A revolutionary way of creating!

I just spent the past several hours enticed by the most amazing creative process.  A few weeks ago I installed FL Studio Mobile on my Android tablet.  I opened it and sort of checked it out but didn’t seriously try to do anything on it.  Until several hours ago.

FL Studio is a popular digital audio workstation (DAW) application, similar to Cubase, ProTools, or Logic Audio.  But none of these others offer an Android product.

There’s an allemande from a Bach French Suite I’ve been learning recently.  The first measures are now pretty much ingrained in my mind.  They are beautiful, elegant arpeggiated progressions.  The bass line that goes with it is very beautiful too.

I decided to try to input the few measures I know into FL Studio Mobile.  I quickly figured out how to use the touchscreen interface and start working with it.  Having worked with DAW’s before, I’ve always found that they stifled my creative flow.  There’s something I just absolutely hate about having to touch a mouse and keyboard when I’m in a process of creating something.  It seems like the mere act of touching either of these just abruptly brings the creative inspiration to a grinding halt and that is it.

I’ve never really been able to successfully get around it, to the point that I envied people like Vangelis and Steve Roach, both of whom are famous for their hands-on electronic music setups and minimal use of computers.

After the past several hours I’m starting to feel strongly that the touchscreen interface is going to bring about a profound revolution in the creative process for music composition.  I already envision a studio with several large touchscreen monitors with various control surfaces on them.  I envision interacting with music by touching it with my fingers, pinching and zooming things, scrolling, etc.

I imagine music theory instructors standing in front of a class and touching a screen to create notes.  Then dragging notes around while explaining characteristics of for example certain types of chords, or of certain types of harmonic progressions.  I even imagine students sitting there in class and, instead of having to go up the a chalkboard to write in an example, can just touch it in on their tablet as they sit in class and the graphic will automatically show on the main classroom display.

The possibilities of this are truly mind-blowing.  I think I’ve already written about the use of tablets for music.  If only they were a bit larger – not smaller – say around 13″ – and not movie-screen dimentions but more like a sheet of paper – they would make the perfect way to display and edit sheet music. The ultimate thing is to also have a stylus and hence the ability to markup scores which is always necessary for students and performers.

I strongly feel that there is going to be a major revolution in the future, a profound change in the creative process not just for music composition but for other areas as well.

Its interesting because DAW’s still use paradigms from the physical world of things like knobs and sliders.  I wonder if things like that will be deprecated in the near future as even better, more convenient and more accurate ways of manipulating control surfaces utilizing various types of touch technologies come to exist.  This has already been in the news lately with regard to the use of computer icons for things which are not even used anymore.

Right now it seems like people are so locked into thinking based on the physical paradigms, which current DAW control surfaces more-or-less model.  But in the near future, just like the old icons of things like cassette tapes which no longer have meaning, there may be completely new ways to manipulate digital controls which are better than anyone could have believed possible because of the crusty old paradigms which are still dominant.

Out of curiosity I did some checking to see whether or to what extent any other of the major DAW’s support touchscreen technology.  I was surprised to see many users with crusty attitudes,probably ingrained through years of drudgery working with the restrictive paradigms of mouse and keyboard, who seem to outright reject something amazing like touchscreen interaction.

I actually read about a psychologic thing related to that a long time ago.  If someone has to do something that is mildly unpleasant, they are more apt to reject it.  But if something is really unpleasant that they are forced to endure, they will actually change their attitude and not only accept it but even defend it as some kind of worthwhile thing.

I don’t see how anything positive can come from the drudgery and creative restriction of working with a mouse and a keyboard when engaging in a creative process.  Fortunately things are about to change dramatically.

In the future I can fully imagine the creative process of music composition on a tablet.  And ideal size would be simalar to 9″ x 14″ sheet music.  I can imagine sitting with a tablet in a quiet cafe with music flowing through my head and I’m holding a stylus and drawing notes in succession creating some totally ethereal music.  Every now and then I can play a few measures back and listen to them through a perfectly sounding orchestra or ensemble of my own creation.  Or I could just ditch the orchestral instruments and use oscillators, envelopes, and filters to create my own instruments.