Anecdote for those who say that you can't make good music with free software
Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 7:42 pm
Back in the 80s, digital stuff was pretty rough and very costly.
The Fairlight CMI sampler and DAW was used on many popular songs, such as Shout by Tears for Fears, the Miami Vice theme by Jan Hammer and The Art of Noise's Moments in Love. The Series II model, famous for its presets (such as the orchestral hit), cost £30,000 and had 8 bit samples and a 32kHz sample rate. Most free DAWs you can find in the repositories of your distro of choice are better than that. Even the ancient looking ones which use XMotif and OSS, probably
And what about digital synths? Compare the famous Korg M1 (price tag £1,499) and ZynAddSubFX. Which one is more versatile? I think nobody can say the Korg M1, but still many musicians from Queen to the Pet Shop Boys to Joe Zawinul used it, because at the time it was good.
And do we really want to compare the LinnDrum ($2,995, used on A-ha's Take on me and Queen's Radio Ga Ga) with its 8 bit drum samples and no MIDI support with DrumGizmo? I don't think so
One might say, well, we are not in the 80s and now technology has moved on, there are things like Melodyne which do not have any real free alternatives and are used pretty much everywhere. To that, I would say, do you really need them to make good music? Back then they did not exist, and yet people managed to make real masterpieces somehow. But that's not the point; what I want to say is that today we can get something for free (as in freedom and as in beer, in most cases) which is better than what cost as much as a house not that long ago, and we should be grateful for it.
I am using hyperbole, but I hope you get the point. I posted this because I just found a thread on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... native_to/) in which someone shared a great free program, Guitarix, and then in the comments almost everyone started criticizing it. This kind of behavior is what scares developers away from releasing free software - it's OK to criticize a program and to inform potential users about its shortcomings, but it'd be better to share these concerns on the bug trackers, or donate some money so that the devs can fix those issues. A program like Guitarix is probably already as good as the digital effect pedals that were used to make pretty popular songs back in the days, it's important to be grateful for what the program is rather than angry at what the program is not (yet).
The Fairlight CMI sampler and DAW was used on many popular songs, such as Shout by Tears for Fears, the Miami Vice theme by Jan Hammer and The Art of Noise's Moments in Love. The Series II model, famous for its presets (such as the orchestral hit), cost £30,000 and had 8 bit samples and a 32kHz sample rate. Most free DAWs you can find in the repositories of your distro of choice are better than that. Even the ancient looking ones which use XMotif and OSS, probably
And what about digital synths? Compare the famous Korg M1 (price tag £1,499) and ZynAddSubFX. Which one is more versatile? I think nobody can say the Korg M1, but still many musicians from Queen to the Pet Shop Boys to Joe Zawinul used it, because at the time it was good.
And do we really want to compare the LinnDrum ($2,995, used on A-ha's Take on me and Queen's Radio Ga Ga) with its 8 bit drum samples and no MIDI support with DrumGizmo? I don't think so
One might say, well, we are not in the 80s and now technology has moved on, there are things like Melodyne which do not have any real free alternatives and are used pretty much everywhere. To that, I would say, do you really need them to make good music? Back then they did not exist, and yet people managed to make real masterpieces somehow. But that's not the point; what I want to say is that today we can get something for free (as in freedom and as in beer, in most cases) which is better than what cost as much as a house not that long ago, and we should be grateful for it.
I am using hyperbole, but I hope you get the point. I posted this because I just found a thread on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... native_to/) in which someone shared a great free program, Guitarix, and then in the comments almost everyone started criticizing it. This kind of behavior is what scares developers away from releasing free software - it's OK to criticize a program and to inform potential users about its shortcomings, but it'd be better to share these concerns on the bug trackers, or donate some money so that the devs can fix those issues. A program like Guitarix is probably already as good as the digital effect pedals that were used to make pretty popular songs back in the days, it's important to be grateful for what the program is rather than angry at what the program is not (yet).