Are DAWs Really a New Form for Composing Instead of Sheet Music?

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DM60

DM60

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I was thinking, and wanted to get some thoughts.

As i was watching a orchestra lay, and they were flipping their sheet music. I thought, that was the earliest form for one person to record (recording is used here as a metaphor), mix and master their music.

Later, we get get recorders, multichannel etc. The came sequencers for arrangements and many sequencers would print out the sheet music (mine did)and even allowed you to add notes by, adding notes.

So now we have these really power tools called DAWs, which really is being used by many of us as our way of composing, arranging and performing our creations. The new sheet music, except, we don't have to hire 50+ people to hear our creations.

If this has been presented on this site before, just consider me late to the party. I stopped using sequencers back in the early 90's, so I haven't thought much about it until the last couple of years.
 
I'm not a full time composer, but I've written several works for full orchestra as well as a number of large-scale pop music productions. When I went to music college in the 1970s we did everything on paper, but I could never go back to that! Today I create everything in SONAR as MIDI, then replace some or all of the sampled synths with live playing. This lets me easily experiment with different octaves, oboes versus flutes, etc, and I can hear what it sounds like to avoid embarrassing mistakes when the musician arrive.

--Ethan
 
Dont overthink it.

No different than the old orchestras/bands who used to chart everything vs. the early rock'n'rollers who would roll tape and splice away the sections with razor blades.
Heck, a lot of the old jazz musicians never learned how to read sheet music.

Just do whatever is comfortable for you.
 
TimOBrien said:
Dont overthink it.

No different than the old orchestras/bands who used to chart everything vs. the early rock'n'rollers who would roll tape and splice away the sections with razor blades.
Heck, a lot of the old jazz musicians never learned how to read sheet music.

Just do whatever is comfortable for you.
Click to expand...

It really isn't about over thinking it, just giving a different view of DAWs in general and looking at them, not as something replacing the multi-track machines, but a new tool for composers. Not just a recording device. Tht was my point.

Reading music back in the old days (I mean, 1600s) was the only way they had to communicate music. There are still fundamentals. Like Nathan stated, he has a whole differnt workflow today that he did back in the 70's.
 
I'm a sucker for old films and the original Fame was on the box last weekend.

This thread reminds me of the scene where Bruno tells his music professor that he doesn't need instruments, musicians and sheet music--just a synthesiser.

I'm not a composer at all but the one semi pro composer I know lets the two forms co-exist. He composes on a mix of instruments but ends up on a MIDI keyboard then uses Sinfonia to make printed copies.
 
I make sheet music using compositional software. I used to use a DAW (Sonar) but now I use Harmony Assistant.
 
I should have also mentioned more modern programs like Sibelius and Finale combine MIDI and scoring. The full versions of those programs are not cheap! But both have "junior" versions that are affordable. One big advantage of such programs is they know how to interpret standard musical notations such as rit, a tempo, crescendo, f, pp, and so forth. I think they also include decent quality samples to avoid the added complication of external synths.

--Ethan
 
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