IS HARDWARE KILLING COMPUTER MUSIC?

There are some new ways to make music in town and they’re hard as nails. But do these new do- it-all hardware units have all the power of a desktop DAW, and will they make you rethink the way you make music? Time to go to the hard side…

It’s funny how things change, don’t you think? There was a time when music technology folk used to muse on whether software was going to replace hardware - like how could we ever hope to replace a studio with all its keyboards and racks, with a little laptop computer and a few bits of software? But we did. Not to the extent that studios disappeared, but a lot did, and most of us are happily making music at home or on the bus. Twenty or more years on from that original bit of musing, and now we are wondering if hardware can replace software – plus ça change and all that! It shows us how mainstream software has become in music production – it’s the default position for any studio. That dominance alone would be more than enough to drive some of the music making population to question it; we can be awkward creatures. The hardware comeback has happened across the 2000s. For a while, studio hardware was unwanted, it was easy to pick up perfectly functional rack gear and hardware synths on auction websites, in the same way that the previous generation of electronic artists built their sounds on drum machines and primitive synths that were considered failures. The rise of interest in modular synthesis was a factor as well, attracting a market who were arguably equally interested in their rack systems as train set substitutes than as musical instruments. A large proportion of music hardware is about nostalgia, looking backwards to simpler times, but fortunately there are designers out there who are pushing forward, often cleverly keeping a foot in the retro camp as well – Akai and Teenage Engineering, are just two examples of this. Now we have the option of using hardware that isn’t just an additional noise maker – we can create entire arrangements without having to leave the lovely tactile hardware interface. In this feature we want to answer the big questions – what hardware is around that’ll let us create a full production without a computer (but will integrate with a computer if needed)? Can we use it live as well? And how easy is it to get a good result? And will it kill software…? Over the next 18 pages we’re lining up four of the new big hardware DAW contenders to answer all of those questions, and a lot more besides. This feature may well change your music making life – and put this magazine out of business [never! - Ed]!