ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the politics of contemporary digital audio workstations (DAWs) vis-a-vis their ancestral ties to early sound recording, editing, and mastering tools and techniques. Most contemporary DAWs rely exclusively on a multitrack timeline as a visual and functional editing interface. Unlearning the multitrack timeline interface need not result in works that are inaccessible to audiences, but they will challenge the sound writer to think about sound acoustically rather than visually. The DAW's interface simply works to black box, or obscure, those processes in the interest of user-friendliness, which is in itself a political act. The multitrack recording and editing idea spread quickly and remains the most used means of sound writing. Sound writing became much more accessible to the amateur beginning in 1972, when TEAC released the first multitrack recorder intended for home use. In 1980, TEAC released its first cassette version of the 4-track recorder, and ushered a significant change in who could engage with the recording process.
