It's a raw piece of software right now but I can see the vision. Traditional DAW's have a lot of hoops to jump through to get this level of detail in your song so it's refreshing to see a new concept and have it just make sense. Right now, it looks like it takes the flexibility and ease of use of popular DAW's and combines it with the detailed editing of trackers. Very interested to see where this goes.
I was kinda like, “yeah that’s cool I guess” until 10:08 and my jaw hit the floor. That is unbelievably dope. I can’t count the number of times I was messing around and made something cool only to mess with the settings and lose it, never to figure it out again.
This is actually a concept I've seen before in a Mr Bill video tutorial - he sets a resampling track recording and then just has fun messing around with things, then comes back and clips what he likes. He called them 'idea jams'. I love using this technique to make sample packs!
Always save your sound presets in a custom folder as you continue working on your track, the file sizes are so tiny you can really go crazy without any concern for space... & consider turning on auto-save for the entire project or get used to quick saving every 10-15min when you make a drastic change within the track.
Scripting via a real programming language would allow customized auto-saving. I hope I can talk him into scripting because it can offload feature development to users and third parties ala Emacs.
The lane effects create a way better workflow and ease of use of the effect than for instance using an effect on a track in ableton, toggling the on and off and then automating the effect. This seems more in line with how a producer want's to use those effects. Very nice.
Without a wider palette of effects and synthesis tools, it's more of a sound design toy or experiment. I love the interface for drawing automation, and i love the clarity of just "sound over time." So, as a big sound design nerd, I see it as a place to go after sound design, where the limitations force me to stop sound design and focus on composition/layout.
This is cool, I can definitely see myself making choppy glitchy whacked out breakbeats in this DAW, seems like the perfect environment for it. I'll keep my eyes on this development.
Unfortunately it's really difficult to break into a market that is already saturated with many other products and then try get people to change after they're used to working on another one.
@@Andrew-rz7qt you don't always have to change, you can just add. If Blockhead remains to be a unique playground, people won't see it as a replacement DAW, rather an enrichment. There already are people who use more than one DAW because they prefer certain operations to be split up across. Like using a different DAW for mixing and mastering.
@@Vegan_Kebab_In_My_Hand personally speaking I started on Ableton version 4 and have tried them all, reason, cakewalk, pro tools and always come back to Ableton.
I use Reaper for recording and Harrison Mixbus for mixing (basically a Harrison Mixbus branded console version of Ardour) and VCV Rack quite a bit. I am in the market demographic for this, I think lol
@@neilpatrickhairless that's the problem with bringing a new DAW to market, once people have found a set up that works for them, it's very hard to get people to switch.
thanks for taking the time to make this short film. i found it inspiring. it's great to see tools that encourage manageable, accessible play; building blocks that are simple to put in place yet rich with possibilities. i'd love to see more on it and will probably end up downloading / supporting.🎉.
Its back to the start, just with a nice interactive GUI. aphex twin had to do that in consoles, text files and tracker-style tables. its a nice idea to galvanise the many software synth engines which were lost to the advances in OS, filesystems and hardware. its not like the techniques aren't in use anymore: they come carefully curated and neatly packed into synth cases, vst files, modulation and effects boxes. but before they ship out as products they still have to be created. taking a step back to the point where every oscillator can touch any point of every other oscillator.. is a great option to have. cross-, pulsewidth-, audiorate-modulations, wavefolding, feedback, using noise instead of envelopes to modulate amplitude etc. there's a shit ton of sounds to be had when shooting at waveforms for target practice. nice!
This reminds me of my first "DAW", Acid Pro - back in 1996(?) I think. It was my introduction to making music with a computer - had to keep everything on external disks - had 12k of memory and a shitty Turtle Beach sound card - that I had to install myself. lol... I swear I made better music when I had shitty gear and no idea what I was doing. Since then I have gone to music school and audio engineering school - worked as a professional bassist, an engineer, and sound designer for film and theater - all kinds of gear has passed through my hands since then - but Id give all of it up - to go back to that time when everything was still an adventure - and I had no clue. lol.
