This jam was long enough that I needed to lower the bitrate in order to upload it to Tumblr. So if I would recommend watching the video if you can, if only because of slightly better sound quality.
I got a Zoom G4 effects pedal for my birthday this year so I could run something through a pedal that can have multiple layers of reverb and delay... but instead of trying to figure out how to run everything through it right then, I decided to run a simple test first. So I installed Valhalla’s Supermassive plugin on the streaming laptop, and had OBS add it into the recording flow. I could run the mixer into the effects pedal, and then have that go directly into the camera or the computer that I was using to record with, but that would have required a lot of re-wiring of stuff in my setup, and this was a ‘hey, I’ve got a couple minutes to sit down and jam’ sort of spontaneous jam.
Of course, immediately after I posted the video on a Facebook group, someone snottily told me that since I mentioned a computer and a plugin, then I clearly wasn’t doing a REAL Dawless jam.
Which is kinda confusing, since there is no DAW installed on that computer.
... so for those who don’t know what that means, DAW stands for ‘Digital Audio Workstation’. E.g., what a lot of people use to do modern electronic music. It’s something that lets them edit sound and MIDI on a computer. It’s what I used for decades before I finally got my studio setup and could just play live synths. Obviously there are advantages to both types of setup, and a lot of electronic musicians use both. Lately there’s been a push for getting away from the computer, so a lot of people will get real snobby about using ‘real’ hardware vs. a computer. But that’s not why I got into doing Dawless. I got into it because I started as a string player, and I’m used to making music with a more hands-on approach, something that requires me to be able to reach out and actually touch the instruments that I use. I don’t give a shit if I’ve got vintage 70s sawtooth oscillators or a good digital imitation, as long as I can make music with my hands.
And there are plenty of other people like me. I don’t care about the purity of hardware or whatever bullshit. I just want to make music. And even among the people who want to get away from the computer for the sake of ‘purity’ or whatever the (*&% else reason they have, there are also going to be plenty of us who just can’t afford to get everything we need without adding in some post-processing after the jam itself. In this case, all I did was add a plugin to the recording software. In other people’s cases, they might just want to bring the audio into a DAW AFTER the jam is done to tweak the EQ and add in effects that they don’t have access to live.
How has nobody told me that valhalla supermassive is free until today??? Like its exactly what I've been looking for for months. I've been chasing that ethereal clean tone and I would have never gotten it if it weren't for some YouTube advertising a free reaper template with valhalla in the front.
