If you are an aspiring musician looking forward to building a career producing your creations, in all likelihood, you have already come across such a term as a DAW. In case you are still at the beginning phase of your exploration, it might not be obvious to you what the purpose of this software is and whether you really need it. This article will help you to understand it.
The industry of music production before DAWs
Producing music back then like in the 1960s or 1970s or before these decades until computer became a dominating part of the time was solely based on a group of people, working together and capturing the music in various ways such as for instance by recording it. Editing, chopping and other tasks were performed in an absolutely manual way which made it rather expensive. In addition to it, the whole process was rather dangerous for the records as there came the risk of ending up damaging the storage medium.
Since the 1980s, things changed a lot as it was the beginning of the domination of the software, although, it was still at its primitive stage and also crazy expensive. Fortunately, for us, at this century producing music turning our ideas in professional sounding tracks is much more easier and is even possible from the comfort of our bedroom. Certainly, our predecessors might have dreamed of having such an opportunity and we can utilise it to its full potential.
What is DAW?
So, I have been blabbering about DAW but the heck is a DAW though? DAW is a piece of software or computer application where you can record, edit and produce or compose a whole song or soundtrack. DAW is an abbreviation of ‘Digital Audio Production’.
Typical operations of DAWs are music editing and recording used for soundtracks, speech, radio, podcasts, television or any other purpose of sound editing or production. DAWs can come in many forms such as the ones residing on your home computer to any integrated standalone units and even to a complex set of various components controlled by a central processing unit or a computer in general.
Usually, these days DAWs are available in one central piece of software where all of your configurations are set and being used under one GUI ( Graphical User Interface ). With this people can easily create, edit, alter, mix, master and any other operations that the user want to perform, can be done via a DAW based on the DAW’s limitations and users computer.
Do you really need a DAW?
So, why would you need a DAW? If you are a seasonal musician or do a lot of live performances outside, you may think that let’s better leave it up to the producer. Honestly, at some point even you would want to have a luxury of producing music independently and irrespective of your amount of time spent on this, you certainly will keep one. So, this was for the live performer, and for the rest, ranging from the bedroom producers to professionals, occasional musicians who love to jam or experiment with sound, to composers and just everyone who want to produce music, needs a DAW. Just like anybody wants to work with film production needs or demand film editing software, any range of musicians needs this as well.