Fanu wrote:I think to most people the point of a standalone, in addition to being live-capable, is distancing themselves from the computer land for a moment.
E.g., my day job is mixing and mastering music for others, in addition to which I work a ton ITB with my own music. That does make you feel sometimes that you need a break from the computer life but not necessarily from music life.
So, after all that, sometimes it feels really good to mess with something that has nothing to do with a computer: f*cking with my Machinedrum as we speak, I love my SP 1200 and MPC 60, but I'd love to have a standalone device with plenty of _modern_ capabilities.
I'd love to be able to work on something for a while even in my kitchen, heh, just to distance myself from my main desk and workspace.
While I do understand that with say a guitar or a drum set but with something like an mpc live you are just staring at computer screen and still using a computer its just a built in screen and its a smaller computer. I never made a song in bed and wouldn't really have any desire to. I do get the idea of changing your environment to change your mindset though.
One thing I often ponder is did music production really change when the visual aspect was added. People used to mix with their ears and now they mix with their ears and eyes with visual waves forms. I wonder if some of the creativity is lost when you have a visual reference. For instance on the mpc60 there was no wave form display so you just started the sample when it seemed right. Not at the absolute start of the transient. Sometimes I miss my 2000 for that but I spent an awful lot of time staring at that 2 inch grey screen.