What is meant by *live performance* and *composing* in a DAW?

[LetItGrowTone]

Please excuse my total ignorance!

I guess the several people who used this expression in another thread meant *recording* a live performance: multiple mics and/or DIs are used to feed each instrument into a separate track. The DAW is used to record that, and editing can be done later.

More intriguing is what is meant by "composing".
Does it mean more than "recording something I have composed"?
I play some notes I want next, and record, appending each time?
Seems like writing on paper keeps a better record.
I can imagine various things. Could you tell me about it?

 

[Tosh]

My first "composition" was hand written on staff paper (more like scratched and scraped on paper). It took me a week to write all 4 parts to a 3 minute song.

When I tried it using a computer, I entered "notes" into "tracks" to create "sequences" , using the computer keyboard. Required much less time! Later I added a MIDI keyboard to the PC, and the flow improved.

Each process is what I would consider "composing".

My last composition was "assembled" by recording a single live improvisational audio track along with a rhythm track, then laying in more tracks in MIDI, then re-recording the audio sections I liked from the first improv track, adding notes, removing notes, clipping, snipping, etc. until it's done.

I don't have those compositions I wrote on paper anymore, but I have saved everything I ever did using a computer, and if the song was done using MIDI I can print out sheet music or simple chord charts if I need to

 

[AGCurry]

In my experience, a DAW is not the ideal tool for composing or arranging. Assuming you can read music, music-notation software like Finale or Sebelius works much better. Moreover, if you wish to use any of the synthesized "tracks" in a DAW, you can simply export them into the DAW.

 

[seamonkey]

Presonus Studio One and Notion work hand in hand
Studio one also has a chord analyzer to get you started if a keyboard or guitar just give you a track and you want to know the chords. Melodyn can convert the track to midi and allow you correct notes in the audio.
In the end you can have full sheet music, or cut sheets with very little manual editing, and all the recorded tracks.
IMHO both Finale and Sibelius are better high brow notation tools, but you can't be the integration Studio One and Notion have in the practical world.

 

[DirkP]

Many DAWs today offer possibilities of Arrangers and Samplers of the past. Like you can simply dial in a chord progression, work with loops, can analyse the chords and notes of a given piece and change them to your liking while always hearing the direct result of what you're doing. Hard to describe. I work mostly with hardware like an Akai MPC live but DAWs like Logic or Ableton offer the same or even more possibilities. It has changed the way tracks and songs are created in a radical way. It seems to me that you aren't even aware of all the possibilities that came with MIDI decades ago and are part of every DAW now, but with much more possibilities.

"recording something I have composed"?

yes. far far more and since a long long time.
You can edit every single note, shift it or replace it and hear the result immediately. You can simply change a chord within your composition without re-recording it.
Simply get a DAW and play with it! Then you know...

 

[LBS-bass]

It depends on how you work best. I use software instruments to play music, and I record it directly into the DAW. I usually start with a piano track and craft a set of chords that I like, then maybe add a drum program, add a bass track, etc. Once I have the "bones" of a composition I can decide what else it needs, and hire musicians accordingly to flesh it out and give it live feel, because they are not using software instruments but are recording audio tracks with their traditional instruments and they play better than I do. Usually I get a piano player to replace my original chord tracks, and I can give him a score or a chord chart based on that track; Logic will print out a score but I have to do the chord charts by hand.

"Live recording" just means you're running mics or direct inputs into several channels and recording a live performance. My band used to do that (before COVID) and we got some good recordings that way. But we were running into a digital board that had recording capacity; it wasn't a computer but it captured files that you can edit in the computer (DAW) later on.

 

[LBS-bass]

Many DAWs today offer possibilities of Arrangers and Samplers of the past. Like you can simply dial in a chord progression, work with loops, can analyse the chords and notes of a given piece and change them to your liking while always hearing the direct result of what you're doing. Hard to describe. I work mostly with hardware like an Akai MPC live but DAWs like Logic or Ableton offer the same or even more possibilities. It has changed the way tracks and songs are created in a radical way. It seems to me that you aren't even aware of all the possibilities that came with MIDI decades ago and are part of every DAW now, but with much more possibilities.

"recording something I have composed"?

yes. far far more and since a long long time.
You can edit every single note, shift it or replace it and hear the result immediately. You can simply change a chord within your composition without re-recording it.
Simply get a DAW and play with it! Then you know...

And also, what he said. MIDI software instruments give you a lot of flexibility and you can edit endlessly.

 

[Frank Tuesday]

Composing could be done any number of ways. You could record individual tracks and keep rerecording with new/different notes until you are done. You could use MIDI, and just keep changing the individual midi channels until you are happy. you could do a combination of "live" and midi.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

Yes, @DirkP, that's the state of my knowlege at the moment.

Thanks everybody. I'll Google on the verbiage you've used, try to select a DAW, and then watch tutorial videos.

 

[LBS-bass]

Yes, @DirkP, that's the state of my knowlege at the moment.

