André Michelle

André Michelle built one of the first DAWs (Music Studio) on the internet. What began as a dream project turned into a 16-year-long lesson about persistence and ongoing failures. He now shares his story of building openDAW, a fresh and modern attempt to democratise music production without compromise.

André talks about why openness matters, why saying no is a feature, and why good ideas eventually find their place if you keep going. “If everybody owns it, nobody can steal it” has become a guiding principle for every decision.

openDAW removes barriers like sign-ups, cookie banners, and vendor locks, putting all data management in the hands of the user with no forced cloud or tracking. By working closely with music teachers and musicians, openDAW not only becomes more robust but also lays the foundation for others to extend it. With the openDAW SDK, developers can create their own music production applications.

Transcription

Thank you That’s really nice of you

We had a very short night this morning we had a hotel fire alarm

So I only needed one coffee to be alive today So that’s good

Yeah, we have a lot of ground to cover so let’s jump right into it So unfortunately, I need to wear these glasses for near view field and that’s very annoying because I’m doing these dead moves, right?

All the time to see you That’s unfortunate, but we have to live with that So a couple of things about me So it’s already starting like this I love music That’s something that runs all my life I love sounds, the web, education, creating tools and I love open source because I think we are all standing on the shoulder of giants(...) It’s like when I talk to companies and they want to have everything closed They don’t understand that actually everything they do is still based on open source tools and this is something that drives me as well Some things about me, so I’m actually a very old guy So already in the 90s, I was a techno DJ I was always broke I promised myself if I ever made it, so get rich and famous Then I wanted to build music studios for people like me So there wasn’t a web, there wasn’t software At least not the way that we are used to nowadays So in my imagination, I built a radio studio with drum computers and synthesisers and mixing units and all these things But things changed very quickly I got no training I have Abitur, which is like high school something but I never studied or...

I wasn’t really interested in education back then So nowadays I usually think I should have learned a little bit more about stuff But now we have AI and all these things, so that’s good as well

We will talk about that later

Yeah, so I started with Flash 4, that’s like 1998-ish

I got really good at it for some reason So I always loved math and physics and science in general And that drove me to programming

I got to be known for hacky workarounds So I did basically a lot of things before I really turned 100% into music production

So I did some 3D engines and physics engines and games and all these things But I was actually always waiting for some things that technology gets forward to a point where we can actually create a music stream

So yeah, this is the slide that needed to be, right? So if you’re that old, then you all remember the Glories Flash days I don’t want to say back then everything was better than today That’s definitely not true But things were, at least in my understanding There was a huge creative community and there was a lot of exchange And I don’t know if this is still happening today, so maybe you can tell me that It feels like it’s very...

There are a lot of different places where people talk about very detailed stuff Well, back then the community was basically talking about everything at the same time So game development, physics and hacky workarounds and all these things So everything felt very new and exciting So every day when I woke up I was looking in, back then, a lot of block aggregators And seeing what people built and I was like, "Okay, I need to build that as well And I need to do it better or differently or I can use that for an idea that was popping up(...) So yeah, the web felt like a huge playground basically And there’s something which I really miss today But if someone can catch me up with a few websites that I should check out, then yeah, please come to me

So one thing mentioning, there was no real sound API You could just play static files So something like that Can I get some audio on the laptop?

Or is it me?

So basically, that’s all we got, right?

Very simple, just an animation,(...) just being a bit goofy A little bit later we had Flash 5 and we figured we could actually start a lot of loops at the same time And then handle them with, say,

volume so we can basically mix stuff

Oh, geez So that was in 2001, that’s 25 years ago That’s insane, that’s older than my daughter is And then later in Flash 6 we got an on sound complete event So we could actually track when something stopped playing And people started making hacks around that, like playing a very short loop And then hitting a trigger where we could start new sounds in a very precise way So this is, by the way, this is a ruffle, a flash emulator in Vassen So it doesn’t really catch up 100% with the hack, but it’s good enough

So you could do more like sequencing stuff, which was back then, like, unheard of Or, well, at least it wasn’t possible, right?

