Some days, I want to have a four track recorder and an instrument, and nothing else. Or just my voice.
Knowing that if the most common forms of digital music production fell apart tomorrow, I’d still be able to release something that qualifies as music, helps when it comes to coping with the morass that is modern music production. I can just stick some piezo mics on a couple of logs, route that to a portable multitrack, make some sounds and call it a day. Or more likely, record an entire album with a digital piano and a workstation or rompler, either hardware or software (these days, software, most likely).
It’s strange though that the easiest workaround to (not actually free, in terms of time and effort) software is non-free software, which turns out to be…more freeing, in terms of production and the time/energy involved therein. “Free” software and modular overlap each other in a variety of ways, and it shows. Further, not all “free” software is “free as in free of charge”, which FOSS bros will be glad to remind you of if you have the misfortune to try to have a conversation with them. It’s far too easy for it all to turn into a time and/or money suck, and who needs that.
Save for solutions that cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, the entry-level cost for producing music on your own is at or close to zero, as long as you have a computer. There’s some exceptions to that, such as audio interfaces, but they largely can be worked around for a lot of users, given time and/or patience and/or savings/credit (as in, $200 or less). If needed, I could write a novel in a text editor, and the same or close equivalent goes for recording an album. So I’ll celebrate small victories, for as long as I can.
