IT'S ALL COMPUTER

It was quite a few years ago that I decided I no longer wanted to deal with computers onstage. It was a dogmatic decision based on fear and some random ideal of musicality, but it was also born from a frustration: I shouldn't have to use computers onstage for the things I wanted to do.

Rewinding a bit, computers had made things so much better. I carted out a desktop and CRT running FruityLoops (now FL Studio) back when MIDI controllers were just piano keyboards, because you could use your computer keyboard to "play" FruityLoops. Then there was Ableton Live, paired with specialized controllers. Suddenly the perpetual issue of how to actually play electronic music on stage rather than just play back, always difficult with traditional sequencers and tons of pre-built effects chains, was solved. Even full improvisation was possible.

But after a brief period of time when computers were both cheap and reliable enough to bring out, it seemed like stuff just kept getting worse. This is, of course, Apple and other manufacturers engaging in Cory Doctorow's famed Enshittification, but if I'm being real it was always in the back of my head. If this thing crashes, I'm fucked. For people with enough money to instantly replace a computer, no biggie. Reinstall the software on a new machine, load up your files from a backup, and you're back on track. After all, you can buy a new Macbook at a Best Buy in likely any place you're going on tour. But if you don't have the means for a new MacBook — which also happens to be the device you do your personal finances, bookmarks, blogging, and day job on — that's a different proposition.

Side note: You can pry my em-dashes from my cold, dead, hands, clanker.

So... after An Empty Room graduated from a two-piece to a slightly more traditional trio, I decided I wasn't gonna do computers anymore. Enter 2025, I look at my setup for SHIVERING, and in the words of a great idiot... IT'S ALL COMPUTER.

How did this happen?

There's the MPC One, which has the form-factor of a classic Roger Linn creation, but also a multi-touch screen, a Linux kernel foundation, and a UI built with KDE's Qt, which Redditors recently discovered bears a strong resemblance to an airline seat-back entertainment interface.

There's our digital mixer, which doesn't even have actual faders, but does have a wifi router.

And there's the MOD Dwarf, a "virtual modular" pedal that I use to create both effects and synth/sample patches that I imagine in my head, and which I strongly suspect is just a literal Raspberry Pi inside a custom German-built enclosure. It's open-source, though!

My Roland SP-404 and Monoprice DMX controller are the only things that don't strongly vibe "wait a minute, isn't this a computer?" and even they're probably just computers.

But I don't look at these things and run, panicked, back to analog synths. They're powerful, flexible, purpose-built, and fun.

Modifying the ban??

So... I guess my computer ban has become a general purpose computer ban.

Almost. I do use an iPad for MIDI-triggered live video, but I'd like to change that someday with another purpose-built (probably Raspberry-Pi-based) machine.

I don't have a point, here. Just finding it funny that I'm still swinging on the hardware-vs-computer pendulum after almost 30 years, but now I'm completely unsure of which side I'm actually on.