What is DAW

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Is a DAW an alternative for the old methodology of music production wherein "in a studio there lie a line of violinists, guitarists, keyboardists and drummers who perform on the instructions of the composer and a singer sings inside the glass room"?
As I am new to DAW, could anyone explain the actual usefulness of the DAW?
 

SeaGtGruff

I meant to play that note!
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In today's parlance, a DAW ("Digital Audio Workstation") is a computer program that's used to record, mix, and produce music, but I think the term originally referred to a physical workstation for working with digital audio (as opposed to analog audio).

Modern DAW software generally combines several types of functions-- recording and editing audio tracks, recording and editing MIDI tracks, transmitting MIDI data sequences to external devices to control them, playing virtual instruments, hosting third-party plugins, applying effects to audio and MIDI tracks, processing tracks in various ways (such as compression, filtering, and equalization), balancing the relative volumes and stereo panning of the tracks, and of course mixing everything down to a finished audio file.

Although a DAW can take the place of a recording studio, it doesn't necessarily do so. Rather, a DAW is frequently used in a recording studio along with more traditional audio devices and procedures. For instance, if you're recording a song then you'll still need someone to sing into a microphone, and you'll probably want them to be in a sound booth, or at least in a room with good acoustics and sound-proofing to keep out unwanted background noises. If you're a musician then you'll probably still want to play your physical instrument-- guitar, piano, violin, drums, or whatever-- and record the audio in the DAW. You might need a mixer to balance and mix audio coming from several different sources before you transmit it to the DAW for recoding. But if you don't have any physical instruments then you could use a DAW's virtual instruments, composing and performing an orchestral arrangement using just the computer, DAW, and any third-party plugins.
 

SeaGtGruff

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Another couple of suggestions:

(1) Think about joining a forum that's dedicated to music recording. This forum is dedicated to keyboards, so the members here are people who want to talk about keyboards, and discussions about things like DAWs, mixers, etc., are secondary. A forum dedicated to music recording will have members who want to talk about recording, so there will be more people there who can talk about things like DAWs, mixers, audio interfaces, etc., and discussions about keyboards will be secondary. I'm a member of the forum at HomeRecording.com myself, although I'm not as active there as I am on the various keyboard-related forums that I belong to.

(2) Check some of the online learning sites to see if there are any courses available on music recording. Many of them offer classes from a number of participating colleges and universities which will let you either audit a class for free (in which case you won't earn any college credit for completing the course) or pay for the class (in which case you do earn credit for successfully completing the course). The course content is the same either way, so you can take free classes for your own personal enrichment. I started out doing this at Coursera.com with a free introductory course in how to use Ableton Live, given by Berklee College of Music, and after that I went on to take a course in music production (also given by Berklee) and a few programming courses. At the moment I'm taking an introductory course in music theory given by The University of Edinburgh. When you audit a course for free, there's no pressure on you to earn a particular grade-- or even to complete the course at all (I've actually had to drop out of several courses partway through due to Real Life Circumstances that got in my way). I can definitely recommend the two classes that I took from Berklee-- Introduction to Ableton Live and The Technology of Music Production. The course in Ableton Live might not appeal to you if you aren't interested in that particular DAW, but as I recall the course in music production lets you use any DAW and it discusses some of the very things you've been asking about. :)
 
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Yesterday or the day before that traction 5 stopped opening up. i have no clue what happened and it seems to be the only software on my pc not working. I have tried contacting them twice. They dont respond yet. Redownloading did not help and uninstalling and reinstalling does not help. Back to audacity i guess for me and hello and good weekends to you all. :)
 

happyrat1

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Things like this are the reason why I image my hard drives once every month or two.

Gary ;)
 

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