why would you not want maths? - a wonderful modulation source, in a rack of mainly granular and effects - I'd still want modulation sources and utilities no matter what I was doing with my rack
-- JimHowell1970
Agreed. There seems to be little point in tossing out one of the most versatile modulation sources ever made. It's sort of like saying you want a Moog Model 15...but NOT that Moog LPF (despite it being one of the main points of ANY Moog modular). I also don't see the point of the hate-on toward DAWs here. Yes, yes, I KNOW there's been a bunch of "the usual suspects" on YouTube yowling about "DAWless rigs" as of late, but as someone who started in this before anything vaguely resembling a DAW ever existed and who has gone through DAWless use both in the studio AND live and who went through several DAWs over a couple of decades-ish, lemme tell you...this trend is a load of #2s. Comparing my output done WITH Ableton against the work from before I settled on that...well, Ableton lets me work FAST, work EASILY, do things that a DAWless rig would find IMPOSSIBLE, and so on.
It's not the gear. Those who pin their musical failings on their gear are lying to themselves, as are those who think that having some "magic device" will be the express lane to SYNTHGODHOOD. All of that is 100% utter bunk. The fact is, if you're blaming some hardware issue for holding your work back, you only need to go and look in the mirror to see the REAL source of the problem!
One other point, also...people who try and sell you a concept like DAWless on YouTube are...well, the word "sell" is a key. YT is about clicks, about hardscrabble survival, and about self-marketing. I see nothing in that list there about concepts such as "art" or "self-expression". They'll toss out the latest trendy whateverthehell, then a few months later they'll shift their entire working paradigm in order to sell the latest concept that all of their competition is jumping on, because that's how you survive YouTube. But it's not how you do art. Just ask Chris Gaines...or rather, Garth Brooks, when he tried to pull something similar at the end of the 1990s by altering his modus operandi, believing that being "edgy" like Trent Reznor would rake in even MORE lovely ca$h. The result, however, was a CATASTROPHIC miscue that imploded and almost took his "regular" career down with it! DAWless is only the current "flavor of the month" on YT right now, and by summer, it'll be something else, with little to no consequences to the YouTubers pushing it (although there should be, just like Garth). Don't be fooled.