{"id":23,"date":"2022-04-13T09:35:35","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T13:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/?page_id=23"},"modified":"2022-04-25T20:16:56","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T00:16:56","slug":"synthesizers-drum-machines-and-daws","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/synthesizers-drum-machines-and-daws\/","title":{"rendered":"Synthesizers, Drum Machines and DAWs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_80\" style=\"width: 412px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-80\" class=\"wp-image-80\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/files\/2022\/04\/tr707.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"402\" height=\"233\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-80\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is the Roland TR-707 drum machine, an example of hardware used by Daft Punk while producing their debut album (Roland)<\/p><\/div>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs encompass a wide variety of musical machines and tools that are used in production.\u00a0 We will specifically focus on synthesizers, drum machines, and arrangement software, and their role in the production of electronic dance music.\u00a0 To begin, it is important to realize the vast impact that these machines had on the culture of music production.\u00a0 Synthesizers allowed musicians to produce an incredible amount of different sounds through the use of a single machine.\u00a0 Furthermore, synthesizers, by the 1990s, had advanced far enough to be able to replicate the sound of acoustic instruments almost perfectly.\u00a0 This means that for an artist, they have an incredible amount of material to work with, and can do so with little to no studio space.\u00a0 To complement this, the use of drum machines allowed for an artist to create a looping pattern that lays down the background of a track.\u00a0 An artist can toy with the pattern of such drum machines, producing a variety of different rhythms very quickly.\u00a0 However, the piece of equipment that ties this all together is the DAW.\u00a0 Such software allows an artist to record, arrange, and mix all of the sounds that they just created.\u00a0 The more impressive feature however, is that a Digital Audio Workstations allows one to do so on a personal computer. The DAW Pro Tools, and its predecessor Sound Tools, paved the way for Daft Punk and other artists to arrange electronic music, by using analog machines to produce tracks that were ultimately arranged on computers (Mixdown Magazine, 2021).\u00a0 This ultimately leads to a shift in the culture of music production, as now a studio is not needed for an artist to produce high quality music.\u00a0 This factor leads to the possibility of small creative groups to become massively popular with a start in a bedroom, which is just what we hear with the duo Daft Punk.<\/span><\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_82\" style=\"width: 516px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-82\" class=\"wp-image-82\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/files\/2022\/04\/roland_mc202.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"506\" height=\"254\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-82\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pictured above is a Roland MC-202, an analog synthesizer and sequencer. Daft Punk used this analog device as input for Pro Tools, among other pieces of hardware (Vintage Synth Explorer).<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs encompass a wide variety of musical machines and tools that are used in production.\u00a0 We will specifically focus on synthesizers, drum machines, and arrangement software, and their role in the production of electronic dance music.\u00a0 To begin, it is important to realize the vast impact that these machines had on the culture of music production.\u00a0 Synthesizers allowed musicians to produce an incredible amount of different&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5592,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[211117],"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus122-sp22-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}