Blockhead DAW

[Bes]

this is a very interesting project that i hope someone at reason hears about

[Aosta]

It is interesting indeed, I really like some of the concepts

[Loque]

Main focus seem to be sketching ideas. Would have been nice to see him doing this instead of only feature show cases.

[bossa]

Yes, an interesting approach! I could have used this kind of DAW a few weeks ago when I was faced with the problem of getting a piece I had recorded without a click track into a sensible tempo to convert it to conventional notation!

[Aosta]

Main focus seem to be sketching ideas. Would have been nice to see him doing this instead of only feature show cases.

He did say that it was just a video to quickly show it's capabilities and not a tutorial but yes I too would love to see a more in depth look because it did jump around quite a bit.

[Jackjackdaw]

I only got a few minutes in but considering that both the DAWs I use have an audio warp feature that you can apply to music not recorded to the click, this dude maybe could have spent some time learning how DAWs work before deciding he needed to build one from scratch

[guitfnky]

that was kind of my thought too. the way you can sort of use it to create a grid easily looked like it could be cool, although I don't really have a good appreciation for what it's actually doing...but ultimately, if you don't want to align to a grid, well, you can already do that in every DAW just by ignoring the grid. like you say, almost any DAW you use will allow you to conform audio to a grid later on, or in many cases, conform the grid to your performance.

some interesting ideas here, for sure, but also a bit of a solution in search of a problem, from what I can tell.

[Bes]

i'm not a patron of this dev and i've not ever used the program. but i remember in one of the superbooth videos this year, Mattias was asking folks what they wanted to see in an updated sequencer. some of the ideas in this video are pretty fresh, too fresh for reason tho

[selig]

Yes, an interesting approach! I could have used this kind of DAW a few weeks ago when I was faced with the problem of getting a piece I had recorded without a click track into a sensible tempo to convert it to conventional notation!

Folks have been doing exactly that for decades now on other DAWs. Pro Tools, for example, does this well and I’ve used it for converting free form piano performances to notation when scoring orchestral parts for ‘real’ players who need sheet music.

That said, I endorse any attempt at ‘re-imagining’ of our current toolset!

[DaveyG]

I only got about half way through the vid. He was all over the place and utterly failed to get across his USP. Sadly, I think his DAW will never see the light of day but maybe his ideas will find a different way to reach the world.

[Bes]

it's certainly not one of Ryans explainers. maybe i could summarise the main points of a video when i share

[deigm]

or in many cases, conform the grid to your performance.

Can reason do that? If not, what can?

[guitfnky]

or in many cases, conform the grid to your performance.

Can reason do that? If not, what can?

yes—that’s what I alluded to. just about every DAW let’s you do that in one way or another, already.

[deigm]

Can reason do that? If not, what can?

yes—that’s what I alluded to. just about every DAW let’s you do that in one way or another, already.

How is this done in reason? I'd love to learn a new trick.

[Jackjackdaw]

This video sold me on Reason. It’s kind of sad, Propellerhead we’re so outward looking at the time. Alihoopa, iOS apps etc. It all felt fresh. Then the Reason Studios manoeuvre pulled down the shutters on all that and gave us a subscription model and some bare minimum under the hood updates and tried to gaslight us into thinking this was better because of focus blah blah.

[deigm]

This video sold me on Reason.

Awesome video. Thank you for sharing!

[Quarmat]

This video sold me on Reason. It’s kind of sad, Propellerhead we’re so outward looking at the time. Alihoopa, iOS apps etc. It all felt fresh. Then the Reason Studios manoeuvre pulled down the shutters on all that and gave us a subscription model and some bare minimum under the hood updates and tried to gaslight us into thinking this was better because of focus blah blah.

As great as Allihoopa, Discover, apps were, these things cost a lot of money, personnel and resource allocation. Times change and Propellerheads probably could have become the Valve Steam of music production, but maybe there weren't enough users, enough money or maybe the right time had passed or was yet to come. As much as I miss the old logo, the old name, which I grew up with (musically and personally), what matters to me is that Reason (which for me remains the DAW and its REs) lives on. Partly because I've invested thousands of € in it and partly because when I launched Reason 1.0 I was a teenager and now I'm a father and these 20+ years of music are a non-alienable part of me. I have no desire to learn a new DAW as long as Reason allows me to do what I want and for now that's how it is. Blockhead's features are great and I'd love to have the 'manipulators' in Reason, but every DAW has its strengths and Reason's (discussed elsewhere here and many times) are the ones I still don't deisder another DAW for.

Time for a "Shut the fuck up and use the software. It's great." and I'll also add my other favourite: "If you cant make a banger with redrum, subtractor and malstrom, then you can't make a banger at all".

[Jackjackdaw]

I don’t really care, but my perspective is a bit different because it was the point where they were doing all that stuff that I decided that I wanted to buy into the platform. I was buying Into the idea of an interconnected mobile app with Compact and the social sharing aspect. Those things contributed to my choosing Reason so when they shut it all down I felt a bit short changed.

[selig]

This video sold me on Reason. It’s kind of sad, Propellerhead we’re so outward looking at the time. Alihoopa, iOS apps etc. It all felt fresh. Then the Reason Studios manoeuvre pulled down the shutters on all that and gave us a subscription model and some bare minimum under the hood updates and tried to gaslight us into thinking this was better because of focus blah blah.

This example is the opposite, it is conforming the audio to the grid, not the grid to the audio. Fun fact - that song WAS recorded to a tempo and if Ryan had used 55 BPM (the actual original tempo) instead of 56 BPM it would have been obvious. Another fun fact/tip: don’t assume the first beat is in time, look a few bars into the song to see where tempo settles into time. Interestingly this can also apply to syncing devices where the first beat can be off if you don’t leave an empty bar for things to get synced up solid (the first beat will often be off in these cases because the second machine has to wait for the first machine to start, which will delay the first beat in many cases).
See my video response explaining it here:

Unfortunately Reason doesn’t have any process that makes this “automatic” in any way, so you’ll be working through the song one beat at a time. My process for this is to record myself “conducting” the song best I can, following tempo changes loosely and recording a single MIDI note tapped out while the original part plays. Then I edit the notes to be as precise as possible, convert that track to audio (using any short ‘click’ like sound/sample with a clear attack). Finally I disable stretch for the audio track so that it will NOT move under any circumstance since this will be our main ‘guide’ for tempo.

From there it’s just a process of adjusting tempo for each beat such that the tempo map lines up to the audio I created previously. The only ‘rule’ here is that you must work left to right because if you go back and adjust any earlier automation point you will move all automation points later in the time line (that’s how tempo works!). Hopefully this makes sense..

[joeyluck]

Logic's Smart Tempo is really great for working without a defined tempo.