A video about Blockhead (experimental digital audio workstation) 

There is soooo much innovation in this thing. I love this approach. Granted it might not have the full suite of what a traditional songwriter might want - is is far superior to traditional DAWs for pure sound design and experimentation. I would imagine an electronic music maker or movie sound designer or game sound maker would love this

This is absolutlely brilliant...you know that feeling when producers make a mistake that leads to them discovering a cool sound they never would've thought of...this daw is pretty much designed for producers to make those sorta mistakes, again absolutely fuckn brilliant.

Insane. I don't know if people will make songs fully in it, but for sound design this is probably the quickest easiest workflow that's even possible

As a hobby musician and programmer, this is blowing my mind in two ways.

Also no software can be everything to all people. This fills a hell of a niche that’s been missing. Keep going. This kind of thing truly excites me

you have no clue how excited i am about this, this design is incredibly forward thinking

Looks and sounds really cool, I'm excited to try it out at some point! *Timestamps:* 0:00 concept of Blockhead (?) 2:31 tempo guides 5:05 cloning (Ctrl+Shift+C) 6:06 manipulators 7:16 parameters and plugins 10:53 more manipulators 12:06 input buffers 13:14 scrubbing 14:11 granular resynthesis 15:49 bouncing 16:19 macros 18:04 macros and manipulators 19:48 effects 22:19 slicing 23:44 midi (WIP) 24:40 choke 26:19 drag to macro 26:30 nested macros 27:53 macro input 28:45 manipulators inside macros 29:46 send/receive buses 31:00 alpha build access 31:33 "babbling" If I got any of these wrong feel free to correct me lol (Also wanted to mention that you seem absolutely genuine about all this and I love it :D )

This is INSANE. This is so far removed from the textwalls of traditional daws. And the backround recording is such an awesome feature.I almost always choke when the record button is turned on.

I clicked on red clickbait arrow. Was not disappoint. You have created new Thing. Thank you for doing that and also for red clickbait arrow.

I may not necessarily be the intended demographic as the music I make is primarily based around live instrumentation, but my initial foundation was in electronic music, and this is so creatively inspiring. the lack of a set tempo for the early arranging process is such a freeing concept for songwriting in-daw, the idea of this fully visualizable top-down signal chain is so intuitive, and the ability to so efficiently compartmentalize the building blocks of a song through macros feels like it would be such an incredible augmentation to my workflow. I rarely ever make two comments on one video haha, but this absolutely warranted it. amazing work.

Love the ability to basically put a lot of things into a macro block and basically make infinitely many sub universes of sound

This is a very innovative DAW. Also, the workflow seems incredibly intuitive unlike a lot of other software. This has a lot of potential. I can see myself transitioning to Blockhead!!!

okay yeah this is utter genius. I use FL and i'm amazed by how many unaddressed needs you perfectly hit on here. i think the only really difficult thing is lacking compatibility with vst stuff is gonna require that you or your community builds out tons of miscellaneous stuff and can't benefit from the current ecosystem as much. still gonna try it tho

i LOVE the way effects are handled. this would be insane for sketching out songs. stuff like the permanent buffer recording and the looseness with which you can apply effects and stuff is awesome, feels like a really unique blend of destructive and non-destructive workflows

Wow, I'mwitnessing something absolutely new in the world of DAW at its brith! This experimental approach and the freedom.. it's like drawing with sound. immediately subscribed on Patreon. Can't wait to try it out

I have no musical background but i love to mess around with music software and hardware. What you have made is incredible looking, the ability to create on the fly and adjust each sound so quickly is exactly what someone like me needs. I want to go in, play around and hopefully find something that sounds good and build from there. Great work, hope you keep developing this further

This project solves multiple problems I've had with traditional daws and trackers since 12 years ago. Latching control over reverbs or "effects" (default off as ofposed to default on). Temporal control and feedback of sends and receives like modular. Native pitching of tracks like a dedicated digital console. Subordinate "blocks" like objects in animation software. I never thought I would see the day where someone set out to this the right way. There's still a long ways to go to correct the naive design decisions of music arranging software. But this is perhaps the biggest leap in innovation of these past 10 years. You have my full support.

