Again, I have Ableton. It's great software (for audio-engineer-inclined people).
Whether the people that made Ableton are musicians or not, or whether you're a musician, or not, is all irrelevant. They made software that is a thin layer over the literal functions of the machine because that's how all DAWs are made. "Don't fix what ain't broke." It's a great way to run a business. You learned their way of working, either from the software itself, or from other DAWs, and you like it. Great! Literally every musician for the past 2 decades has come to work with these DAWs, so it's not like working in a format for audio engineers is incompatible with being a musician. I'm quite certain it helps, actually.
But, again, none of that speaks to the complexity of using the software as someone who doesn't know anything about DAWs or modern audio software. I know a guy who can play the guitar beautifully; yet he can't figure out Ableton. I've sat him down multiple times and showed him some really cool stuff that he really liked, but he has never once not called me when he tried to use the software. Some people just aren't built like that. He is thinking about music in one form, and the computer wants him to formalize it in some different form. And he just can't or won't make the bridge.
And you may say: "well, fuck him; he should learn Ableton or be doomed to live without its benefits". More power to you. But I just wish there were something ELSE that would speak to him in his language.
I think the deeper process here is this: if you're a musician and you start using a DAW, pretty soon you'll be an engineer, whether you intended to be or not.
In the days before DAWs, the role of musician and engineer were both critical for recorded music, but also mostly distinct. DAWs have changed that fundamentally because there's very little capital outlay required for the engineer's tools these days.
We've seen this over the years in Ardour. A musician wants a big red button and an application that will find their device signal all by itself. Two weeks later they want to use an EQ. Two months later they want to be to arrange whole sections. Two years later, and they don't like the pan power law and have some criticisms of the automation interpolation.
> I think the deeper process here is this: if you're a musician and you start using a DAW, pretty soon you'll be an engineer, whether you intended to be or not.
There's a bunch of stuff like that happening in that industry as the equipment evolves. I've been doing software/networking/hardware for coming up on 30 years now. My wife's been doing mostly live audio/production with some recording for about the same amount of time. Starting about 10 years ago she had to start learning about networking. It started simple with things like setting up routers/WiFi access points for controlling consoles with iPads. Now with AES-67 she's had to learn a whole bunch about RTP, PTP, QoS, VLANs, DHCP, subnetting, etc. It's working out well for her, she's incredibly sharp and many of her peers come to her for advice/consultation when things aren't working right, but it was definitely not something she expected to need to learn. When everyone's stumped they give me a call... I don't know much at all about the audio side of it but a little bit of Wireshark can usually explain what's broken in their systems.
You told a guy complaining that DAWs are too complicated that he should stop being a musician, and now you're telling him to use a tape machine. The entire point was that a program that's a drop-in replacement for a tape machine (or even simpler pieces of equipment) should exist, because it's not that complicated of a concept (even if you can make it complicated by nitpicking details of the execution).
Whether the people that made Ableton are musicians or not, or whether you're a musician, or not, is all irrelevant. They made software that is a thin layer over the literal functions of the machine because that's how all DAWs are made. "Don't fix what ain't broke." It's a great way to run a business. You learned their way of working, either from the software itself, or from other DAWs, and you like it. Great! Literally every musician for the past 2 decades has come to work with these DAWs, so it's not like working in a format for audio engineers is incompatible with being a musician. I'm quite certain it helps, actually.
But, again, none of that speaks to the complexity of using the software as someone who doesn't know anything about DAWs or modern audio software. I know a guy who can play the guitar beautifully; yet he can't figure out Ableton. I've sat him down multiple times and showed him some really cool stuff that he really liked, but he has never once not called me when he tried to use the software. Some people just aren't built like that. He is thinking about music in one form, and the computer wants him to formalize it in some different form. And he just can't or won't make the bridge.
And you may say: "well, fuck him; he should learn Ableton or be doomed to live without its benefits". More power to you. But I just wish there were something ELSE that would speak to him in his language.