This DAW is beautiful precisely because it is different... I don't want it to become the same as the others. There are 20 piano rolls out there, 20 mixers, a sea of plugins with a vintage look... I think it's right that these things are missing here, or at least that they are considered only last and priority is given to other oddities that make Blockhead special. If I want a piano roll I will open FL Studio and I will have the piano roll... Wanting a piano roll in Blockhead seems to me like saying "hey, you are a beautiful girl but you need to go on a diet" .. but if you like the skinny girl, look for her skinny... Why look for her chubby and then tell her to go on a diet?
I definitely think this will help get people out their heads and into the music. The "limitations" of the workflow would probably make me feel a lot less dependent on the end result. I'm genuinely excited to get my hands on this. I can go with the flow here and take it into FL Studio as a sample.
This app seems really freeing and even if I don't use it as my primary DAW I can see it's usefulness for creating new sounds. I became a supporter after this so thank you for the demo!!
Workflow is king and queen and this is a fascinating approach to changing the traditional workflow for multitrack sound. I'll keep a keen eye on this product, as stated it seems fantastic for sound design as it appears to make you work within a different paradigm.
this is interesting. cool video! always fun too see a video not about the same stuff everyone else is doing lol even if its all stuff you can do in reaper using takes and free lane positioning (outside of the carnival thing). The only difference being the way you implement the effects, you would have to use bypass envelopes for it, but still doable. I guess the creative advantage here being the workflow. Even the loopback recording is available via the global sampler script. All that said, the way the effects are implemented gave me some cool ideas to try in reaper!
This feels like an evolved thing from Cubase's old *Direct Offline Processing* (which can be done per individual clip or how ever many selected, but can still be reverted back how ever many steps) I can't really agree on "not knowing your way around" being helpful if you are surgical in your sound design, since you really need to know the tools and where to access them. BUT. If you rely heavily on "happy accidents" in the production. Sure, a new "confusing" thing can be helpful I guess. This is interesting nonetheless
Thanks for a bit of background on DOP. Sounds interesting. I don’t doubt a good sound designer can master a program like this or a synth like the OP-1, I just think there’s something charming about diving in headfirst into unorthodox methods to making music. It definitely makes for something inspiring happy accidents early on that I think tend to disappear once you master any specific tool. Thanks for watching!
Great video and demonstration! Kind of seems a bit lackluster, but if they flesh it out a little more I could see it being really cool. It kind of reminds me of Audiomulch or something, but hopefully won't stagnate in development as much as that did :)
It’s very much in what I would consider to be pre-alpha at this stage, but I just really dig the direction it’s taking so I’ve been supporting the dev on patreon for some time now. He’s been consistently dropping updates since release so I’m excited to see where things will be a year or two from now.
Most DAWs stagnate in development without a fat budget or generous development team. A lot of plugin development is the same way, especially when you're talking Linux it seems
It kinda reminds me of a video editing program. Every block is it's own independent unit with it's own independent effects chain and settings, even if it's on the same "track". The lanes concept is awesome. I also really like how it seems *waveform based* and how everything makes waveforms that you can see and then you click on and manipulate like they're a .wav you loaded up, even if it's actually just the middle of an effects chain, which would be insanely painful to do on a traditional DAW if not impossible. In exchange for that, it seems like it's made all the basic easy stuff you could do in a DAW really painful. I'm curious to see if this DAW takes off before someone else sees the lane system and says, "why don't we make that a VST," or "we should make an instrument in our DAW that works like that". Similar to how basically anytime one DAW gets something really cool and unique, 6-18 months later every DAW has their own version of it.
This looks fresh. A cool tool to get or stay creative. At least for new inspiration. I like unconventional concepts - whether good or bad, they are innovative to begin with.
Ok.... I'm sitting here watching this and..... I found myself filled with somewhat giddy wonder! I use Reaper and love it,but this is just crazy enough to bubble up some new juices.....👍
My biggest complaint with mainstream DAWs is that you need to jump through hoops to achieve any sort of freeform/off-grid arrangement. I'm not even talking about experimental production, but it feels like adding those desirable little details that make the difference between a demo and a finished song is an afterthought in most software. Blockhead feels like a huge step in the right direction and I hope it lights a fire under the other software companies' asses. After twenty years it's time to see some innovation.
