I would love to.
I used to have a nice sample/loop player that came with its own keyboard. On screen, you dragged your samples/loops onto a virtual keyboard, selected whether they were one-shot or looped and (if you wanted) hit [RECORD] / [OVERDUB] to record a session for mixdown. It was so much more intuitive than an on-screen piano-roll. When I wanted to rough out some ideas, I could just drag whatever sound sources I wanted about on the virtual keyboard and press the keys on the real thing until I had something I liked. And it meant I ended up doing things I’d never do on a piano-roll, like bring sounds in at times that weren’t rigidly patterned or quantised, because that was what sounded right, not what looked right. I got to like the immediacy so much that I ended up installing it on a second machine and going all Rick Wakeman, with two keyboards 😉
There was still the matter of getting it all set up on the piano-roll in my DAW afterwards, of course. And it was only good for audio samples/loops, not MIDI, and had no fx facility, so there was still work to be done afterwards. But it was quicker than trying to compose on a piano-roll: the arrangement was already decided and it was simply a matter of putting things in place rather than dragging them up/down a cent at a time, for hours on end, trying to find the right point in time to trigger them — it was much less laborious.
It’s the same as when DJing: I’ll happily mix on a laptop, but I can’t be doing with virtual interfaces … there have to be physical jogwheels, pitch-sliders, master tempo buttons, brake adjust, etc. and a physical mixer. I haven’t got time to waste on “Oh, shit, where in that waveform should I click the mouse to get hold of a breakpoint? Crap, I just missed it.” Nor for messing about mousing quickly between the EQ pots and the faders, when what I really need to do is twist and flick both simultaneously.
So, I’d love to have dedicated interfaces to the various sound generators and fx but:
- I couldn’t possibly afford them ¹
- I simply don’t have room for them
Also, there are physical limitations that the computer/software overcomes: I never run out of physical i/o ports, I never run out of channels and I don’t have MIDI note-stealing problems to contend with.
Then there’s the matter of replacement parts — if you’ve got any old PC66 SDRAM … or, better yet, EDO modules … hang on to them — sooner or later, someone like Mike Oldfield’s drummer is going to come to you and and beg you for them ².
Finally, there comes a point when the sounds outboard kit makes just doesn’t cut it any more. You’ve moved on and they don’t move you. A software based solution overcomes that eventuality. Admittedly, you still need to upgrade your kit once in a while (you aren’t gonna be using your VST3 plugins in a VST2 host) but:
- you’re gonna do that anyway
- it’s cheaper than trying to replace outboard gear.
There are a couple of clever solutions out there … including a pseudosynth a few years back: a physical host machine, running a dedicated OS that would host VSTi plugins and control them either onboard or from your DAW, via connected control interfaces. And a friend is exploring a couple of virtual rack solutions at the moment (including one that sends/receives MIDI and audio over a network). But, at the end of the day, the problem remains the same: they’d require dedicated interfaces for each instrument/fx module if I weren’t to end up cycling through them on a single display/controller setup.
What I really need is a way to get what I hear in my head into the real world without any intermediary steps. But I won’t be availing myself of Musk’s Neuralink, even should it become practicable in my lifetime — quite apart from the (literally) built-in obsolescence … it lends a whole new dimension to the concept of viral infection, so I wouldn’t be able to countenance ‘jacking’ in to anything anyway.
Nope … I’m just gonna have to buy a whole load more laptops, a whole load more monitors, a whole load more keyboards/controllers and a whole load more (sub)mixers.
One day *sigh*
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¹ When I work, I can earn ridiculous amount but I live frugally, remember … so that I don’t have to work often and can, instead, dedicate my time to other pursuits. If all I wanted to do were work, I could be stupidly well off and buy whatever I wanted. But then I’d have no time to play with any of it … so, I don’t, I live frugally instead (I have lots of spare time though 😀).
² True story.
