However, having unlimited tracks and all the bells and whistles of a daw can often promote ‘playing with your toys’
I think it's actually neutral. It's the one using the DAW that determines how many of the toys get played with.
Both with my 8 track portastudio and my 12 track DAW, there are tons of features that I've never used or use. In 30 years. Having the things there doesn't mean they have to be played with.
On the other hand, 24 track enabled bands like Queen, on some early recordings, to go bananas, to the extent they used the tracks and did so much bouncing, the tape went clear !
Whereas having limited options ‘forces’ to a degree more of the old ways of recording
Yet, the reality of humans recording is that from the very moment we worked out how to record sound, we kept moving toward the situation that digital eventually gave us, more tracks, more bells and whistles, cleaner, more "accurate" sound. More automation, effects, less and less human input, or let's say more, done by less people. And certain instruments started going that way too. What we call digital had its genesis in the moans and groans of studio engineers, producers and artists throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, grizzling about the limitations of tape and analog technology.
Get a bunch of people in a room and play some music.
As soon as overdubbing entered the building, bit by bit, the notion of the people in the room playing began to make a graceful exit as the only norm. Even in the 60s, the Beatles were in studios through the night, not always recording together. Some of the outtakes that appeared on the anthology are quite a surprise as to their sparseness and lack of numbers playing together.
One could go as far as saying that the onset of
recording actually spelled the death knell for the idea of musicians always playing together, for the simple reason that.....they no longer had to in order to achieve the same results.
To elaborate a bit more..... technology to a degree causes laziness
It doesn't so much cause it, as much as enable it. People are people. Flawed, lazy at times, but also innovative and sometimes finding it more productive to do more with less. 8 track was seen in some quarters as sacrilegious, with 4 track being the altar at which some practitioners bowed. But once 8 track was in, people wanted 16 ! Then 24. The Beatles wanted 72.
You’re in your home studio. Working to a click track, everything locked to a grid. You send the files to your buddy. They add their parts (to a click, locked to the grid)
This gets sent to the other players.
While it’s ‘convenient’, you’ve lost the magic of a bunch of musicians all playing together in real time interacting with each other.
On the other hand, I think of a great song like Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" which began life with just Jimmy Page on guitar and John Bonham on drums. You'd never know it by listening to it.
Click tracks didn't start with digital recording. They pre~exist recording per se. The whole locking to a grid thing is just
one way of going about it. And I think within both mediums, there can be very impersonal ways of recording. As there can also be wonderfully interactive ways. Everyone's situation differs, also at different times.
But if Mike is in NC, Joe is in CO, Ted is in CA, and Steve is in Tx, then it's just me and Bill left. Not a lot of interacting is going to take place.
Music making is very much like film making. It's not just one way of doing it, there are a variety of ways and they combine and overlap. Of course, not every aspect of the creative process is satisfying, but who genuinely loves tuning their guitar, I mean the actual act ? Or changing strings ?
When I think of all the people that have contributed to my recordings over the years, it would have been impossible to get them in the same place at the same time, rehearse them to a shared understanding and then record in a single take. Sometimes, it would have been impossible to get them all in the same country at the same time !
In this respect, I completely disagree with Marshall McLuhan that The Medium is the Message.
I think McLuhan was in need of several corrective slaps
for that ridiculous notion.
The irony is that in so many recording quarters, it has turned out to be held by so many of its practitioners, both digital and analog.
But I'm veering off topic.
That's hopelessly human, too. And so say all of us !
ha ha
