How I Recorded The First Brainstorm

I recently released my first collection of music, and one of the things I wanted to share was the workflow I used to record it.

A big part of the process was something surprisingly simple: my MIDI keyboard is always recording.

Normally, recording music involves opening a DAW, creating a track, pressing record, waiting for the count-in, and then trying to reproduce whatever idea you had.

I wanted almost the opposite.

I wanted to be able to sit at the piano, start playing, and forget that I was recording at all.

Brainstorm

For this I use a small command-line program called Brainstorm, which is part of Div’s MIDI Utilities.

Brainstorm listens to incoming MIDI and automatically captures what I play. That means I don’t have to decide that I’m about to record something.

I can just play.

If something interesting happens, the performance already exists as MIDI and I can go back to it later.

On Linux, I built Brainstorm from source:

git clone https://github.com/dgslomin/divs-midi-utilities.git
cd divs-midi-utilities

mkdir bin
cd src
make -f Makefile.unix
cd ..
cp bin/brainstorm ~/.local/bin

Running Brainstorm

Running it is very simple. Brainstorm writes its recordings to the directory it is started from, so I start it inside the folder where I want to keep my musical ideas.

I use tmux and start Brainstorm in its own window:

tmux new-window -t piano -n brainstorm -c $HOME/music/brainstorm

From there, I run:

brainstorm

This gives me a Brainstorm process that can stay running in the background as part of my normal piano setup.

Connecting Everything with JACK

The other important part of the setup is JACK.

I connect the MIDI output from my keyboard to Brainstorm through JACK and configure things so Brainstorm is always running and listening.

I also use LinuxSampler as the instrument I actually hear while playing. My keyboard’s MIDI is routed to both LinuxSampler and Brainstorm: LinuxSampler generates the piano sound, while Brainstorm quietly records the MIDI performance in the background.

LinuxSampler is a useful part of my setup, and I may cover how I have it configured in more detail later, but it isn’t really the focus of this post.

The important part here is that the whole setup is ready before I start playing.

The result is a workflow where I can walk over to the keyboard and immediately start making music.

There’s no:

“I should record this.”

The recording has already started.

I think that small difference changes the way I play.

Instead of trying to perform something correctly because the red recording light is on, I can improvise freely and decide afterward whether anything was worth keeping.

From Brainstorm to a Release

Eventually, some of those improvisations became the pieces I released.

That makes the name The First Brainstorm especially appropriate. The music wasn’t created by sitting down with the goal of producing an album. It grew out of capturing ideas while I was experimenting and playing.

For me, that’s probably the most interesting part of building creative tools and workflows: removing the little barriers between having an idea and actually capturing it.

Sometimes the best recording interface is one you don’t have to think about at all.

Originally published on Patreon