I hope you are aware how many peoples dreams you make come true... I actually shouted at a few points and flapped my hands cause I couldn’t just only watch what I see and accept it... I had to express my wonder... it’s hard to find words, holy moley you have gifted the experimental music world with something truly amazing. This sets a benchmark. And it’s a one guy operation.... Its all about dedication, that is what this shows again so wonderfully. Focus and a will to create ❤❤❤❤❤❤ I cant even comment on single features, all of it is just BONKERAGEOUSLY WONDERMENTAL !!!!!

I really love the consistency of the ideas, e.g. if you can make macros out of stuff, and macros are stuff then you can make macros out of macros. The same philosophy seems to apply throughout, and it's really refreshing.

I always wanted multiple simultaneous BPMs in a project. This is super innovative in many ways and I'm incredibly excited how it develops in the future.

I feel like the whole video you’re like “i don’t know if this is making any sense” and I’m just like “oh my god this is amazing!” I’m super excited to try this out, such an incredible free-form architecture you’ve created! I’ve been longing for this!

This is insane. I can't imagine how much work you put into this. It's really inspiring to see so much innovation from just one person. Can't wait to see the final product.

0_0 Whooo-Aaaahhh! Geezer music dork here... You have given me hope for the future. So good. The future of DAWs. Or... You could make a VST that someone could run inside of their DAW of choice. A truly creative space, right. Create the 'block', 'sample', groove', vocal line, whatever and just drop your creation on a track in the DAW. Something like this would be wonderful for DAWs that SUCK at working with samples. This is sooo fast! Dude... Keep on kickin' ASSSS!

I find this unquantized workflow with all of these crazy non-destructive options to be mind-blowing. Will definitely have a go at it.

This is the most excited I've been about music production software since I saw FL for the first time in 2008. Brilliant idea. I've wanted something like this for years but modular DAWs like Buzz haven't agreed with me and ended up feeling more limiting than freeing. I continue to use FL because of its wide open playlist where you can just throw down whatever midi or audio etc, though it still creates unnecessary complexity for this type of temporal thinking. This feels like how I've always wanted the FL playlist to work, the level of control and encapsulation is mad in a beautifully inspiring way. Can't wait to get my hands on this. Thank you for innovating and sharing your ideas with the world.

This is crazy good, I don't think I've ever seen so many innovative and unusual features in a digital audio workstation

This is so creative, it might bring forth new music GENRES(!). Exciting.

This is some crazy, unique masterpiece of creation software. Outstanding work! I can't wait to see what other insane brilliance you build into it. You should feel immensely proud of what you've accomplished so far.

I love the way effects are handled. It looks so easy to just drop them in when needed rather than having them run constantly across a track. Can't wait to play with this! PS: Thank you for putting this out into the world.

This is absolutely incredible. You are creating the future of sound design here. I am so excited to see where you take this ❤

I absolutely love this! I can remember thinking of exactly this some time ago and wondering why it didnt exist. Its like a tracker but for the modern era. Just brilliant

I can't imagine that this is the kind of thing you could use to create Despacito or record a 4-piece rock act. But as a creative tool for sitting down with and not knowing where the hell you're going to end up, I can't think of anything like it. Seems absolutely amazing. It's like the difference between buying Serum and playing with a modular synth.

This is amazing! My favorite DAW is Caustic 3 for android. It's midi focused but there's something special about how you can easily get in a flow state while using it. This is the first thing I've seen that looks similarly "comfy" like Caustic, even though it's a totally different concept.

I used to make personal music as a side hobby, wasn't amazing at it...I haven't touched music in a long time. But seeing a program like this with all of these capabilities and smart ideas blows my mind...I wanna try this thing someday. Coming from video editing, this setup makes so much sense to me...the splicing especially, revealing the "cut" section of a track is very similar to Sony Vegas. Often to do crazy blends and cuts in audio tracks I would just take it out of the DAW and import it into Sony Vegas where it's just much easier. I think something you should think about implementing is the quick ability to fade out the beginning and ends of tracks...I know that's what a manipulator can do but having a manipulator track on top of every single track you want to fade would get convoluted, it would be nice if it was just built into every audio track's UI like in video editing programs. In Sony Vegas they let you scale the fade and select the curve you want.

