A small, deliberately limited studio for your Mac.

I'm Dave, a songwriter in Denver. I've used Logic for a long time and I still love it, but the feature list is huge now, a lot of it powered by AI and fancy Apple silicon, and this latest release kind of pushed me over the edge. It's just too much.

I've also been a little romantically obsessed with recording everything over the air: an amp, a keyboard, a voice, whatever it is, through a microphone in the room. So Porchlight is all audio. You can still plug straight in, but there are no virtual instruments and no MIDI, so I'm not clicking through presets or fussing over MIDI timing. That's where I like to write.

I still use voice memos all the time. I wanted something that could take a song from there to something release worthy, that I could send off to a mixing and mastering engineer. Hardware still intimidates me a bit, between the space it takes and the learning curve, so this is software, with some of the constraints real hardware gives you.

On the deck

The cream Speed knob over its gauge, set to minus three percent, beside the Direction, Tape speed, Recording and Snap switches

The Speed knob

I could never figure out a good workflow in Logic for slowing a song down, recording, and then speeding it back up. Here it's two steps: turn the knob down and record, then turn it back up. A part recorded slow comes back brighter, a part recorded fast comes back darker, and it changes the formants on a voice too. I think it's going to be a great way to get new tones out of all my instruments.

The Direction switch runs the tape backwards. You hear everything in reverse while you record, then you switch it back and your part plays forward.

The Direction, Tape speed, Recording and Snap switches, with Recording set to Layer

Layering on one track

Set Recording to Layer and each new take goes on the same track, on top of what's already there. Everything underneath loses a generation every time, the way real tape does, so it gets a little quieter and duller with a bit of hiss. I'm excited to stack harmonies this way, all on one track, with the older passes fading back on their own. I'm still dialing in how much it loses while I test it.

Four track strips with masking-tape names, pan and drive knobs, faders, and FX, mute and solo keys

Eight tracks

Eight is kind of a standard, and it's stood the test of time. I could have gotten weird and done nine or thirteen or unlimited, but eight fits on the screen, and that matters to me. I've done productions with 60+ tracks, every one-shot on its own track with its own effects and automation everywhere, and it gets overwhelming. For a while I've wanted to just put all my one-shots on one track, no automation, and live with it if something's a little loud.

Each track has a Drive knob for some grit. It only changes what you hear, never the recording.

The Bounce section: From and To rows of numbered keys, the Bounce key and the After bounce switch

Bouncing down

When the eight fill up, pick a few tracks, pick one to put them on, and press Bounce. That's how four-track records got made, and it pushes you to decide what the song needs. If you change your mind, there's Undo.

No grid

I turned off the grid. Maybe it's a bit of pushback against AI music, which is all super produced and perfectly on the grid, and I've never been about any of that. I'm a classical piano player, and I love music that slows down at the end of a phrase and picks up when things get exciting, without having to program that into a metronome. Recording without a click can be hard, I get that. But it pushes you toward simpler songs, because it's hard to keep stacking things that don't line up on their own, and I'm good with that.

A small rack of effects on the Vocal track: three painted units with On, Open, Swap and Remove keys, and an empty slot

Your plugins, in a little rack

There are four slots on every track for the Audio Unit effects you already own. Each one shows up as a rack unit, painted the color of its own window, with keys to turn it off and to open it.

The meters with the left one tuned to G, the tape counter, and the A, B, Loop and Punch keys

Fixing a line, and tuning up

Mark A and B around the line that went wrong and turn on Punch. Rec runs the tape in so you can find your place, records just that stretch, and stops. Loop plays a section over and over while you work out a part, and Tune turns a meter into a tuner for whatever's plugged in.

It saves as you go and keeps a backup every couple of minutes. Sessions are folders of ordinary audio files, and To file exports the mix or each track as WAV. The help page covers everything else.

Who it's for

I think this is for people who really love the craft of songwriting: people who play live, play open mics, play in small combos and small bands, on instruments you actually have to touch. I'll be running my synths and drum machines through it too. But if you need everything precisely on the grid, care a lot about MIDI placement, or have a huge library of virtual instruments, those tools just aren't here, and it might not be for you.

I've been listening to a lot of music from the 70s, Don McLean and others, and to Theo Katzman and what he's doing with his label 10 Good Songs, recording live takes with the whole band in the room, straight to tape. There's a movement back toward analog, and Porchlight is my middle ground. I'm not ready to go fully analog yet. I still like working on my computer with minimal gear, but I want that way of working.

Porchlight

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$29 once, every update free. For macOS 15 and later.