New old stuff

[Tim Ressel]

I have to agree. Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos) did the Switched-On Bach
recordings. These were universally held as sounding thin, dry, and flat. Well,
he used the sacred Moog to produce these albums, and we all know the reputation
the Moog has. So I agree: its the synth's "operational metaphor" (hee hee) and
not just the clean-ness of the modules. Its also who's at the controls.

I believe you have to concider what you goal is. Some people want to reproduce
the sounds of traditional instruments. Others want to create altogether new
sounds that cannot be made naturally. My personal fetish is to make sounds that
sound like they came from a solid instrument, but no device exists that makes
that sound. In other words, natural sounding new sounds. 

As with any tool, there are differences in the capabilities in synths. Some
people could take the Radio Shack Moog and make it really fly. Others played
chop sticks on it. I once knew a guy who was so talented that he could pick up
*anything* and make music with it. I'm reminded of Laurie Anderson and what
passes for instruments for her. The mic'ed microphone stand is one of my
favorites. 

So you see, a synth will take you so far, and you can take a synth so far.
Together, one hopes, you go very far indeed.

As for definitions, well, how do you write definitions for exactly how
beautifull a tree is? Color of the bark? Heigth to leaf ratio? Quality of sap? I
think "thin" and "dry" are like saying the paint Da Vinci used was a bit "runny"
or "smelly". I don't like to dwell on these things. To me, its like the reverb
craze. Before long, we had Alan Parsons and his "Wall O' Reverbs" adding
time-domain processing to every single stinking note. I don't want to hear "fat"
synths forever. I want to hear music, preferably pleasing to the ear, and moving
the heart. The occasional effect, tastefully done, is nice. 

Hope I didn't step on too many toes with my brain-dump.

Cheers.

Tim Ressel--Compliance Engineer
Hewlett-Packard
Verifone Division
3755 Atherton Rd.
Rocklin, Cal
916-630-2541  
timothy_ressel at hp.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Magnus Danielson [mailto:cfmd at swipnet.se]
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2000 2:55 PM
To: Juergen.Haible at nbgm.siemens.de
Cc: czech at Micronas.Com; synth-diy at node12b53.a2000.nl
Subject: RE: New old stuff


From: Haible Juergen <Juergen.Haible at nbgm.siemens.de>
Subject: RE: New old stuff
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 15:00:28 +0200

> 	>I'm engineer, no musician. I'd never dare to explain some musical
> 	>question, if I'm not absolutely sure what it is all about.
> 	>Many books about synths are written by musicians, and many of these
> 	>contain misunderstandings, errors and crap.
> 	>A lot of prejustices come from that and spread arround, like
> 	>synth X sounds weak, filter Y is too bright, oscillator Z sounds
> fat and so on.
> 
> Amen to that.
> It's funny in retrospect to see how many synths got that "weaker than a
> Moog"
> attribute in Matthias Becker's book. 
> 
> (Great book nevertheless)

Personally, I think there are many issues to the whole issue. I have so far
never seen any really good description of what makes a synth "fat" or even a
good definition of what is meant. Similarly the term "thin" doesn't have a good
technical definition even if it seems to be implied that something that sounds
"thin" sounds "not fat" and vice versa. I _think_ I know (now) what people mean
by these terms, and I also _think_ I have a clue of some of the things that
makes the difference.

But, when we techies makes a perfectly ultra-stable synth, then people accuse
us of doing "cold" synths, thus, not having the "warmth" of some semi-crappy
synth that tech-heads at best describes as a mediocre solution, done to be
cheap and all that.

For me, part of the "magic" about a synth is not only how it sounds, but how it
behaves and how it allows for a creative mind to acheive something with ease
and fun. Personally, some of that got lost behinds menues, but that is MY
personal view, even if some of those gear sounds very well when put into the
right hands.

For me, there are alot of subjective comments about synths and it to some
degree come with the territory, but I don't take such statements as anything
else than subjective comments. If I know where someone stands on synths and
their sound, I can better build my understanding of what to expect.

If someone could come up with good universal definitions and technical
descriptions of "fat", "thin", "cold", "warm" etc I would really like to hear
them and put them down on paper.

Cheers,
Magnus