Thanks everybody. I'll Google on the verbiage you've used, try to select a DAW, and then watch tutorial videos.

It's pretty fun, and you can combine a lot of techniques do to all sorts of things. The song I'm working on now has drum and percussion samples dropping in and out, along with more traditional instrumentation. I once wrote a song around a loop of a mistake I edited out of someone's guitar track. You just never know what might inspire you. Have fun!

 

[fishdreams]

Composing historically speaking, as in the 'analogue years' never was confined to pencil and paper. The centuries-old practice of improvising is a form of composing-in-the-moment. The post WWII Musique Concrete compositional practice took tape recordings (of 'found sound' for example) and cut them into pieces and glued them back together into a composition. DAWs are great tools for those practices.

 

[JRA]

the previous posters have covered the subject, IMO, but here's a paraphrase that describes an 'average' workflow for some of my typical work:

i compose on a piano, but with a DAW = i can compose a bar, or a few bars, or a section and then record that work into the DAW. i continue to compose and record until i have a tune or a sketch of a tune. my piano is represented in the DAW by midi. once those notes are in the DAW i can change them from piano notes to horn section notes, or bass notes, synth notes, whatever. i can use samples/loops in the DAW to help my 'demo'/composition sound more like 'live tracks' if i want. any part of my composition that was recorded into the DAW via midi can be exported to my music notation software and i can give a printed manuscript copy to other musicians who can then re-record those parts with real instruments, live --- into the DAW, thus replacing or adding to the midi parts i had originally composed on my piano. some of those other musicians come to my place to record (pre covid!) and some record at their place using backing tracks i have made from my composition. either way: when i get all of the tracks i need = i assemble them into the DAW, make edits (if necessary), and mix my tune to a satisfactory demo or final version. i have composed, recorded, edited, mixed, and mastered an original tune!

i don't know whether my post adds to your confusion or your understanding, but i wish you good luck with your efforts!


i use pro tools and/or reaper as my DAW, and i use sibelius for music notation.

 

[oren]

Much of modern popular music is “composed” by creating, arranging, and stacking repeated short snippets called loops, assembling them on a timeline. That’s the workflow that one popular DAW, Ableton Live, was originally built to support, and all of the DAWs have extensive loop libraries and facilities to support working with them in various creative ways.

The loops themselves can be created from audio material you record, midi bits entered on a keyboard or an editor, or from sampled sounds. The DAWS have all sorts of features for editing and manipulating these bits of sound.

The ability to manipulate sound digitally in these new ways has had long lasting and profound impacts on music in the last couple of decades, and I have yet to see the history or analysis of it that is probably deserved.

 

[LBS-bass]

We should have a home recording club here at TB. Do we?

 

[JRA]

We should have a home recording club here at TB. Do we?

well, we have a number of threads (and a few clubs, i think) dedicated to member's original music. when those threads crop up on the first few pages of "recent posts" i always take a listen just to see what others are doing with their music/creativity. there are a bunch of talented, thoughtful creators here (including yourself, of course!). i'm sorry that the names of some of those threads escape me ATM or i'd provide links. there have been several that have cropped up since the plague, e.g., "show us what you're doing/creating at home" threads.

but a recording club, per se, is a great idea....madame president!

 

[LBS-bass]

well, we have a number of threads (and a few clubs, i think) dedicated to member's original music. when those threads crop up on the first few pages of "recent posts" i always take a listen just to see what others are doing with their music/creativity. there are a bunch of talented, thoughtful creators here (including yourself, of course!). i'm sorry that the names of some of those threads escape me ATM or i'd provide links. there have been several that have cropped up since the plague, e.g., "show us what you're doing/creating at home" threads.

but a recording club, per se, is a great idea....madame president!

I think a club could get more in-depth about using the technology and helping others, whereas a thread for the music is more like "hey, look what I just did!" Which is great, because we all want to have our music heard by others, but maybe a place to talk about how we did it would be good.

I'm not good at starting things (except maybe trouble) but if anyone else would like to start a club, I will join it.

 

[JRA]

I'm not good at starting things (except maybe trouble)

right there with you on that "trouble" thing!

 

[LetItGrowTone]

...a club could get more in-depth...

Could be too broad for one club-thread (the minutia-traffic might clog).
If someone asked for a subforum, I wonder what the management would say?

 

[LBS-bass]

Could be too broad for one club-thread (the minutia-traffic might clog).
If someone asked for a subforum, I wonder what the management would say?

The forum this thread is in kind of works for that. It's broad, as it includes all sorts of recording, and it's focused on gear rather than technique, but I'm not sure if we'd need two subforums for recording.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

A club title should be chosen with some foresight, which I don't have.

At *this moment* in my learning about these things I would like to see more "my home recording workflow" posts just like those above, and follow-up questions about them.

Each DAW has support groups elsewhere, many extremely well-developed. I think the "which DAW should I use" threads here are already well-packed with info. And hardware is already well covered.

I would have to seek advice about the responsibilities of running a club before I could volunteer.

@LBS-bass, yes I agree with your previous post.