Yeah, and then, so what is digital audio anyway? So I was used in Flash 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 You could just import files and play them back So basically it was a static file that you imported And then you had a bunch of numbers that were sent to the sound card But you had no way to manipulate or even create them by yourselves

But why? It’s actually super easy, right? So it’s just a bunch of numbers you have to create in a very fast pace And this is what I did back then in 2005 The Flash 9 player introduced a way that I could basically create a byte array Which contains a swift file, a Flash movie And load it into memory without getting it actually from the net So this was like the first hack where, well, at least for me that was the starting point Of having some kind of web DSP, which is short for digital signal processing So we generate samples, we put them in a byte array And then we change that in a sound object in memory, in a swift file We load it back in and play it again, and we do it in a very fast pace So basically when we change something in the stream it gets as fast as possible to the sound card

So the first thing that we did was a collaboration with UI Ebert Where we created an Amiga mod player And that was quite fun because we started in the morning and we ended up Sorry, we started in the evening and we ended up at 10 o’clock in the morning Hearing Super Mario for the first time And it was like Jesus, and that was all, he was in a different city But we had a very strong urge to hack ourselves because we had the feeling that we are really Yeah, so on the edge on technology But actually what we were listening to is this

(Music)

So if you have seen that, it is from 94, it’s more than 30 years old And it was back then running on a Commodore Amiga, so that’s a long time ago And I did more things that I couldn’t do before, like sequencing stuff That’s called the tone matrix We just plot a few things, you have a fluid simulation beneath Which doesn’t actually add anything to the sound, but it looks nice

(Music)

And so on

(Applause)

I was thinking of mixing up physics and sound So I could generate a few seconds in here, and when they touch, they basically play a sound And reverse their grow rate

And this can be very soothing So let’s try something else

(Music)

Or you can create a different scene in here

(Music)

Yeah, that’s quite nice, because you can basically

(Applause)

Yeah, sequence tone generation at very specific times And that wasn’t possible before And from there, unfortunately, I couldn’t get these guys to run I created Roland 909 emulation, which was like so much fun to do I love this machine, and that was actually the drum machine to produce techno until today Everyone wants to have one of these guys, and they cost like, I don’t know, if you get one used Be happy to have it below 5,000 euros or something And yeah, and above is the small synthesiser, and they were actually working And they were direct precursors to audiotool.com, the company that I then worked for

Having a huge plan, right? So everybody should be able to make music

So that’s then the long story in a very short list, right? So I was working for 16 years for Audiotool And I brought all the ideas actually with me and the technology and all these things And I was starting in Berlin, moving to Cologne And I was so happy because I got paid for basically doing what I always wanted to do And yeah, but as you can see, I don’t read at all You’re faster in reading than I could speak to have But basically, it didn’t turn out well After 16 years, there was kind of an escalation going on So I was basically expressing my thoughts about how the company is run And that we need more developers because we were just two people Feeding a community of 2 million at a time where I left And yeah, doing that wasn’t a good idea So all these people that I, from the management I worked for Or where I had the feeling we had a friendship relationship So this is the thing you can take home with you Be very careful with all these handshakes, agreements and stuff

They don’t last long enough if you are on a long-term project So if there is something coming up and you express yourself And you have the feeling things are not running very good

People might change and go 100 degrees in the other direction So this is what happened So my contract got terminated and yeah, it felt very depressing So 16 years working on something that was my baby, was my thing to do And all of a sudden, other people are doing that And yeah, and I was sitting there and even my promised chairs were like(...) We don’t care, so... And yeah, now I’m soon in for two years now, which is crazy, right?(...) So things can turn out completely different So I was taking a step back then, a huge step back Revisiting all decisions I made in life, maybe even

And yeah, I tried to remember Why did I actually start with Audi tool? What were my thoughts in the first place? And then I figured that these goals never changed actually And there was actually the reason why I got displeased with the whole situation Because nothing turned out as I thought it would be And it’s not about money and stuff, right? So it’s more about I wanted to go into education, I wanted to have it open source, all these things But if you work with people that are more in business, then they say No, no, we need to have everything closed Yeah, so yeah, I think the getaway here is I was mostly embarrassed by my own poor judgment So I was working for 16 years, many people could just say Why didn’t you leave? Well, it’s not that easy as that, right? So you’re working on your thing that you brought to life And then it’s really hard to say, okay, I’m just stepping out So I needed this break, I needed this termination of my contract And then what else? I was so angry, right? So at these people I felt so unfairly treated, but that’s okay I actually turned that into work And every evening I was actually writing a plan for the next day When do I going to eat? When I going to have a walk? When I’m going to work? So I really needed that, right? So this structure back in my life And from there actually things got better So I turned spite into termination Which is, yeah, that’s a good thing

