It took many years, but I’m finally taking the plunge into the technological end of my music-making. Aside from my microphone and associated accessories, I’ve been removed from—if not accidentally averse—to wires and whatnot. I’m always with someone who’s more adept at working the effects, sounds, and PA. A near-luddite, it seems, I just plug in, blow, and move my fingers. Sure, I’ve done a lot of recording (mostly scratch demo work) at home, but it’s a far cry from anything covered in my music technology coursework from years past.

The times are changing, indeed.

After months, if not years, of musing about working with recording and effects on my own, I finally took the plunge a couple months back and got Ableton Live. My learning curve has been steep, a bit frustrating, but overall quite fun. It’s also been a lot of new information to take in. Latency, new hardware, etc. For a while, I felt like I was doing more reading and researching than tinkering and experimenting. It’s been quite the humbling remedial independent study in music technology, but nonetheless enjoyable.

My goal is twofold: to have a more sophisticated and listenable home recording setup, and to eventually perform with live effects. The latter has a ways to go, but the former is coming along nicely. The rabbit hole is endless, and I’ll of course set my limits, otherwise I’ll accomplish nothing while in search of more and better everything. But as of now, I’m glad to have gone down this road. As with improvising and now with tech, it’s refreshing to completely start at zero and see what happens…