2020-03-24 DAW Options and Deliverables

This message is mostly for the future. But if any student wants to jump in and participate ASAP, hit me up at support@brucetambling.com. Or, feel free to layer your current assignment deliverables with this new vision. It's all good.

Pro Tools Certification Students

For students in Avid Pro Tools Certification classes, the main take away in this message is:

Moving forward, I will require PT Cert assignments to submit ENTIRE, fully functional, Pro Tools Session folders (compressed as ZIP files)
- NOT required for this Winter 2020 quarter. But you are welcome to submit full sessions if you can
Pro Tools is only one of many DAWs
- Understanding how to collaborate with different platforms is super important (and fun)

General Music Tech Students

Working 100% online from my private studio in San Jose has really inspired us to step up our game with collaboration workflows. Pro Tools remains the #1 platform in the professional audio production industry. But music technology has arrived to the point where is DOESN'T really MATTER what DAW anybody uses. At the end of the day, we are exporting and delivering our work as a stereo WAV file. Nobody knows, or cares, what DAW we use. "At the end of the day, press PLAY!"

In an interest to best support our music technology students, assignment deliverables have been "DAW agnostic" for quite awhile. This has included: MP3s, Screenshots and even Screencast videos for various assignments.

Today, I got a crazy idea. What if I installed ALL of the major DAWs on my computer? And, what if we all agree to collaborate with a collection of 3rd party plugins? Theoretically, this would mean I could RECALL your EXACT project, with ALL the elements. That would be AMAZING! I would totally be able to review ALL the details of your work.

This is, in fact, what I do with professional clients and private one-on-one lessons where students bring drives into my studio or share full projects through a cloud server. Then I can REALLY provide very specific feedback. There have been a couple limitations:

I must have ALL the plugins the student used in the project
- Otherwise we cannot fully recall it
It had to be Pro Tools
- Collaborating between Pro Tools and other DAWs is possible. But, it's a bit of a dance!

I think by opening up the platforms and synchronizing our plugins we can create, collaborate and learn on a whole new level.

Here are DAW platforms I plan to support:

Pro Tools
Logic Pro
Garage Band
Ableton Live
Reaper
Studio One
FL Studio
Audacity
Maybe Cubase?
Don't get me started on Luna!
Did I forget any?

Here are the plugin bundles:

Waves
Fab Filter
Sonnox
Steve Slate
Universal Audio
Sound Toys
Avid
Izotope
Free Plugins
- There are tons of them!
- We will make a list as I install and take inventory
Did I forget any mission critical plugin bundles?

That should be enough! Any one of these 3rd party plugin bundles is ALL we really "need" to produce a hit record. And, if you don't have ANY of these? No problem! You can get 30 day trials. This is plenty of time to work on any assignments.

What format will you deliver? Great question!

Project Folder (in Pro Tools this is called a 'Session Folder')
Everything related to the song is in this folder
- So that I can perfectly recall the project on my computer
Stereo WAV file of project

This is how professionals collaborate. So this is a GREAT way for students to submit assignments!

A few years ago, this level of technology might have seemed overwhelming and crazy. But now, in 2020, my hypothesis is ===> This is DOABLE!

It's a little late to change any of the "requirements" for assignments due this Winter 2020 Quarter. But, we will definitely update and provide some options for those students that are ready to step up to the plate!

That's the news. More details to be provided.