The DAWLESS Dream (And Why It Wasn’t Mine)
One of the goals I was quietly chasing during my studio makeover was the idea of a standalone, DAWLESS setup — a studio where the AKAI Force could act as the central brain, controlling everything else around it, including the Roland SP-404MKII and the Maschine+.
Like many people, I had been watching synth YouTubers jamming away in their studios, surrounded by gear, everything connected, no computer in sight. It looked like a lot of fun.
And it is.
What never occurred to me at the time — and seems painfully obvious now — is that I am not a jamming-style musician. I deeply admire those who are, but it’s simply not how my brain works. I tend to think linearly, build deliberately, and refine over time. Although jamming can be that, my skills don’t facilitate that. Spontaneous hardware jams aren’t really in my wheelhouse.
Still, I was inspired.
Once again — and very much out of character for me — I skipped proper research. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned that careful planning is usually my default approach. For some reason, during this redesign, that habit went out the window. I didn’t fully stop to analyze what these artists were actually doing. Instead, I tried to build something far more complicated than it ever needed to be.
My idea was to create an ecosystem where:
- The AKAI Force could work fully on its own
- The Maschine+ could work fully on its own
- Both units would retain all their independent features
- And somehow… they would all work together seamlessly
At the time, Logic Pro — the DAW I normally use — didn’t yet support Ableton Link. Looking back now, the solution was actually quite simple:
Use Ableton Link to sync the AKAI Force and Maschine+, allowing both to stay independent while remaining tempo-locked. With the Force connected to my other synths, this would have worked perfectly well.
But instead of stopping there, I decided to take this relatively clean idea and complicate it beyond reason.
I tried to integrate:
- Ableton Live multitracking
- The AKAI Force controlling Ableton Live
- The Force sequencing external synths
- Ableton Link syncing the Maschine+
- And everything printing tracks back into a DAW
Even writing that out now feels ridiculous.
I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.
This wasn’t just complex — it was a workflow that made no sense for how I actually work. Keeping track of which device was sequencing what, how clips related to arrangements, what needed to be printed, and in what order was never going to result in finished music for me.
If someone out there is using a workflow like this successfully — that’s amazing. I’m impressed.
But it wasn’t me.
That said, I don’t consider the time I spent exploring this idea to be wasted. I learned a great deal — mostly about what doesn’t work for me. And sometimes that’s just as valuable as finding what does.
This experiment helped point me toward the direction I plan to take moving forward.
It’s now 2026, and while it may sound funny to say, nothing is permanently connected to my DAW yet. To be fair, everything is technically connected — but this year I plan to make a major, more permanent change to how my studio integrates with my computer.
That plan involves adding a piece of gear I’m very excited about.
I just don’t know exactly when I’ll be able to get my hands on it.
More on that in a future post.
