what is non linear sequencing?

[tone-def]

you can add reason to the list as well.

i'm not sure this make logic or pro tools linear. you can go to any point in the timeline and drop in. you can reverse stuff and move midi and audio anywhere you like. now a tape machine, thats linear.

i do relize i'm confusing sequencing with recording but there the same thing in DAW.

[oblioblioblio]

I never used Reason but I can't imagine that it has the same deep access to mechanics of sequencing like modular.

Logic and Protools are linear as fck. Completely different to what's being talked about here.

[tone-def]

try telling that to the film industry. DAW IS AS NON LINEAR AS IT GETS! you can do things linear but most people work in a non linear way. you don't have to start at the beginning and work your way to the end. it has more to offer than tape, which is the only linear thing i can think of.

steevio describes his way of working as linear. he hits record and then performs. he doesn't record little bits and then rearrange them which is a non linear way of working. it may be different to modular seqencers but it's still non linear.

[oblioblioblio]

film industry and making techno music are totally different applications of music technology.

Maybe non-linear is the wrong phrase. Maybe there's no real way to describe the joy of working in these methods.

To me it's one million times more enjoyable than putting notes into Ableton, or moving clips around across this big start to finish map.

Classical composers worked in a linear way. With a big score in front of them and planning ahead the big breakdown.

I prefer little machines talking to each other.

[hydrogen]

try telling that to the film industry. DAW IS AS NON LINEAR AS IT GETS! you can do things linear but most people work in a non linear way. you don't have to start at the beginning and work your way to the end. it has more to offer than tape, which is the only linear thing i can think of.

steevio describes his way of working as linear. he hits record and then performs. he doesn't record little bits and then rearrange them which is a non linear way of working. it may be different to modular seqencers but it's still non linear.

yup... its just words not too much to think about i think about... unless you seriously can time travel or distort time.

I like steevio's term "fractal sequencing" too me this makes a lot of sense for a lot of my favorite techno and how it sounds and evolves overtime.

[steevio]

try telling that to the film industry. DAW IS AS NON LINEAR AS IT GETS! you can do things linear but most people work in a non linear way. you don't have to start at the beginning and work your way to the end. it has more to offer than tape, which is the only linear thing i can think of.

steevio describes his way of working as linear. he hits record and then performs. he doesn't record little bits and then rearrange them which is a non linear way of working. it may be different to modular seqencers but it's still non linear.

i thought we were talking about non linear 'sequencing' not ways of working.

recording is linear which ever way you sequence, rendering in a DAW / tape whatever.

theres a fine line between arranging and sequencing, what youre talking about is non-linear arranging imo. (btw. i have used non-linear arranging in my tunes for a long time, although now i prefer to capture live performances)
the term sequencer came originally from modular synthesizers, and of course has been appropriated by first software sequencers and now DAWs, so obviously the definition is open to interpretation, but which ever way you look at it, what i'm talking about is very different to working with a DAW.

the final result can be non-linear which ever way you sequence.

[pafufta816]

so all software DAWs are non-linear.

i really don't know what they were talking about now. they were saying software was linear because it used a timeline.

I guess because of the time line its geared to create linear music. But once you are recording anyways and leaving it at that you would have a linear output i think...

Unless you have some way to continually modify the output overtime then you might have something non-linear? i.e. ableton clip gid... but still you render the output again... you've got something linear lol. not gonna escape that unless you can time travel i guess.

granular effects can be "non-linear". take a scatter processor for example. this takes audio from the input stream, and chops it at random points (which can be adjusted by user). these random bits are then moved (user specified) within a certain range of time. the output stream is randomly rearranged audio.

you can use this for mixing/mastering purposes. rearrange a piece of audio so that all parts of the song are equally distributed in the output stream, ie the output has parts from the beginning, middle, and end of original audio file are nearly equally scattered in the output. you can then look at a spectrograph to see acoustical propreties of your recording space. this would describe the recording devices possible range of recordable freq's pretty well. you could take thumbprints of your hardware for mixing reference with this granular technique.

[steevio]

DAW IS AS NON LINEAR AS IT GETS!

surely this is a bit meaningless bro,

alot of music made on DAWs these days is about 'as linear as it gets' just in the same way alot of music made on analogue sequencers is.

surely its the musician who dictates whether his music is linear or not.

sorry for being argumentative, but you know what i'm like

edit
i'd just like to say that i'm not sure why have to label things, hydrogen is right.
we should just rejoice in the fact that we have so many different ways to do things now compared to the not so distant past, surely it must mean more variety in electronic music.
how we each intepret the terminology is irrelevant as long as it works for us.