I've finally gotten around to installing and trying ohmstudio, which looks to be a very cool new (still in limited beta) collaborative music studio.
One way that I like to judge music software (often called a host, sequencer, or DAW ("digital audio workstation"*)) is its TTMS - time to make sound. There are two philosophies being put to the test here. One is that the primary purpose of music software is to make noise via loaded virtual instruments. The second is that easy things should be easy**. So what I do is try to load an instrument and play it using my keyboard and time how long it takes without using a manual.
Most are miserable failures, in my opinion. Keep in mind, though, that different people will have different work-flows and assumptions. I'm only expressing my own opinion here. (Were you expecting me to express yours?)
Speaking of miserable failures, the program that I feel does it best is Tracktion. It was developed under an understanding that while music has traditionally been done in the physical domain, music software is first of all software and it should work on the strengths of such instead of trying to pretend to be hardware. When you're working on a track, everything relevant to it is easy to see, flowing from left to right. Unfortunately Mackie bought it, developed it slightly, then left it to languish. It hasn't been updated since the start of 2008.
And so here I am trying something new.
Anyways, the TTMS of ohmstudio ain't bad. There were only two obstacles. One was that it comes with only a few plugins, effects and instruments are lumped together, and the Ohmies really like to use cryptic names. Apparently (and I'm not 100% sure about this) only one of them is an instrument. It took a while to load, likely because at the same time I was trying to get the program to find and list all the instruments I already have. It didn't like that. After a few minutes, I noticed there was an error window behind the program window. Meanwhile, "MiniMonsta:Melohman***" wasn't loading.
The error was a mysterious one. It would seem that one instrument was telling me to load a disc from the installation of a different one! NI's B4 wanted me to put the Kontakt disc #2 in the drive, or some such. No idea. Ignored it. Tried a few other more specific folders. Also didn't work.
But MiniMonsta:Melohman eventually did load. Twice. I must have gotten impatient and tried again. But it loaded. The second obstacle was finding whatever it was that let the MIDI from my keyboard route through the instrument. It's a little "ON" button. I only tried about three things until I found it.
Meanwhile, my attempt to have ohmstudio see my VST plugins was making it decidedly unhappy. It crashed. I loaded it again and it crashed again. A reboot solved the problem.
It's a start. I can make some noise.
NEXT: I try to record MIDI and write MIDI!
* I've never been fond of this term, for two reasons. One: it's another TLA****. Second: the term is also used for a physical computer that's been configured to run music software, so you end up with a DAW running on a DAW.
** I don't mind if difficult things are difficult as long as easy things are easy.
*** Incidentally, this is a very nice plugin and its inclusion is very generous! Thanks, Ohmies! (Note that it's not a full VST version that can run in other hosts.)
**** Three-letter acronym
No comments:
Post a Comment