It's a destructive workflow. That's what he meant. In the world of digital workflows, destructive doesn't necessarily mean what it sounds like it means. I too noticed the similarities with Audacity though, as Audacity renders the effected audio as a whole new waveform. It seems like a limitation, until you realize that Audacity came from a time when computers weren't very powerful. Rendering the audio like that saved processing power, and didn't sacrifice anything in terms of capabilities.
This feels like opening up a DAW for the first time as a kid, I kinda wanna try it haha
It’s $3, so it’s worth a shot just to mess around with!
more like opening paint as a kid
@@soundlearn is it a one time 3 dollars or subscription ?
Throw it at Burial, see what he comes up with :P
@@CypiXmusic lol for real!
Underrated comment
Thought the same ha
I’d wanna see what aphex twin does with this too
That's the first thing I thought when I saw "no grid."
It's a raw piece of software right now but I can see the vision. Traditional DAW's have a lot of hoops to jump through to get this level of detail in your song so it's refreshing to see a new concept and have it just make sense.
Right now, it looks like it takes the flexibility and ease of use of popular DAW's and combines it with the detailed editing of trackers. Very interested to see where this goes.
this should be a plug in, not a DAW
Right? This totally reminded me of absolute macro control you'd have on a tracker. This seems so cool and makes me want to mess with it.
@WhizPill there's no way this could work as a plugin
I was kinda like, “yeah that’s cool I guess” until 10:08 and my jaw hit the floor. That is unbelievably dope. I can’t count the number of times I was messing around and made something cool only to mess with the settings and lose it, never to figure it out again.
You should check out the rolling sampler from bird bird. It will do exactly this in whatever saw you want and it’s only $20.
Also a feature in BespokeSynth
This is actually a concept I've seen before in a Mr Bill video tutorial - he sets a resampling track recording and then just has fun messing around with things, then comes back and clips what he likes. He called them 'idea jams'. I love using this technique to make sample packs!
Always save your sound presets in a custom folder as you continue working on your track, the file sizes are so tiny you can really go crazy without any concern for space... & consider turning on auto-save for the entire project or get used to quick saving every 10-15min when you make a drastic change within the track.
Scripting via a real programming language would allow customized auto-saving. I hope I can talk him into scripting because it can offload feature development to users and third parties ala Emacs.
legitamately excited to hear what music is going to sound like in 10-20 years with tools like this available to the next generation
Just look up various granular vsts and resampling tools. This really isn't anything new just expand your listening and find new genres :p
Based on the music nowadays it will be just a pure sine wave
@@benjoe999 😂😂
my cpu wheezin watchin this
Indubitably!
I like the clean sketch aspect. It’s open and exploration beckoning.
BwO-esque
this looks great for sound design, like the type of sound design you would do for movies and games, where you’re layering many sounds into one
Great point! Layering here is goiunt to be great.
The lane effects create a way better workflow and ease of use of the effect than for instance using an effect on a track in ableton, toggling the on and off and then automating the effect. This seems more in line with how a producer want's to use those effects. Very nice.
so excited for this kind of alt-DAW
Without a wider palette of effects and synthesis tools, it's more of a sound design toy or experiment. I love the interface for drawing automation, and i love the clarity of just "sound over time." So, as a big sound design nerd, I see it as a place to go after sound design, where the limitations force me to stop sound design and focus on composition/layout.
This is cool, I can definitely see myself making choppy glitchy whacked out breakbeats in this DAW, seems like the perfect environment for it. I'll keep my eyes on this development.
One day, this is going to be INSANE
Unfortunately it's really difficult to break into a market that is already saturated with many other products and then try get people to change after they're used to working on another one.
@@Andrew-rz7qt you don't always have to change, you can just add. If Blockhead remains to be a unique playground, people won't see it as a replacement DAW, rather an enrichment.
There already are people who use more than one DAW because they prefer certain operations to be split up across. Like using a different DAW for mixing and mastering.
@@Vegan_Kebab_In_My_Hand personally speaking I started on Ableton version 4 and have tried them all, reason, cakewalk, pro tools and always come back to Ableton.