So no bitterness, it’s all good, I’m fine That was the best thing that could happen to me I was destroyed for a few months, definitely destroyed

But yeah, there you can see it And yeah, reclaimed what you always believed in, right? So this is what I did, basically

And this is what I then did

So I created something that I think is definitely right That what I always had in mind So I needed something where actually everybody can make music for free It should be open source because if nobody owns it, nobody can steal it So easy is that, right? I want to emerge educational funds So students are usually new to borrowing software Why is that? There’s no reason for that So everything that I enjoy, a student would enjoy also, I guess Data privacy is a priority from the start So there are no accounts, no subscription, no cookie bar now

So you just go on the website and you download like half a megabyte of code And you can start right away So it boots up in like 200 milliseconds or something So there’s no barrier that keeps you from creating music

There’s no AI music generation So I want to go into schools, thank you

I want to go into schools, I want to go into universities And it doesn’t make sense if people are actually using AI to prop their way to a finish or final track There’s live collaboration, that’s something that I had on my list for virtual classrooms And taking it step by step I was so annoyed by the management always saying, yeah, if we, or if I, or my second employee in law I would just say, if you do this feature, then we can go this And then we can collect millions and blah blah blah I don’t care anymore There must be a different way There must be a different way without investors, without looking at millions of dollars or euros to make a company And I think I can prove it

I’m constantly talking to musicians, I’m constantly talking to music teachers And that’s always a good idea because these are the people that eventually work with these things(...) And I was going to find some ambassadors to help me spread the news So I have these guys, so there’s Eric de Clark, which probably a couple of people still know from disco to disco(...) And there’s Polarity, which is a nice guy doing YouTube content There’s Daniel, who’s a music professor, as well as Marco Koon He’s also a music professor in Berlin And Damian Padera is someone who’s really into open source And yeah, more on the social side, I would say

And these guys are doing a great job So if you look at Polarity and the t-shirt he has on, that’s actually the Bitwig website It’s not a competitor, it’s like proper desktop software But I like that so much that he sniffed in open door(...) Which is by the way the name of the product I’m just presenting I just figured that I don’t actually write it anywhere, it’s coming later

So reactions, that’s like the typical internet, right? I don’t care, it’s just for fun, right? So impressive, but who is it for? I don’t know I can think of millions of people, but if he can’t, so that’s not my problem Those are probably the last thing I want running in a browser Yeah, that’s fine, why sharing this information? I don’t know So I don’t get this, blah blah blah The core needs to be in C++ or us, it needs to be Why? Who’s saying that? I don’t know

So fuck them

I’m doing it anyway, so here we go That was the first day, and this is something you can maybe take as a suggestion with you as well

Start documenting your stuff, it’s so much fun to look at this two years later and thinking Oh Jesus, that looks so embarrassing(...) But things, right, so you need some numbers that are monospaced And you keep adding stuff and moving stuff and putting in more shades

And colors and first plugins with a little bit of here, some components,

a mixer So things were coming together quite nicely over the month

And that’s a modular system that I’m going to focus on probably in the second half of the year And content editor, something to create and modify nodes

And you can actually take every panel and put it on a different monitor, which is also nice(...) And this is how it looks today, so there is basically everything there what you need And it just took me two years, and I think this is something that I also need to understand That these 16 years, they weren’t pulled away from me, or they wasn’t taking anything from me I learned so much, and not that I’m thankful now for these guys

That would be a little bit of a stretch So I could take that and create an online door in basically no time

So where is it today? So it’s online now, you can basically go on openDAW.studio and start creating right away I have two commercial open door SDK consumers, so I did not mention saying that All the technology that I’m using, a lot of libraries that I created, they are all of course open source And I put them into on NPM, or there’s a slide later for that where I explain it better But there’s also commercial license, and I have two companies that are paying me And that’s enough to pay the rent and all these things, so I’m quite happy with the outcome Still constantly talking to musicians and music teachers, and actually next semester there is a course In the Cologne University of Music and Dance where open door is the software to start with And that’s like, Jesus, yes, it’s working