Great job! I probably wouldn't be able to change my old habits and use this as my goto DAW for making music but it looks like a great tool for creative sound design sessions when you want to make something fresh or a starting point when you're stuck without any ideas and need some extra inspiration. Honestly, I can imagine Blockhead as a plugin or some kind of sandbox mode built into another DAW you use as a sketchpad for your music. You could design your sample/loop or whatever and when it's ready you can just drag it into a playlist in your DAW as a single waveform, but still have the power to edit it in the Blockhead window at any time

That recursive self referencing macro behaviour is pretty neat. I also came up with something very similar to this but in a completely different field.

Did you make this for Burial? 🙃 Looks sick, I wish Bitwig had this kind of arranger timeline...

I started off this video not knowing if how I felt about this. But I’m not halfway through and gotta say man this is truly something NEW in our community. Can definitely see the potential in this and also think the younger generation would really enjoy it

The ramifications are beyond my understanding... Something tells me that this software will kick off some new really crazy genre of music. Looking forward to see that.

This is the most exciting thing I've seen in audio in YEARS!!! Genius!! So excited about this! Patreon here I come!!!

12:33 this auto Stop for the mic is INSANE! as a youtuber who edit tones of videos, this DAW is not just for Musicians. it can be used for video editors as well! It have A LOT of potentional. Love it!

This seems like something I've been aiming at recently, I want a kind of, audio sketchbook/notepad. You're heading in a great direction. I'm also picking up Reason and Renoise soon, they're proven tools in the space that I'm probably gonna use having tried them, but I'm massively intrigued by your direction here and will be keeping an eye on the project man, if you get a core stable version running I'd probably switch up/incorporate this. Great stuff.

The granular synthesis that you said would sound awful was actually instantly cool. I loved it.

This is insane! Sidechaining would be so fun and easy in this. Just create a macro that contains an amplitude modulator and then multiple different "parent-macros" for the different beats and stuff...

this is actually insane. "you can layer two beat grids, i don't know why you'd want to do that" I know exactly why i'd want to do that! Polyrhythms!

Love the idea of this. Can't wait to give it a try. This treats the DAW like a tool for music creation, not a tool for recording. I like that.

Bro, this guy talks like an actual dev does. And this thing looks freaking coool.

Hi! I'm a sound editor and re-recording mixer who mainly uses PT and what I'm seeing here seems pretty revolutionary for sound creation. The amount of freedom you allow the user to have and how quickly you can both record and re-record and pop in sounds is honestly astonishing. I've been wanting a DAW for something like sound design for a long time, especially one that would allow me to use a feature similar to the loopback function you have already built in. Subscribed on here and Patreon and I'm looking forward to seeing more updates from you in the future!

absolutely incredible work sir. looking forward to it's future development, and I beg of you please keep this IP and build it organically if the big names come knocking with $$$, you're truly onto something here.

Innovative!! Great for experimentation. We have enough traditional DAWs and workflows on the market - this is bringing something very unique and is absolutely worth attention. Keep at it - keep the unique ideas. Many musicians and sound designers will be very very interested in this tool.

This is such a unique sound design workflow, I think you may want to target this at movie / experimental sound designers. its kindof a dream workflow

Whoah this is totally amazing already. I have been pushing my templates in Performer to be more of a sandbox, to emulate older working environments, other stuff. This seems to take that in more fundamental direction. I love love love what you are doing. Anything that pulls away from the NI etc ecosystem is also very positive. I am very excited about what you are achieving.

