[sdiy] Wakeman

[Richard Wentk]

At 10:31 03/07/2003 +0100, Neil Johnson wrote:

>Well, my experience is different, but perhaps thats more on the actual
>design side of things.

Okay. In that case I'll just say that that's not how it's done in 
publishing (IME), and leave it that.

>Richard, if you wrote _all_ the reviews the world would be a better
>place!!

Aw, shucks. :-)

> > Actually very little of interest has been appearing modern synths.
>
>Sadly true...just more of the same, nothing really interesting save, as
>you say, the Neuron.  Its nice to flick through the past years of SOS and
>read the reviews of the synths we now consider key points on the synth
>timeline.

I think more in music technology in general. A big driving force for synth 
design was imitative synthesis, and once sampling appeared there was no 
longer any need to keep pursuing that. There are some interesting things 
you can do with phys mod, but they need supercomputer power, and most 
people can't hear the difference between a sampled piano and a real one 
anyway. So for now we're stuck where we are. I'm guessing we'll be here for 
another decade or two at least.

>Now I wonder which synths in the last couple of years will we go "wow" at
>in 5/10 years time??

I really like Reaktor. It's the main reason I've stopped doing hardware. I 
can't see the point in spending hours and hours and pounds and pounds 
prototyping something in hardware when I can patch a simulation together in 
a few hours. Or a day or two at most.

I only wish it did spectral transformations too.

FM7 does some really good sounds as well. Much better than the original DX7 
but with a lot of the same character.

> > Analogue is in a rut, and has more or less reached the limits of what's
> > possible.
>
>I don't know about that.  What I do think is the situation now is that the
>demand for really innovative stuff just isn't there, so what company is
>going to invest lots of money developing a product that would sell in
>small numbers of units?

Well, that's a similar issue. The problem with analogue is that the old 
oscillator -> filter -> amp signal chain has been done to death. I also 
think very few people have the time, inclination and talent needed to reach 
a Tomita-level of fluency with the technology. So we get a lot of sounds 
that have been heard countless times before.

And I'm not sure the market isn't there for something *really* different. 
It will be interesting to see how the Neuron does...

But in analogue terms I don't think the world really needs yet another 16 
step sequencer design. I mean as a hobby sure, but as a serious product - 
not really, no. If you look at some of the things that someone like Raymond 
Scott was doing in the 50s, they're way ahead of anything that's being done 
today. That's the level of innovation I'm really missing. And considering 
he did it all without proper digital logic, never mind a good CPU...

There's also quite a bit of mileage in hybrid designs. But I'd best not say 
any more just in case I actually do build something sometime. :-)

> > The *only* - and I mean that literally - interesting recent synth is the
> > Neuron. Everything else is just a retread of the same old ideas, most of
> > which are now decades old.
>
>Agreed... *sigh* ... At least round here you find the more interesting
>devices, from all-valve synths to chaotic generators, from
>laboratory-grade modulars to reborn PPGs with a twist.

Those are still all kind of retrospective though, aren't they?

I'm sitting here thinking 'Wouldn't it be good if I could.... and then I 
could... and then the sound would morph into... and after that it would 
explode into this huge kind of...' And then I realise there isn't any gear 
around that can do things like that.

I could probably persuade Csound to do it if I had six months to spare. 
Then again I know someone with a Kyma system, which might be able to do it 
a bit more quickly. (Which, I forgot to add, is also a *very* interesting 
synth box that should be better known. The designers are really cool people 
too. I have a lot of respect for what they're doing.)

>Going into a music gear shop these days is like going into a car
>showroom---its all plastic, feels plasticy, and they all pretty much do
>the same thing, just with a different name on the badge.  Case in point:
>recent range of K-6 E-Mu keyboards---same hardware, slightly different
>colour scheme, different set of samples.  *yawn*

Sampling is killing music! <insert Akai and crossbones figure...>

Richard