The Challenges of Creating and Performing Music

Open Labs is a company made up of musicians and producers. All of them have been in bands that perform; most still are in bands. Several of them have produced songs and albums of other bands. One scores music for movies. While the musical genres vary, as well as the instruments played, there is one similarity:

They want to make the music creation and performance experience process better.

During the past year we have gotten feedback from our customer base, as well as prospective customers about the music performance and creation process. The insights have reflected strong feelings about workflow as well as features. From the conversations and discussions a number of common elements have emerged:
- Musicians want the creative process to fun not technical
- Musicians want technology to manage their music, not them
- Musicians want their live experience to be easy, flexible and stable
- Musicians want Open Labs functionality and quality at a lower cost
- Musicians want products today, not future product announcements

At some level these are clichés that everyone can agree on. However, the specific detail behind these fundamentals makes for a real challenge. Let’s take a deeper dive on the first two particular areas that musicians want addressed.

Musicians want the creative process to fun not technical. The specific area of focus for musicians is the balance between complexity and capability. DAWs are extremely powerful tools for musicians to produce professional quality music. However, learning how to use most DAWs is a time consuming exercise with multiple windows and pull down menus. Many musicians are looking for an easy way to get an idea into a digital format prior to using a DAW to fine tune it. The frustration was best summed up by one producer, “Sometimes it takes so much time to get my system set up that I lose the creative idea in the process.”

Musicians want technology to manage their music, not them. There are an amazing number of sounds available to performers and producers. Although finding the sound you want and managing it on stage is very difficult today. Musicians need to be able to have seamless song transitions on stage. There is nothing worse for a performer than to have their music crash during a live performance. Musicians want technology to protect them from crashes, make finding sounds easier and managing set lists of songs seamless.

Tomorrow, we will examine the last three broad requirements below:
- Musicians want their live experience to be easy, flexible and stable
- Musicians want Open Labs functionality and quality at a lower cost
- Musicians want products today, not future product announcements

There is good news on the horizon….soon…..very soon.