I use Reaper for recording and Harrison Mixbus for mixing (basically a Harrison Mixbus branded console version of Ardour) and VCV Rack quite a bit. I am in the market demographic for this, I think lol
@@neilpatrickhairless that's the problem with bringing a new DAW to market, once people have found a set up that works for them, it's very hard to get people to switch.
Great video! I don't have the sort of galaxy brain that could create entire tracks in this, but I could totally see myself using it for sound design.
Trust me, neither do (as you can clearly hear in what I created), but it’s fun to play around with nonetheless!
thanks for taking the time to make this short film. i found it inspiring. it's great to see tools that encourage manageable, accessible play; building blocks that are simple to put in place yet rich with possibilities. i'd love to see more on it and will probably end up downloading / supporting.🎉.
Polyrhythmic music would go crazy in this
paging Virtual Riot!!
Randomized 'Drum Computer' beats fed into 'Blockhead', more randomizing, samples made and fed back into 'Drum Computer' and so on...
dude this has some crazy potential, definitely make more videos on it
Definitely plan on following the development. Next time I’ll be a bit more well versed in it and do a proper walkthrough.
Its back to the start, just with a nice interactive GUI. aphex twin had to do that in consoles, text files and tracker-style tables. its a nice idea to galvanise the many software synth engines which were lost to the advances in OS, filesystems and hardware. its not like the techniques aren't in use anymore: they come carefully curated and neatly packed into synth cases, vst files, modulation and effects boxes. but before they ship out as products they still have to be created. taking a step back to the point where every oscillator can touch any point of every other oscillator.. is a great option to have. cross-, pulsewidth-, audiorate-modulations, wavefolding, feedback, using noise instead of envelopes to modulate amplitude etc.
there's a shit ton of sounds to be had when shooting at waveforms for target practice. nice!
This reminds me of my first "DAW", Acid Pro - back in 1996(?) I think. It was my introduction to making music with a computer - had to keep everything on external disks - had 12k of memory and a shitty Turtle Beach sound card - that I had to install myself. lol... I swear I made better music when I had shitty gear and no idea what I was doing. Since then I have gone to music school and audio engineering school - worked as a professional bassist, an engineer, and sound designer for film and theater - all kinds of gear has passed through my hands since then - but Id give all of it up - to go back to that time when everything was still an adventure - and I had no clue. lol.
Okay - spoke to soon - MUCH cooler than ACid! lol
This would REALLY benefit from a touch screen - a port to iOS would be fantastic.
I feel that, I feel like the most fun I had producing was when I first started and really sucked at it lol
I was just reminiscing about Acid Pro yesterday how weird
@@onlyusernameleft2 it's what got me into making music with computers back in the day
You can drag in SAMPLES into the CARNIVAL and hit RND also (Sample stays). Glitch heaven.
Oooooh me like! Thanks for the quick demo! Tht always recording feature should be in all daws.
Great video! Your presentation is very on-point, honest, and not dumbed-down. Sharing your enthusiasm, not making an ad. Appreciated!
Wild... Gonna have to look more into this...
Thanks for revealing!
This DAW just needs a piano roll, and it's already on its way to becoming a contender with the Big Boys.
This DAW is beautiful precisely because it is different... I don't want it to become the same as the others. There are 20 piano rolls out there, 20 mixers, a sea of plugins with a vintage look... I think it's right that these things are missing here, or at least that they are considered only last and priority is given to other oddities that make Blockhead special. If I want a piano roll I will open FL Studio and I will have the piano roll... Wanting a piano roll in Blockhead seems to me like saying "hey, you are a beautiful girl but you need to go on a diet" .. but if you like the skinny girl, look for her skinny... Why look for her chubby and then tell her to go on a diet?
Damn. I recently fell in love with working with audio over midi. This is perfect 🤩
Video games, shows, animations and indie music is about go crazy
this is pretty sick! it reminds me of seeing these old computer programs that aphex twin would use to make his music back in the 90s
I definitely think this will help get people out their heads and into the music. The "limitations" of the workflow would probably make me feel a lot less dependent on the end result. I'm genuinely excited to get my hands on this. I can go with the flow here and take it into FL Studio as a sample.
