. So far most code music feels shiny, slippery, and weightless to me, in comparison to mainstream pop and traditional acoustic music. It lacks the finely controlled detail and depth of both.

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