Digital Audio Workstations

User experience (UX) in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) refers to the understanding of users’ attitudes about using technological artefacts. This study proposes the Unified Theory of Acceptance Use of Technology (UTAUT) for the assessment of Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) user experience among heavy metal and hard rock artists in the European Union (EU) countries. With a total of 711 collected surveys, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was used for the assessment of the measurement and struc-tural model. To determine the most relevant drivers of DAW usage among artists, the IPMA (importance-performance map analysis) is conducted and assessed. The significant manifest variables should be considered by DAW developers as a guide to improve the UX among artists using DAWs.

My paper discusses the effect of the DAW environment upon student attitudes to musical composition with reference to pedagogical research that I have conducted over the past two years at Leeds College of Music. I focus in particular upon nature of the graphical interfaces provided by certain DAW platforms, considering their relationship with the 'traditional' media they are often modeled upon, and their impact upon the conceptualization of musical ideas. Much of the discussion is focused upon the musical thought processes that users of DAWs bring a priori to their chosen platform and how contact with the software both modifies these ideas and impacts upon creative flow. The issues arising from the paper have interesting implications for ideologies of composition teaching per se and aim to raise debate in regard to the special challenge presented by new technologies to received ideas in this area.

The singer songwriter’s technological medium has always played a key part in the creation and execution of songs. While the impact of the piano and guitar on songwriting in the 20th and 21st centuries has been far reaching, it is becoming clear that the future of the practice will be bound up with the emerging digital technologies. Computer based MIDI and audio production systems (Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs) in particular have become central to the set-up of the autonomous musician. In one sense the DAW functions as a tool for recording and producing traditionally conceived songs. However it is also an instrument in its own right whose characteristics may equally play a role in determining the manner of a song’s creation and its realization as a sonic entity. This chapter considers the potential of the DAW as a songwriting medium, focusing on its capacity to inform the creative process as well as the opportunities it provides to experiment with songwriting possibilities.

This article considers the ways in which metal has interacted with the aesthetics of electronic music since the 1980s, from its earliest exchanges with hip hop through to recent developments in the djent subgenre. It highlights the persistence of metal’s practitioners in adopting new technologies (including samplers, drum machines and Digital Audio Workstations) and the challenges that this has brought to established ideas of conventional metal music practice. Underlying the discussion is the notion of the ‘code’, a familiar term in metal music studies, which has been employed to articulate ideas of metal’s core musical attributes. In these terms, electronic music’s creative practices can be seen to have facilitated both the deconstruction and re-contextualization of metal’s code, enabling the genre to be re-imagined and ultimately enriched.

This chapter describes a lesson that gets learners to go beyond the loop paradigm typical to most DAW production environments by encouraging a focus on the musical content of looped materials. Students will develop skills using a DAW’s MIDI editing facilities for “re-calculating” musical content, such as note value augmentation/diminution and pitch transposition. In addition, students will investigate the potential of musical materials for variation, transformation, and re-combination in the context of extended musical structures. One of the key learning outcomes of this exercise is understanding that looped material need not remain a static and unaltered building block in a composition/production.

This chapter continues my ongoing research into the DAW and its role in reconfiguring popular music practice (see , with particular reference to genre characteristics in heavy metal music. My focus is on the manner in which those "rules" that determine the "compositive" elements of the metal genre (see are "transgressed" as a result of their interaction with new technological forms. These ideas are applied specifically in relation to DAW-based practices, highlighting the manner in which this medium might be regarded as an agent of genre deconstruction and destabilization. Key to my argument is the hypothesis that the DAW is essentially a genre-specific medium in the sense that it foregrounds specific notions of creative practice associated with the aesthetics of electronic music. To illustrate this, I trace the route by which the DAW and its inherent electronic music aesthetics have become gradually integrated into metal music practice, from metal musicians' uses of the DAW during the mid-1990s through to the activities of DAW-based metal practitioners during the mid-to late 2000s and the hybridized forms of "electronic" metal that emerged at this time, including djent, djent-step, and cyber-grind. The concluding part of the chapter discusses situations in which older metal bands have attempted to incorporate, from outside their idiom, the traits of DAW-derived genres, with a particular focus on the dubstep collaborations on Korn's 2012 album, The Path of Totality. The chapter's key assertion is that metal artists who have gravitated toward either the DAW, or DAW-based practitioners, are all engaging to some degree with the aesthetics of electronic music and, while this has enabled the domain of metal music

This study analyses the influence that new tools and resources in popular sequencing software have over the composition process. An analysis of the different resources of a software sequencer (Cubase 7) has been combined with a field study among 220 musicians from different countries that use this sequencer. A specially designed questionnaire has been used to collect information about the frequency use of different tools, the stage of use of them and the way the use of the sequencer influences their personal and professional development. The study has evidenced that certain tools have been fully incorporated into the composition process, while others are practically not used, or its use relies on different factors. The use of the sequencer has also clear positive effects on musicians and their creative process. Finally, the field research has helped to define and characterize different kinds of workflows in the composition process.

The Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) has undoubtedly been a massive advancement in the field of music composition. Whilst it is perhaps best known for expanding and creating numerous genres of electronic music, its impact upon composing for orchestra is lesser documented. This paper discusses the numerous ways in which the DAW has influenced the composition of modern orchestral film music, utilising multiple research sources; including primary research conducted with working film composers and orchestrators such as Guy Rowland and Stuart Kollmorgen. Many of the individuals interviewed in the process of primary research recognised that the DAW has had a negative influence on the general quality of orchestral film music now as opposed to before the advent of the DAW. It was found in the course of the study though, that the DAW has had many alternative positive effects on film music in general, including the ability to hear composed music instantaneously with the use of samples. The paper ultimately found that the DAW has had an extremely profound influence on modern orchestral film music, and the study documents the specific aspects of it that caused this influence.