This app seems really freeing and even if I don't use it as my primary DAW I can see it's usefulness for creating new sounds. I became a supporter after this so thank you for the demo!!
sounds good. almost sounds like something fever ray would use i hope they find this
Carnival is crazy! I want to try it! Noise music gona love this!
I really like the idea behind this UI.
This is closer to what trackers are capable of. Each step can be effected
Seems like a second daw i would actually use in specific scenarios once it’s fleshed out a bit more
I like this approach. It seems minimalist and simple (once you've got the basics), but with endless possibilities and few limitations.
CPU GONE WILD🗣🗣🗣🗣
Workflow is king and queen and this is a fascinating approach to changing the traditional workflow for multitrack sound. I'll keep a keen eye on this product, as stated it seems fantastic for sound design as it appears to make you work within a different paradigm.
Fun fact: there's a great US HipHop producer named Blockhead. Highly recommend a listen.
thank you for showing this off, this is sick!
It’s cool, thanks for figuring it out for us!
This is the most pure data-driven DAW I have ever seen. As a programmer I am very interested.
this is interesting. cool video! always fun too see a video not about the same stuff everyone else is doing lol
even if its all stuff you can do in reaper using takes and free lane positioning (outside of the carnival thing). The only difference being the way you implement the effects, you would have to use bypass envelopes for it, but still doable. I guess the creative advantage here being the workflow. Even the loopback recording is available via the global sampler script. All that said, the way the effects are implemented gave me some cool ideas to try in reaper!
That’s cool. It’s like a visual send.
As somebody who knows a bit about how DAWs and Audio DSP work, this is an incredibly inventive and innovative approach to sound design... I need this.
that carbibal thing is the wetdream portion of this..omg its insane!
Two Tempos what was this madlad on thats wild
you always save the weird shit, man
This feels like an evolved thing from Cubase's old *Direct Offline Processing* (which can be done per individual clip or how ever many selected, but can still be reverted back how ever many steps)
I can't really agree on "not knowing your way around" being helpful if you are surgical in your sound design, since you really need to know the tools and where to access them.
BUT. If you rely heavily on "happy accidents" in the production. Sure, a new "confusing" thing can be helpful I guess.
This is interesting nonetheless
Thanks for a bit of background on DOP. Sounds interesting. I don’t doubt a good sound designer can master a program like this or a synth like the OP-1, I just think there’s something charming about diving in headfirst into unorthodox methods to making music. It definitely makes for something inspiring happy accidents early on that I think tend to disappear once you master any specific tool. Thanks for watching!
That's it I'm creating a new moniker to release blockhead tracks with named: "no icon"
space is play/stop
tab is "play from where the mouse is"
Great video and demonstration! Kind of seems a bit lackluster, but if they flesh it out a little more I could see it being really cool. It kind of reminds me of Audiomulch or something, but hopefully won't stagnate in development as much as that did :)
It’s very much in what I would consider to be pre-alpha at this stage, but I just really dig the direction it’s taking so I’ve been supporting the dev on patreon for some time now. He’s been consistently dropping updates since release so I’m excited to see where things will be a year or two from now.
Most DAWs stagnate in development without a fat budget or generous development team. A lot of plugin development is the same way, especially when you're talking Linux it seems
There Is No "they" , its one Guy creating a daw
oh snap he got audio inputs working! TO THE LAB!!!!!
First thing I notice is this: it’s brilliant cos it concretises invisible fx.
Feels like an invitation to break from the formulaic. I’m in.
Damn. That is pretty much like adjustment clips in Video editing. 😲
It kinda reminds me of a video editing program. Every block is it's own independent unit with it's own independent effects chain and settings, even if it's on the same "track". The lanes concept is awesome. I also really like how it seems *waveform based* and how everything makes waveforms that you can see and then you click on and manipulate like they're a .wav you loaded up, even if it's actually just the middle of an effects chain, which would be insanely painful to do on a traditional DAW if not impossible.
In exchange for that, it seems like it's made all the basic easy stuff you could do in a DAW really painful. I'm curious to see if this DAW takes off before someone else sees the lane system and says, "why don't we make that a VST," or "we should make an instrument in our DAW that works like that". Similar to how basically anytime one DAW gets something really cool and unique, 6-18 months later every DAW has their own version of it.
