Leaping and Bounding

There's nothing that will make you sound more like an old timer than going on and on with comparisons to the "old days". Whatever the "old days" were, they were generally a time when everything was less expensive, less complex and less technical. For me, the "old days" were the '60s and '70s, definitely a time of simplicity, technology-wise. I can't remember a single device, appliance or tool common to most households at that time that a child couldn't operate, save perhaps a sewing machine. Sewing machine technology hasn't changed much because engineers haven't yet found a way to make it more complex than it already is.

Fostex 4-Track Cassette Recorder

I've always been technically-minded to a degree, so as I learned about certain technologies, I wanted
to get my hand on them and learn to use whatever it might be. When video recording began to mature in the 80s, I wanted to learn video editing, yet it usually required expensive hardware that I didn't nor was likely to possess. Video mixers and multiple playback/recording decks were essential, and only the most rudimentary editing was possible unless you had access to the high-dollar hardware that only professional studios and television possessed.

When I learned what multi-track recording was in the 70s, I wanted to experiment with this as well, learning the technologies that the big boys used to make all those hit records I loved. This, too, was out of reach. I didn't even own a 4-track recorder, one of the first accessible multi-track devices. The 4-track was an advanced cassette deck that would record using all 4 of the tracks on a conventional cassette tape, allowing you to create overdubs and to bounce tracks. This was big technology on a small scale.

Multi-track recording progressed. Hardware improved. Stand-alone multi-track machines were developed that used hard-disk and the CD-burning technology common to personal computers, allowing home studio amateurs to mix-down to CD, the going media format at that time. Companies like Fostex, Boss and Tascam were making some happening units then, yet I still found myself on the outside.

My first video capture card, now an obsolete dinosaur.

The strides that personal computing took in the new millenium made many of these things accessible. Those were sweet, heady days for me. I saw all of these technological dreams materialize right before my own eyes.

In the early 2Ks, I built my first computer, a Pentium-based machine (the first machine I built, not the first I owned). Though I don't recall the specifics, the RAM was in the sub-GB range and the HDD wasn't much over that, probably in the 40-60GB range, still spinning at 5400 or less. XP was the OS of the day and was new on the scene.

I had discovered the accessibility of video capture hardware and editing software and was determined to build a machine that I could use to edit video. I bought an entry-level capture card and Sony Screenblast Movie Studio,  Ver. 1.0 (now called Vegas Movie Studio after its parent). Vegas was software that gave me the ability to do complex things, such as video layers and multiple audio tracks on my own computer. With Vegas, I learned the simple beauty of a fade when compared to the coarseness of a whole catalog of other transitions, all which now seem utterly silly and amateurish. I have been able to make quite a few passably good DVDs with Vegas, my limits usually being my own skills and creativity.

I also later bought a Firewire audio interface and an entry-level DAW, Cakewalk's Music Creator. This was my entry into multi-track home studio recording. I've progressed through two versions of Music Creator, to ProTools and am now using Sonar X2 Producer. I love recording technology a bit more than video technology, as cutting edge results for video are out of reach and progressing faster than I can keep up with. Recording, on the other hand, gives me professional-level results with the hardware and software I have, the limits again being my own skill and creativity.

There's a whole lot more to be said, too, if I should include digital photography and Photoshop, but I'll leave that for another time. 

Technology, while it hasn't led us to Utopia nor has it solved any of the truly weighty issues of our time, has liberated creative people in many different ways. These are but two ways technology has liberated me and given me access through doors previously locked.