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0 pointsmjr003y ago0 comments

> Your DAW example would work if DAWs could generate samples, beats, and whole songs by the click of a button. But are you truly the author, then?

They absolutely can, at least with 15-20 clicks rather than 1 at the moment. Drag in drum loop, drag in melodic loop, use Scaler2/Cthulhu/Captain Chords to come up with a chord progression, use a synthesizer preset to play the chords, drag in vocal sample, put on Ozone AI Mastering on the master bus, done. If you sent me back in time to 1990 with that track, people would be really impressed.

As to whether you can claim you're the author, this gets debated a lot. I'll just paste the famous goat farming quote.

> I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I then thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I then thought that programming it was cheating, so I learned to play drums for real. I then thought using bought drums was cheating, so I learned to make my own. I then thought using premade skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I then thought that that was cheating too, so I grew my own goat from a baby goat. I also think that is cheating, but I’m not sure where to go from here. I haven’t made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all.

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mrob3y ago

There's a natural stopping point from a musical perspective, and that's learning to play the drums. Every step beyond that only affects image or cost. There's a huge variety of commercially available drums, so anything you build will likely sound like something you could buy. Even if you make something weird, it will sound like a modified commercial drum, and there are commercial products for drum modification too.

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kif3y ago

I really like the goat farming quote, as we all have to start somewhere. Still, the takeaway isn't that you can find a song on the internet and claim it to be your own creation.