It's the DAW version of direct modeling in the 3D world.
omg it has an in-built rolling sampler
you can do this in reaper too with BirdBird's global sampler script (also a plugin for other DAWs, just called rolling sampler)
Thats great, thanks. More please.
Love the multi-tempo guide idea in a DAW! Midicake ARP can do this for MIDI.
This shit's fucking wild.
So glad I clicked this link
the noise generator is similar to Aparillo synth, its not as complicated as you think. its actually very simple to understand.
This is like a super neat Visual Scripting interface for Audio in a Game Engine.
Looks so interesting !!
Ivy Lab just dropped a new single called "blockhead" ...wander if they used this thing
Wow, what a unique approach to the DAW!
Great Vid. Thanks
First I've seen of this so thanks for posting about it -- I've got interested in non-traditional workflows recently and this one looks tremendous.
It's magix music maker, the first one. Just without the grid. I really liked editing with magix.
This is definitely cool but you can achieve this in Reaper using the global sampler script. Totally a game changer and I like it a lot
This looks fresh. A cool tool to get or stay creative. At least for new inspiration. I like unconventional concepts - whether good or bad, they are innovative to begin with.
Ok.... I'm sitting here watching this and..... I found myself filled with somewhat giddy wonder!
I use Reaper and love it,but this is just crazy enough to bubble up some new juices.....👍
Thank you...Wonderfully creative, and super interesting.
I thought this was a reference to the legendary producer Blockhead himself 😭
A brilliant video. Really helpful too. Many thanks!
This is like playing a 2D game in a 3D platform
this looks incredible, thanks for sharing
thanks for sharing, this looks awesome.
Someone needs to show the Blockhead DAW to Blockhead the hip hop producer
deffo had a burial/ fred again vibe to it
I wonder how importing and exporting stems would work, because it looks like automation and stem processing would be fun
Most intriguing. The future DAW or … a DAW within a DAW.. Certainly very unique.
There was software during 2000 that gave you the ability to make strange sounds, this reminds me of that.
You mean, like pretty much _every_ software that lets you manipulate sounds? Yeah, this reminds me of those too.
Metasynth?
@@mvsr990 actually no, I can't remember but this is very nice.
soundshaper? (edit: that one is even weirder and much harder to use... :D)
@@22222Sandman22222 I just don't remember but it was something odd.
It looks like most control of the daw is the mouse. If this comes to raspberry pi this would be perfect for the uconsole
something for experimental artists for a change.
this is really cool, well made video
I love this daw, y'know, because of the implication.
It looks good for fx making software
Looks very interesting. I'd check it out if it wasn't for 'Usine Hollyhock'. I frickin' love that software.
Would love that carnival thing as a vst :o
All of this stuff is super easy to do in Ableton.
This would be dope for sample based songs
This would be sick with MIDI and plugin support.
That looks awesome
This would be great for workflow with modular synths.
The musician's gonna flip and get mad. The sound designer will do a cartwheel. 😂
My biggest complaint with mainstream DAWs is that you need to jump through hoops to achieve any sort of freeform/off-grid arrangement. I'm not even talking about experimental production, but it feels like adding those desirable little details that make the difference between a demo and a finished song is an afterthought in most software. Blockhead feels like a huge step in the right direction and I hope it lights a fire under the other software companies' asses. After twenty years it's time to see some innovation.
This would be so sick as a VST with multi out, or maybe even an auv3 on iPad.
or just rewire compatible
@@Arkansya yeah that would be cool too. Though I think require has lost quite a bit of support in recent years unfortunately.
check out Bespoke Synth it's another really weird DAW
Audacity is destructive. I would even call this non destructive Audacity.
It's a destructive workflow. That's what he meant. In the world of digital workflows, destructive doesn't necessarily mean what it sounds like it means.
I too noticed the similarities with Audacity though, as Audacity renders the effected audio as a whole new waveform. It seems like a limitation, until you realize that Audacity came from a time when computers weren't very powerful. Rendering the audio like that saved processing power, and didn't sacrifice anything in terms of capabilities.