(Applause)

So the official release is then in September,

and these are all the features just to show off So there’s a lot of things that you can do with it

Maybe like a few honorable mentions is Live Rooms, which is basically the live collaboration And when you do that and you record audio, actually everybody in the room will get the same samples That you uploaded or recorded with your voice or guitar or whatever But nothing touches my server, so data privacy again, that’s like a focus, so I’m doing WebRTC And this is where AI really helps me, because these are things where I usually would need to talk to other people

Sorry

Now I love to work with other people of course, but

Yeah, it took me like three days to do that, which is just insane We did live collaboration and audio tour, it took us a year Because we had no libraries and all the things that you have nowadays And a lot of more things that are there So what can you do with it? So let’s play a track Oh, sorry

Thank you

So obviously in the hands of a real musician you can really do some music with it But you can also write code in it, which is quite nice So this is a short example on that

So that was playing the guitar in dry Now I created an audio effects, which is called Wegstad

And you can just write some JavaScript inside the application, compile it, load it on the audio engine

So just with a few lines of code, you can create a distortion effect for your guitar, for instance But you can do so much more, there’s one for sequencing, there’s one for actually creating an entire instrument And there are also startup prompts for AIs, for people that do not know how to code And it’s just like an AI talking to another AI, explaining how the thing works And it works pretty well actually

So yeah, and there’s another view that you probably know from YouTube If you want to learn a piece of piano, then you can just import some MIDI(...) And then you get this view

And this works with every project of course, right? It’s just a view

(Music)

And you can scroll

(Applause)

So this is one of the libraries that I did from the very beginning So I did not want to work with React I cannot really stress that enough, it’s the worst framework I’ve ever seen And I don’t know why it is so popular and people are just falling for it Jesus Christ, it does so many things that you do not see But you want to see the things that are important to you And especially if you’re doing a music application You don’t want to waste a lot of CPU cycles on a framework doing things that you can do so easily by yourself So on the right side you see it looks like React in a way, right? But what it doesn’t do is actually evaluating the function all and all over again When some dependency are changing, so it’s just one call So as it should be, right? So this is how I learn programming and it should be like that So maybe that’s the old guy speaking, but still So you need to basically do HTML updates Which is super easy because you have some functions like on init Where you get a reference to the element that has just been created, blah blah blah And then you can basically listen to a model and do a text content change Or a class name change, it is much simpler than React There’s another library which is called the lipbox Which is basically a graph structure where I store everything And there’s a nice view on that, that’s actually a track, a techno track to be precise And you can basically discover how the data is organised in there

And I use that actually for debugging because the idea is that there are no isolated groups in there They should all be connected to the root And yeah, sometimes there are weird effects or a bug And then I actually open this view to figure out what’s happening Why is there no edge and stuff like that So if you zoom in here, that’s an automation for instance

So this is a track,(...) has a value region And from there, a collection, value event and a curve So everything is basically boxes where fields can point to other fields That’s pretty much it But it makes it so easy to extend it So I started implementing the first format like one and a half years ago And it’s still the same thing, I never needed to say Oh sorry, all your projects are broken now because I changed the format No, I’m just attaching stuff It can be so simple actually So this is the same project now rendered with Shader Toy and audio

(Music Playing)

So--

(Applause)

(...) Thank you. Thank you.(...) I need to hurry up a little bit. So openDAW can also talk to your gear. So you can basically plug in a MIDI device in both directions. So if you have a MIDI keyboard, then you can play instruments in openDAW. But it can also export--

or export, yeah, stream MIDI to a device. And this is my new desktop guy,

modular synthesiser,

which is really nice. And what I’m doing is basically I’m sending--

so I created a script node, which was just creating ambient chords.

And I have two instances. One is basically playing soft pads, while the other one is actually running an arpeggio, sending to the synthesiser and back into openDAW. And you can even add effects. And you still have a latency below 20 milliseconds, which is just insane. That’s not my work then when it comes to latency and stuff like that. That’s what the web audio API is actually capable of. So let’s have a listen.