This is going to be a game changer!!!! I make a lot of glitch music, and the constant Loopback feature is just a stroke of pure genius for sound design. I can't wait

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. Another story of how a guy with a different perspective, passion and determination can change the game entirely and let some team coders of many brands think what dfck have they´re doing with their time and creativity for a loooong time. Fresh, raw, brutal honest and humble. There no respect for how things HAVE TO BE DONE here, cause this use to be the main problem sometimes, there is no sense to have such a restrictive thing when you want to just let it GO. This seems like a huge garden where you can run, laugh and cry. There’s no sense to me to talk about the missings yet instead of enjoying this new world. Our creativity just goes on free and our tools to express and explore all them just need to be as open and free as life itself. I came & I WILL STAY. CHEERS and please, STAY DIFFERENT

This is insane. Something I have seeked for a long time. No grid, just blank canvas.

This is like you took the ideas of what a DAW should be from my brain and actually implemented them. I absolutely LOVE what you've done and hope that you can continue to make progress on it!

i love this limitlessness and this whole 'acts like u would expect' kinda concept.

I've always thought it to be limiting how DAWs expect you to kinda know what you want to do before you get in there by picking the tempo - when you made that point I felt seen ngl. This is a crazy project, can't wait to see where it goes from here

That soundwave sculpting s gorgeous

Awesome stuff! Makes me want to try it out. One comment I have is actually for the video itself. You should try improving the presentation. Write a script so there's a structure and less wandering/thinking. I think that would boost the video a lot. Then maybe show a finished track as a demo if you have one (or one someone submitted). I'm very interested to see what can be made with this. Good luck to you!

As a noise and experimental electronic musician, I am obsessed with this.

Really sick, any plans to make this open-source? I would still pay for this

Only this demo in an experimental alpha takes you to the Olympus of innovation and sonic experimentation. You're 10 years ahead of current DAWs (Reason user here by the way). I really wish only one of the dozens of features were implemented. I shake your hand because I find myself in front of an authentic genius. And if you ever market this thing you will have me as a customer for sure! Cheers!

Completely creative and out-of-the-box thinking! Can't wait to see where this is going. Potentially a game changer in the way we are used to creating music. keep up this great work!

I love the concept, and look forward to seeing how the project turns out.

wow this is super cool and I feel like a bunch of new genres are going to be created using this

Holy sheet you made this by yourself? This is so full of cool ideas! I'm just a caveman that uses Audacity so this is the first time I see a DAW and not get intimidated. It all looks so intuitive. All of it looks so powerful yet so simple, I hope you keep developing this thing, it's awesome! Quick feature request: a video player track. The only thing it needs to do is play the video as you go through the timeline. This would make timing stuff to a video very easy! I hope it's not too out of the scope of the project but even a rudimentary ffplay window sync'd to the timeline would help. Man, I never knew I wanted to see a software like this before. So cool!

Honestly, just the way tempo is handled is incredible. I would love to be able to start recording an instrument (MIDI or Audio), then easily conform the tempo to what I played and build around that. I find that is where my creativity is killed most of the time using Ableton Live, Logic, or Pro Tools. I know I could record and then tempo map, but it is so tedious that it totally kills my flow state. This seems like an amazing solution to that.

The pitch and stretch algos are fantastic , handles the scaling very well ! cheers , glad to be part of the journey of this DAW now ! singed up for Patreon !

That clickbait arrow got me 😂 The Modulator and FX blocks are super convenient 🤔👍 I really dig that sample track at the bottom and the granular as well. Super cool approach here! When is this available to mess with? 🧐 Alpha builds, very cool 👍 Will check this out! Great work! 🙌🎶

The sheer speed of responsiveness alone is mind-blowing. Just knowing this work flow can exist is making me feel a level of stress relief from working in some of these other slower DAW workspaces

a daw with swag

Happy to be a a Partron while you figure it all out! Played around for a few last night, very neat.

