An old iteration of my rig, "the terminal". Some aspects have changed while others haven't. Whenever I make a change I have to "re-synth" the old songs; they never sound the same but I think that's kind of cool.

Hello friends. Welcome back for part 3 of A Dawless Perspective, a series in which we're exploring a different way to make electronic music.

Today we're going to get a bit philosophical; after all what is art without a little philosophy.

This philosophy has to do with how constraints (aka limitations) affect our musical output. There are examples of these constraints all throughout history where a musician's environment directly affected their music, something we don't really have to think about in our world of DAW-based production. What I think is extra interesting is that as dawless musicians we're engineering our own systems of constraints; our self-created sonic infrastructure is an act of art just as much as the notes we play.

I realize I'm getting a bit ahead of mys...

[ vt100's dawless synthesizer rig during a live performance ]

Welcome to Spaceship Design 101

Hello friends, welcome back. Recently I shared with you an article where we began to explore an unconventional style of electronic music production, dawless electronic music. In this style the music producer is focused on creating electronic music with music hardware exclusively, in real-time, at least for the purposes of composing and performing their music. This style is really not practical if I'm being honest, but it sure is fun. If you missed it, check out part 1 to learn more about the roots of dawless and why I find this artform so compelling.

When it comes to dawless electronic music production, the musician has quite a bit to think about and a seemingly infinite number of choices to make. Every step of the way is going to be unique and custom tailored to the musician by the musician themself. The musician is going to design a rig that has certain sound and control characteristics...

[ Dawless Electronic Music Hardware Setup Studio Synthesizers Mixer ]

What if you built yourself a spaceship…
and that spaceship just happened to play music?

Friends, I’d like to share with you my perspective on electronic music production; a dawless perspective. If you’ve been around a while making music, you know opinions on electronic music production are everywhere; there’s easily your pick of producers out there who will shed their light on your efficiency/sound/composition/whatever. You could stage dive right now (the stage is in your mind) and you’d hit at least 15 producers who’ve got advice for you no matter what DAW (aka music software) you use.

I’m not that producer. In fact, the way I go about making electronic music is not guaranteed to yield the “best” results. My style is also not the cheapest nor is it the most efficient. This style is full of limitations. I might even go as far as arguing that my style is… uh… complicated.

The secret is in the cables.
I have

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