I built my own DAW with no undo

On getting lost in possibility, and building software with edges.

Software, generally, has moved in one direction for 50 years: more features, more options, more editing. In other words, more ways to change your mind later. I’ve been using music software for the last 10 years, and I still get lost in how easy it is to go in 100 directions at any given moment. Sometimes I don’t want 100 directions. I want a few clear ones. Enough to keep moving, not so many that I disappear into them.

A lot of musicians turn to tape machines here. Tape has a particular workflow and clear boundaries to push up against, but the problem is it’s largely inaccessible. And, I happen to be a little impatient. Finding a decent machine takes a fair amount of time and research, on top of making sure it works well, getting it all connected, and keeping it maintained.

I started to wonder what it would look like to take the principles of tape workflow, and bake them into an easy-to-use piece of software. Not a tape emulation. More like a modded 8-track that happened to live inside a computer. So I got to work.

Here’s the first drawing I made:

I discovered pretty quickly that making a tool that actively pushed against this grain of expansion was a sort of conundrum. Because, basically, everything in software (including the software that makes other software) is optimized towards expansion. Nothing I wanted to implement was technically that complicated, but the challenge became when, how, and where to restrain. The deeper I got, the more it felt like an exercise in authorship and less like an exercise in execution.

On day 2 or 3, I decided to use a drawing I made last year as inspiration for the interface:

As I tested early versions, it started to feel less like software and more like an instrument. The limitations were unforgiving but the sessions kept going somewhere. At some point it stopped feeling like an experiment and became something I could actually make music with.

I don’t quite remember when, but I started calling it Blueprint. Partly because of the aesthetic I landed on, but mostly because of the way I wanted it to make me think and play. Approaching Blueprint with an idea felt more like opening a door to what a song is, instead of opening the door to infinite possibility. I was getting a better sense of how my ideas could grow when they were rubbing up against something solid. Working within constraints like this isn’t new, but it’s definitely not the norm for software. It’s a workflow traditionally reserved for hardware.

Blueprint, as it stands, is an 8-track ‘machine’ that exists in one window. It has one echo/reverb effect. Its master bus track is reactive so that you can push into it and feel it pushing back. There are no plugins to get lost in. Crucially, it has no undo. So actually, it really only has: do. It is all blue when standing still, and a little red and green when you really get it going. It connects to any audio interface as long as your computer recognizes it.

It is not meant to be a replacement for a traditional DAW. I like to think of it as more of a supplement. For me, it has become a space I return to when I want to think about a song in a different way. Often, a simpler way. When I start songs in Blueprint, they evolve in a way they wouldn’t otherwise. This is, I think, because it has a clear shape. It is something to get to know. It has an opinion. It is something to push into because I designed it to push back.

I sent it to some friends recently, and was pleased with the response. Now it’s open for anyone to play with.

Blueprint is out now for Mac. There’s a free 7-day demo, and it’s $25 for the full version. Check it out at blueprintdaw.com

Open it when you want a few clear directions instead of 100.

— Max H.