This looks fantastic, can't wait to try it out. Are you looking to open source it? I would gladly write some code to help out in my spare time, even if it's just simple bug fixing

this is one of those ideas that seems obvious in retrospect but it took a truly original thinker to come up with it in the first place. i'm absolutely fascinated by this project and i can't wait to try it out for myself!

woah, is this yours? this is actually incredibly appealing for the kind of thing I've been trying to implement into my music, I've been wanting to use a DAW that is similar to audio editing software such as Audacity or Wavepad for singular sample manipulation and weird rhythmic stuff and this seems like it does just that. I will most definitely check this out, I see a lot of potential in this already! also, I wonder what's the plan when v1.0 is ready; I hope it ends up being open source 🥺

I love this so much. I think it encourages experimentation which is my favorite approach when making music. This project looks like it’s a happy accident generator. Great work!

Loved the thumbnail, loved the features, loved the DAW and how you deconstructed it. Awesome job, really looking forward to this project.

This is awsome!!! Will Blockhead be open source? I love these ideas!

The thumbnail magically brought this to my timeline and I hate that that is what it takes for me to find a cool project like this lol

Looks real cool. Are you planning to open source it at some point? Just asking because hoping it will get continuity it deserves. Btw tou sound like mr Bill.

10000% more intuitive than being limited to a fixed tempo grid

sometimes i end up doing something creative/experimental, then bouncing it.. creating a new project file based on that wave file.. rinse and repeat. it's fun, i like it - but i end up with multiple project files because it just seems to be the only way i can really do what i want to do without getting bogged down with trying to shoehorn it into the daw. im not doing anything too complicated either, it's just it gets complicated this way.. obviously trying to go back a step or two is a nightmare. - i think this is something your software would eliminate entirely. just throw ideas down and keep going and if i change something earlier in the process it seems like it would magically update everything else - feels a bit like parametric CAD but for sound. i refuse to use patreon, so i dont know how that pans out, but i've mentioned your video to another youtuber in the production space so maybe if they get around to it at least it'll be found by more people. good luck with it all

In reached the end of the video and I'm almost in shock. One person. Made that? And you release on Mac and Linux??!! I'm a web developer and musician, and I can't imagine how you've coded something like this. I'd actually love to dig into it a bit, and that's before even thinking about what I'd do with the software itself. High, high praise! And you seem like such a down to earth humble person. Wow. What a hit from the RU-vid algo. Patreon here I come.

I absolutely love it!!! However I’ve not been able to successfully save a project yet without blockhead crashing 😭 I’m on a Mac…….

I've always had trouble wrapping my head around other DAWs. This is the first one that feels intuitive to me & I completely agree with what you said at the end. You barely had to explain anything for it to just make sense in the way I think about sound. Keep up the great work😁

Idk if I’ll use it to do whole songs but as a sound design sample generation tool this is really really exciting. The built in noise envelope is genius. Thank you so much for building this, it must be so much work.

As a musician I must say, this looks incredibly handy. Having two different tempo grids to snap to would be amazing for polyrhythmic arragmngements. Even just the ability to record something and then measure the BPM based on your sample... seriously genius.

The sound design potential in this program is exactly what I wanted and more. I will definitely be using this.

Dude, what. I’m 5 mins in and in love with this. You’ve got an incredible mind

Oh man, dont appologise for this thing being an unusual workflow. Its a reflection of your unique brain, and thats something to be proud of. This shit is absolutely loaded with innovative new ideas, dont apologise for it, be proud of it dude.

Remember seeing bits of this that you uploaded on twitter a while back but really cool to see how far its come along!

The realtime updating waveforms are blowing my mind also. Especially once you start adding the effects and their waveforms show what the effect is playing back.

The handling of tempo was sexy as someone who does a lot of film scoring

@colugo This looks absolutely bonkers. What a masterpiece of a start!

this has a lot of potential for soundtracks for films, videogames etc. the idea where you have tempo guides but no global tempo makes it easy to line things up with what’s going on in the media. as long as you can automate the tempo guides and make them gradually get faster or slower.

I'm just here for the big red arrow... Now that I'm here, that looks like a pretty interesting setup. A lot of very cool things to jump in and play with.

Please don't apologize! Your approach is genius and refreshing.

@15:30 ish "non of is gonna sound good btw" Wtf, that was some insanely cool sounds, absolutrly delish

Only clicked because of the enticing thumbnail, stayed because of the innovation.