That's a pretty useful distinction, yeah.

Yes, useful distinction and great start to, well, not a new beginning, but in this case a new "end". lol
 
And yes, the expense of outboard gear was 5 times that of today, at least, and IF you went the cheapest route, simply because there was no knock-offs etc., every thing was pro .. you were either in the game or not.
A single compressor could be an easy $1500 ... and don't even consider a pre-amp for it. lol
 
A little perspective...
My first trip into a studio was 1982, and it was close to $700 per hour for one engineer-in-training, (you better have your chit together before), and that price was to reuse a worn out 16 track master tape.
Anyone who has properly set up mics on a drum kit can tell you how long setup can be, tuning or not. lol
If you wanted to keep the masters, it would double that amount for a chunk of that same worn-out master.
The good news is the cutting and splicing tape was included!
 
Not long before then I was tickled-pink when I found my first reel to reel, (2x4.. 2 tracks one way, 2 the other), for $400 slightly used ... the reels were about $40 each for the smallest.
My first "hi fi" component system was a Marantz 75watt per channel ... the receiver alone was $600... it was hot back then. lol
Most people played guitar ... never recorded it until blank cassettes dropped. lol
 
You worked to the bone to pay for the gear you had, and you knew it inside and out, every aspect and limitation well-explored until you could save to pitch-in for something else.
Working musician meant the opposite of what it does today lol.
 
Buy-in today seems nominal in comparison..... but I still have issues peeling off $100 bill for a "do it all" plugin set. lol
 
I think my resolution-by-thread this weekend will be to explore some of those oodles of plugins I have deeper! lol
 
On another note that strikes a major chord .... if I haven't said it yet, I think these forums are great, and the shared ideas and peeps here are even greater.
I thank you all!
 

This comes under the heading........ when is an artwork Finished. ?????
When I say it is!!!!!
Sometimes its under baked, sometimes it is stewed to death!
The artist has the choice now a days!
We have way too many tools and not enough time to develop our ideas fully, like they did in the old days.
Are the recording tools giving us too many options? or are the tools wasting our time?? Making us too removed from the Music side of things.
I see both sides, playing live and jamming free form help me keep it in perspective, I think. I hope!!!
 
 
 
 

John T
But opportunity is not cause, and we're all in charge of our own working practices.

 
If I change this a bit (for the purpose of broader applicability) to, "Opportunity is not cause.  We're all in charge of our own work ethic," how would you like the attribution to read?  Like this?
 
"Opportunity is not cause.  We're all in charge of our own work ethic." -- John T

mettelus
He did drop an interesting perspective on me which was basically, "compose everything BEFORE you track anything."

 
This is something I used to agree with, but less and less as I become more proficient with computer-based composition.
 
For me, music is all about inspiration and speed of capture. I might be messing around on guitar and come up with some chord progression I really like, or a melody line. It used to be I would capture that inspiration by fleshing out the song on guitar or keyboard, but now I turn on the computer and capture it.
 
During the composition process, I lay down tracks as fast as possible, with as little "thinking" as possible. (This is why I use SONAR; for whatever reason, it lets me stay in right brain mode more easily than other programs.) This process is mostly about getting notes and ideas down, I'm not concerned about tone, plug-ins, etc. (That approach is what inspired me to come up with the CA-X amps and Pedalboards - I wanted something I could drag 'n' drop and at least get close to what I wanted.)
 
After the composition process is done, then I start replacing tracks with the "real" ones where I do pay close attention to playing cleanly and getting good sounds. But the pressure is off to be inspired; I've already been inspired and captured it. The song has a direction and shape. At this point I'm more like a studio musician coming in and lending my expertise to a project.
 
Finally there's the mixing, and that's the part where yes, you can take forever doing little tweaks and such. But the mix develops in parallel with the track replacement stage, so when it comes time to stop replacing and start mixing, I'm most of the way there. But I would never attempt to develop a mix during the composition process. For me, that's the quickest way to kill inspiration.

As to the da Vinci quote, although I finish songs sometimes I re-visit them. That's slippery territory, but for example, there's a song on my YouTube channel that's a cover of Mark Longworth's "My Lucky Day." It has a lot fewer clicks than my other songs. I listened to it recently and thought I really hadn't done it justice...the guitars sounded kind of muffled, the bass part wasn't solid, the drums needed to be brought down a bit, and the vocal EQ needed work. I replaced the amp sims with CA-X amps and the bass part with the EB 5 expansion pack bass, brought down the drums a bit, and made the voice brighter. The song sounded sooooo much better. I'm going to re-post it, delete the old one, and see if it gets more clicks.
 
So while art can be abandoned, you can also run across it later and pick it back up again.
 

konradh
Maybe this is related and maybe not; but a lot of modern records sound huge and I think a lot of it is effects, layering parts several times, and other such tricks.  That said, early Beatles records with a 4-piece band and sometimes doubled voices sound "huger" than some of my 60-track songs. I think it was 1-musical arrangement, 2-superb vocal parts, 3-a great sounding studio space, and 4-engineers who knew how to select and place mics.  Some will say it is tape v digital and that may be a factor but I don't think it is the major reason.
 
Random thought: We used to tell people that a lot of things sound good but not everything sounds like a record.  I still test tracks that way.  I close my eyes and try to visualize a 45-rpm record turning while I listen.  I just finished a song last week and it was the first one in a long time that popped that image into my mind.  Sorry if I am getting too mysterious and Zen here.

