Ah yes, the free lunch that so many people are always on the lookout for. We hunt for these things almost daily. Sadly, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has a price. That is true in everything including music production.

Now I know what a lot of people are going to say. There are plenty of free tools to use for music production. There are even free DAWs. Yes, this is true. There are plenty of free tools. I myself have written about a few of these and even use them.

But these free tools come at a price. No, the price may not be money, but a price just the same.

Let’s take the free DAWs. Have you noticed something about them? You probably wouldn’t if you hadn’t paid for something like Cubase or Logic. So I’ll tell you what it is.

They’re limited in what they can do. I’m not saying they’re worthless or that they can’t do what you need them to do at the time, but they’re still limited. If you ever reach a point where you need them to do more than what they’re capable of doing, you’re out of luck. That point in time is more likely to happen with a free tool than with a paid tool. Sure, even paid for DAWs can have limitations and may not be able to do something you want it to do. But the chance of that happening is a lot greater with the free tool. So you do sacrifice something. That is a cost.

No? Don’t think so? Let me ask you this question. You’re working on a project for a client in your free DAW. You reach a point where you need your DAW to do something that most paid DAWs can do inside of a minute but yours can’t do easily. You need to jump through a whole lot of hoops to get this one thing to work and those hoops take hours to setup.

Isn’t your time worth something?

This is where we get to the age old argument that people make that essentially reads like this.

“My time is my time. It’s for me to do with as I please. Therefor there is no cost to it.”

So you’d rather be spending hours doing something in your free DAW that could have been done in a minute with something like Cubase or Logic than, oh, I don’t know, maybe working on another project to make even more money or, for that matter, doing something for fun?

If the answer to that is yes, then God bless you. You’ve found the free lunch you’re looking for.

Me? I don’t want to spend anymore time doing a task than I have to. I love creating music. I can do it all day long. But I don’t want to spend hours doing a task in creating that music with a free tool that could have been done in a minute had I had something like Cubase or Logic.

I’ll give you something really simple that would annoy the heck out of me if I didn’t have this functionality and had to go to another piece of software to do it.

Multiple file formats. Imagine your DAW only allowed you to create wav files but you wanted to make MP3s. You’d have to find a wav to MP3 converter. And assuming you don’t want to pay for that either, you’d have to find a free one. Oh, they exist. There are plenty online. That means going to a web site to begin with. More time wasted. Then you have to upload the wav file. More time wasted. Then you have to click the convert button and then you have to download the converted file.

All this when all you had to do with your paid DAW was choose the export to MP3 option.

That would drive me crazy and not worth my time.

And this doesn’t just apply to DAWs.

You think you’re free synths are so great? Hey don’t get me wrong. Some of them sound very good. I love my Synth1…for certain things. But it’s not a Swiss army knife. It can’t do everything. For one thing, it does have limited polyphony. It has limited waveforms that you can work with. It only has one ADSR for the filter and one for the amp and only one of each of those. It only has 2 oscillators and only a few effects.

If you think you’re going to get the sound out of that, that you can get out of something like Omnisphere, Zebra 2 or Massive, forget it. You can’t. Will it be good enough for what you’re doing at the time? Maybe. But it’s not going to replace the best synths on the market. It’s not meant to.

What about orchestral sounds? I won’t even try to pass off the free orchestral samples as realistic or anywhere near as good as something like EWQL or Vienna. Anybody who even tries to make a case for the free stuff over these is nuts.

Are the free samples good enough for cheesy pop tunes where you don’t really need real sounding strings? I guess. After all, we dealt with that stuff back in the day when that was all we had. But if you’re trying to create a symphony that sounds realistic, forget it. You’re fighting a losing battle.

Free DSPs? Some of them are quite good. But if you need a really professional sound they’re not going to cut it. Of course if you need a really professional sound your free DAW isn’t going to cut it anyway.

Point is, everything has a price. What you trade for your free lunch is quality and/or flexibility. You’re not going to get both. Not for free. I have learned this the hard way over the years when I always tried to take the free way out. It only gets you so far.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Not really.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

So now that Mariano Rivera has retired, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” is out of work and with it, sad to say, Metallica too. If you didn’t see the Sportscenter video, it’s really pretty funny. But that’s not the point of this article. I’m going to address the general issue here and while we’re all having a good laugh at the expense of that immortal metal band, there is some very real truth here.

