The big "why"

[DoctorCosmos]

I suppose you're wondering, as am I, just what the point is in creating another forum. In the world of facebook groups, reddit, and a plethora of other mechanisms available, is this group really necessary? I mean, can't we all talk about and share our dawless electronic music already? We certainly can, and yet, here this forum is.

Dawless, as it has come to be known, is usually thought of the practice of making electronic music without your computer; I'm talking about that Digital Audio Workstation people are so fond of. Outside of electronic music, people are generally pretty used to making music without computers, so this 'dawless' I'm talking about typically refers to music production styles that "these days" would typically be assigned to a DAW. For me, and many of the people I'm trying to connect with, 'dawless' usually means you have a big pile of music gear and you make music with it in real-time. People 'like me' are usually into synthesizers, samplers, and sequencers. Maybe you even have a collection of cool effects pedals.

Not limited to us synthesizer folk, I see other forms of electronic musician expression as dawless all the same. We, as the dawless, effectively build our own instruments through the clever placement of instruments and modules. But many of us are no stranger to the soldering iron and will happily build an instrument no one has ever seen (or will again). However deep you go with your electronic music, as long as you're writing and performing it with your unique pile of gear, you're one of us.

Now dawless can extend far and wide. There are folk out there who make records dawlessly. By leveraging analog mixing consoles, tape machines, and that one 1176 you keep repairing, you can leave the daw at home for the entire process of releasing recorded music. While I see you, and I love you, this forum really isn't about the craft of recording. And I'll freely admit, I use my daw to make my recordings because i'll never be able to buy enough 1176's.

Here, on dawlessforum.com we're about the making and performing of the music. If that's you, and you love putting that gear together and finding your unique style, you belong here. We're not total sticklers of course, no one will be shunned for a cool in-the-box production, but the people that I really wanna talk to are no stranger to cable management.

That's who we are, at least sort of. Now for the question - why here and not somewhere else? I've certainly had my rounds about the internet, and frankly, I just haven't found the community I was looking for. Yet, I want that community. I see part of the problem in finding that community the platforms that we all tend to be already engaged in. And so a new platform I shall provide.

Just some of my own thoughts as to why I think this forum should exist:

• I find I have a better sense of community in places where the scope and audience are limited. Platforms like Reddit or Facebook, while convenient, are simply too connected to everything. I would rather meet at a place where dawless is the only topic, and not one of many.
• We can set our own community standards instead of having those standards mandated by a corporation (and their shareholders).
• I want to collaborate in a space that's about the music and the art and not about engagement.
• Personally, I would like to promote dawless as an artform wholly differently than other groups I've seen. Longer form content, with little to no focus on 30 second clips. Songs and albums and not just jams. Dawless as a performance that rivals any band or DJ. A deep art form with much left to be discovered and not another avenue for synthfluencing.

There's probably more I'll think of later. But I think this sums up the basics of why I'm starting this forum. And sure, maybe we're never going to be as big as the dawless subreddit, heck, maybe i'll be here by my lonesome for some time. However, I'm willing to bet that if I'm unsatisfied with what's out there, so are some of you - and you are who I'm looking forward to meeting and working with.

And I think with that I'll end this for now. This feels like a good start. Or maybe it isn't, guess we shall see who joins and if we can build a cool little electronic music community in this lonely corner of the internet.