(Music Playing)(...) (End Playback) (Applause)

Thank you.(...) So the idea is with the SDK, you can build your own door. So if you’re a developer, wipe code, or it doesn’t even matter,

there’s just one line you have to add to your package dependencies. And then you get all these things, including basically all the devices,(...) all the features that were on the list.

And yeah, it’s three shakable. So if you just use 10 features, the rest doesn’t get included in your file. So that’s also good.

Yeah, give that a try, because people are already doing that. So there’s riffle.studio. And they created in basically no time an entire door, which is really neat because it has a huge desktop where you can place actually different instances of open door projects.

So in a botanist one, and there’s one up, and you can basically take things from there and put it up. Or you can extract it to a new one. So this is a completely different way of actually interacting or collecting ideas and then merging them together in a new project. There’s a lot of AI, of course.(...) That’s how things are working now when you have a commercial company. But I think they did it in a good way. So it’s not basically creating a fully fetched track. It’s just creating like, do you need a guitar loop? I will create one for you. You can put YouTube videos on their covers or lyrics and stuff. So that’s something that I really find interesting.

And the cool thing is that everything they need from me is basically everything I need from myself because we’re basically building the same thing with different UIs.

So it’s a win-win situation. I get some money.(...) They get features.

And even I could, in this wipe-coded presentation, very quickly set up something

with

a little bit of FX,

the reverb.

(Music Playing)

OK, let’s keep it at that.

(Applause)

Just a few things about AI. I had a lot of talks with some of you guys already outside. And there’s a lot of different ideas on, is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I think it’s a great thing when it comes to coding, at least, all the other things. There is a lot of going on, of course. And that’s not my job to talk about these things. But actually, 15 years ago, I can remember when we started at Audiotool that I figured we are writing books of code, literally

huge books. And that was crazy to me. I felt like something is off. So we should actually talk to the computer, and the computer should code for us. And I just recently realised that that’s actually happening right now.(...) So we are talking in natural language to an AI and it’s coding for us, which is actually great.(...) It lowers the barrier for other people to join the club.

But it also, of course, for the people that are now developing, it’s a little bit weird that a lot of, yeah, wipe coding, also not very good production code is coming into the world. But this is how things are right now. So I think it’s OK. So just a few things. So I’m usually making a plan and I’m documenting everything.

I asked the AI to relentlessly ask me questions, which is also very good to figure out, did I actually thought the whole feature through? I make multiple dry runs. That’s actually a good thing. And then I’m usually saying, collect all the issues on the way and put them in the documentation so you can really see, oh, it told me it is fine.

But then when you do a dry run, you get a lot of information that actually it wasn’t thought through. And I do that really multiple times, like five, six times or something.(...) Yeah, read the plan, never trust an AI. Sure.

They’re doing weird things sometimes.(...) And yeah, implement meaningful steps that compile and can be reviewed. This is actually like a sentence from before AI, right? It’s the same thing.

So it’s demo time. Basti, looking forward for that one. So we prepared something. So just a quick, if you want to take the slides with you, make a picture now.

You can check out the code. This is Basti. I was actually asking Marc if he wanted to play the guitar. And he said, no, there’s actually a much better guy for that. And I’m really happy that you do that. So let’s see what failed today.

So first of all, I cannot-- I can just close that, right?

OK. This is a dry signal going into openDAW.

But in openDAW, you can basically say I want to route it to-- so monitor it with effects.

That’s actually the same thing I did with the synthesiser. But the latency is so good in browsers nowadays. It’s six milliseconds, which is kind of insane, actually.

So let’s add a little bit of reverb here.

That sounds nice.

Or with the setting before, add some delay.

Should we spice it up? All right.

So this guy is-- I did a program on that. It’s just an insane technology that some people created. It’s open source as well. And it creates a neural network which emulates an amp, but a real one. So when I turn that on, you will hear that it’s even doing the noise.

Yeah, so-- oh, jeez.

(Guitar Playing)

OK, that’s cool.

Then let’s have a backing track running and see what you can do on that.

(Guitar Playing)

(Applause)

Yeah.

That’s it.

(Applause)

I’m done.

(Applause)