Very few things stand the test of time.

Sure, you can look at classical music and here it is hundreds of years later still being played by orchestras all over the world.

How many people do you think will still be playing The Rolling Stones hundreds of years from now? My gut tells me, not many.

But isn’t that pretty much the way the world is? Nothing really lasts long these days. Most gadgets are manufactured with built in obsolescence. Look at your phones. Don’t you get a new one every two or three years or so? I’m an old dinosaur so I’m keeping my LG until it dies. But most people aren’t like that. Things get old real fast in today’s world.

And music is no different.

Remember the days of “Dark Side Of The Moon” by Pink Floyd? Do you have any idea how many weeks that album was on the charts? Try 741 (some say 736). We’re talking 15 years (from 1973 – 1988).

Granted, there haven’t been many “Dark Side Of The Moons” in recorded history (actually there haven’t been any others) but music tended to hang around back then more than it does now. We get tired of things very fast these days.

I think part of the reason is because we live in a faster paced world than we did 25 years ago. Information is now available at the touch of a button or a mouse click. Want to know where the closest Chinese restaurant is in your neighborhood? No problem. Just whip out the old iPhone or whatever it is you’re walking around with these days.

There is virtually nothing you can’t get within seconds, depending on how good your Internet connection is.

Anyway, because we live in a faster paced world and can get things more quickly than ever before and because we have access to so much more than ever before, we tend to bore with things quickly simply because there is something else new just seconds away. The choices we have for entertainment are mind boggling. I am a video game junkie and have yet to scratch the surface of what’s out there. Forget new. Did you know that there are Atari 600 emulators out there so that you can play all your old favorite Atari games? I once spent almost a whole day just playing Pitfall II.

So how can anything stay new and appealing in a world with millions of choices and new ones coming out every single day? It’s very hard unless you have something really, really special.

Having said all that prelim stuff, what about your music? Are you trying to create something that is going to stand the test of time and be played hundreds of years from now? Good luck with that. You have about as much chance as I have in dating Angelina Jolie. Forget that I’m married. That woman wouldn’t even look at me a first time, let alone twice.

In my opinion, and this is ONLY my opinion, you are better off writing to make a living. In other words, write in the moment. See what the trends are. See what’s popular. Ride the coattails of a new genre if you can. Be on the cutting edge.

Years ago, that would have meant adopting the new style of movie orchestration that is so popular today. You know what I mean. Everything is so big and over the top, with blaring horns (lots of overdrive on them) and screaming strings with lots of high EQ. Superhero scores of today are massive. There is just no other way to put it. I don’t remember which movie it was that started the big over the top scores but once it came out and was a blockbuster hit, all the others followed. Now, it has become standard Hollywood.

Maybe Hollywood movie scores aren’t you scene. That’s cool. But whatever your scene is, keep your pulse on where that scene is going today. What’s commercial? What’s really hot? What has been phased out? Is the scene itself still viable?

I hate to say this, but if your musical style is 70s prog rock, you’re going to have a difficult time getting any of that sold today. It just isn’t popular anymore. At least not with the masses. Sure, it may always have a small cult following, but you’re never going to make a living off of it. At least not now.

Does this mean that you have to sell out? Of course not. You can pick a style of music that you enjoy (certainly you enjoy something that’s contemporary) and put your own signature on it. This can be done in a variety of ways. Probably the easiest is to maybe feature an instrument that isn’t normally featured in that style. Look at what Kenny G did with the sax. In fact, he created his own line of saxophones called (drum roll please) Kenny G Saxophones.

If you try hard enough, you can always put your own signature on the music you’re doing. I’ve done that to some degree even having a royalty free music site. If you listen to a lot of my non classical stuff, you’ll notice a definite 60s Bubble Gum influence, even in my dance music.

Truth is, if you are true to yourself, whatever kind of music you’re doing, the real you WILL come out. You just have to be smart and let it come out in something that the masses currently like. That combined with something a little “new” will have them sit up and take notice. They may not ultimately like it, but at least they’ll listen.

And that is half the battle.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

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