Recently, a screenshot flashed through my head - an image of a recording software called Traction. This memory took me to a time in my life where I was perpetually fascinated with the suite of tools that one could use to make music. Not only that, I realized with some wistfulness how much I miss the excitement that I had for using these tools. There were so many different kinds of programs, and still are, to make music. But none of them feel like they capture the youthful energy I had of getting into the world of capturing sound.

I spent a whole summer using Cubase LE on my oldest brother's laptop with 1 gig of RAM and 80 gigs of hard drive space. Cubase had a particularly strange UI that I look back very fondly on. It might have been around the time that Apple had started getting into skeuomorphic design, but I don't think Cubase was necessarily aiming to look like a physical hardware recording device.

Take a look at the screenshot above. The hues of each track seemed just the right colors, the gaps between the hues just the right amount. The jogwheel on the bottom of the transport bar (I don't remember it being very useful, but it charms me still). The buttons for each track pop off the screen in their embossed way. I don't mean to glamorize this UI and think that it is the pinnacle of good music software, but I can't say it any other way—I'm nostalgic about it.

And this software—if you didn't pirate it—was so expensive. And there were many different product variations of it. There would be light ("LE") versions, there would be full versions. You could get Cubase, but then you might want its bigger sibling, Nuendo. The differences between them, I'm not really sure to this day. The UI looked a little different and maybe it offered film scoring, for all I know.

Somewhere along here, I started to look at the possibility of tools and would often embed the hope of what I could create into the sets of features and offerings that these tools had. Meanwhile, my middle brother was composing beautiful pieces of music that got recorded onto his zen music player through a tiny pinhole microphone, all of it always sounding so much better than anything I could create. But nonetheless, I moved through these tools and got to know all of them over time. Eventually, I purchased Logic, Ableton, and Reason (not in that order). I spent countless hours happily exploring the depths of these programs. Reason, with its massive wires and cables bouncing as you flipped the rack to display the connections you were building devices. Ableton with its strange Excel-like session-view where you could trigger clips of sound, warp audio, and use a few different sound devices. Logic, with its polished interface and legacy instruments.

And how could I forget Fruity Loops, which predated my exposure to any music-making program? Fruity Loops, a program that I simply never understood at what, 10 years old? The strange tracker, sequencers, the completely confusing VSTs that I loaded. None of them made sense to me. Looking back now, I know all about VCOs and VCFs and LFOs, but at that time they were intimidating knobs that I would eschew in favor of tabbing through presets.

So many good memories. There was so much joy in just exploring, putting things down, but not understanding exactly how to even work with those sounds. Sure, the timeline was simple, I could move clips, but not really understanding the ins and outs of a program could be so liberating. Later when I would become an adult, there were many different jobs, contracts, and projects I took on where knowing the ins and outs of a program were the only way to get things done. But there was no play, it was work.

Recording software was where my obsession with gear began. It behooves me not to have seen it before; that these digital spaces were playgrounds for me.

Years later, the continued collection of these programs became the building of a toolbox that never got opened. Each new release came with new instruments, new features, and new abilities, while I slowly became disinterested in the actual recording and creating of music. After, I would turn then to hardware music devices, hoping that it would inspire me like I had once been with these digital audio workstations. That lasted for some time, but it, too, faded before long. I was in a consumer loop. Each tool offered me the hope of re-finding my capacity to create. When the purchase was complete, I would engage with this new tool, until eventually, I would stop.

I'm unsure what happened in that time. Perhaps I burned out on the act of creating music, putting too much pressure on myself to make a certain kind of music or a music of a certain caliber. And yet days come up now where I feel a loss and a lack. I miss music. I miss having it in my life. I miss making it with other people. I miss the weird, strange, and creative sounds that I made at one point when I had no regard for how good something was or where it would take me if I published it. I think somewhere along the way I profaned the sanctity of something I barely even understood; barely even appreciated. Somewhere, somehow along the way, work sullied play.