Well, remember that The BEATLES played/worked like slaves in Hamburg. They would play 8+ hours a night, 6 and 7 days a week. They did that for over a year... SO, when it came time to record they could walk in and get it done right then, right there. Malcolm Gladwell put it well with the 10,000 hour rule. It takes it (the time and work) to get there. I will never have that much time or energy in this lifetime. There are musicians, and then there are MUSICIANS. There are bands and famous people, songwriters like Dylan or like Rich Mullins. Rich recorded his last album playing a piano and singing, in an abandoned church onto a cheap stereo cassette recorder. He died less that 2 weeks later, IIRC, in a car crash. His band and others got together and recorded the songs in the studio. The CD is a double, one CD is the recording of Rich in the abandoned Church, the other is the studio version and it is an incredible album. He absolutely got the songs recorded, though starkly and lo-fi, they are still good. It is The Jesus Album.
Then there are the people like The Wrecking Crew or The Atlanta Rhythm Section or The Memphis Horns. I got an up close look/listen at ARS as they developed. They were Roy Orbison's band and played on the side as The Candymen. They were and are the best band I have ever seen or heard. They would play The BOWL Teen Club in my hometown, Moultrie, GA. It was, of course a converted bowling alley. John Rainey Adkins on guitar (he is now in the Alabama Music HOF), he and his brother later played in Beeverteeth along with one of our own members here. Anyway, The Candymen would play the whole Sgt. Peppers album and Pet Sounds. They could perform both and sound exactly like the records, Good Vibrations... perfect. Besides Beeverteeth some of them left and started or joined the Classics IV, then they wound up in Atlanta as studio musicians, hence the name ARS. There was a god group in Macon at the Capricorn studio to, a good friend Al McDonald (RIP) was one of the guitarists.
These kind of musicians would never need a DAW except to mix and master because, well.. they just wouldn't need it. I'm sure it was the same with the Muscle Shoals studio musicians (Duane Allman was one of them for a time), The Wrecking Crew with it's stable of musicians... these kind of musicians just come in and play and the engineer mixes it and everyone goes home happy.
IDK, I guess I'm trying to say that a DAW can be a crutch for an accomplished. polished musician who is a master at the art, or it can be a tool if one is self controlled. On the other hand a DAW is a Godsend for someone like me who is a musician but not a MUSICIAN. I could always do a demo on a tape and get the general idea down but could never get it to sound anything approaching professional until just lately as computing power and the DAW became more powerful, faster, and affordable at the same time.
It is funny, I have been cleaning out a room and an attic space, going through boxes, throwing things out and getting out things I had forgotten about. I set aside a little booklet: "Recording to Hard disk" to look through when I went to bed last night. When I read this thread I thought it was really timely. It is from the 2000s, a Roland booklet and is pushing the BOSS BR-800 and another one, the BR-600 I think. It was comparing the pros and cons or the standalone BR to the ADAT recorders and making a big deal about the "virtual tracks", which were, I guess, a big deal. No DAW, just BR-800, MIDI sync, Computer, monitor.. etc. Now, if you remember, that was an EXPENSIVE setup. I still have a Cooper MIDI Sync unit if anyone is in need of one, LOL.
In any case, back then in order to run a DAW without mega headaches and get some pleasure out of it you had to have a LOT of money to invest or you may as well have just stayed with a Tascam or Fostex 4 or 8 track cassette recorder. I bought a Yamaha QY-70 sequencer. I am basically a singer/songwriter and can play electric guitar suitably well enough to fit in and I can play a little keys. I never could get a handle on the sequencer and finally sold it. MIDI, until recently has been a mystery to me. The new power and ease of Sonar and the affordable processing power have REALLY helped me to be able to do more than I could with a 4-track cassette.
So, a DAW for someone like me is a REAL help. I can see how it could sidetrack some more accomplished producer/engineer or musician though. This is an interesting thread and I'm glad it was started.
I cannot imagine what Jimi would be able to do with todays technology. He took what was available in his day and pushed it past it's ability.

Interesting thoughts, jbow.  Thanks for sharing them. 
 
Although I was trained on the classics on both piano and organ for many years and worked as a studio player for a long time, at heart I am a songwriter and that is not necessarily the same as being in a working band.  And although I played acoustic guitar on more tracks that I can count, due to hand injuries all my guitar parts are virtual these days.  (I do keep a Baby Taylor around for songwriting but won't play it in front of anyone!)
 
PS Isn't Rich Mullins the "Awesome God" guy?

Great thread, and it brings back a lot of memories.
My "hey-day" (after stopping playing/touring with a band after 14 years on the road) was in the early 90's to around 95 where I was most productive with only a master keyboard/synth, an AKAI sampler and initially a 286 Compaq, later a 386.  The tech has come a long way ... (good) ideas have become scarcer as I seem to be in "update" mode constantly !
Thanks Mettelus !

Some of us here are engineers. That's the beauty of the DAW. Engineering.
 
Some of us are here are musicians. That's the other beauty of the DAW. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in virtual gear (for a mere few thousand).
 
I know I need to keep those roles separate.
 
My take away from this thread is:
 
Anderton does what the OP's friend does. He gets the inspiration out first. That's the musician(composer). He does what the OP's friend does but using a different tool. Then Anderton becomes the "psuedo engineer/producer" directing himself (musician) to get a cleaner more tone/dynamic performance. Then Anderton really becomes the producer/engineer and finishes the song.
 
Nowhere in there did he get too bogged down because of the tool. And I suspect he either did at one time or still does own as many VST/VSTi products as I do.
 
For the most part I do that too. Sometime I write outside the DAW but eventually I have to see if what I'm working on make sense. Hence I record to the DAW. If it does make sense I move on else scrap it.
 
Collaborations are a completely different story. The DAW is the tool used to get the ideas across to the collaborators. In the virtual world a collab cannot happen easily without the DAW. I do far more collaborations than sole productions.