[sdiy] Wakeman

[Rude 66]

and don't forget the kawai k5000, another potentially very interesting
machine crippled by a joke of an OS, and crappy factory presets. i've had
more than 1 person here who heard the k5k in a music store, decided it was
crap, and then heard it here with some 'proper' additive patches and went
'shiiiiit'... not that i programmed these myself, but the friendly folks at
the k5000 yahoo group do..;-)

next to the neuron there's one machine on the market today that i would both
call a good instrument and a very innovative machine: the roland v-synth.
i've had it for a review here, so it was dissected quite hard. what a
machine! maybe in itself no new technology, but for once an os and editing
system that's right. the innovative part about the v-synth for me was the
way you can improvise and experiment with it just like on a good size
modular system. never worked with a synth that cool to operate..
now if they'd only get the thing to sound better, we'd be in business..;-)

r./



----- Original Message -----
From: "Les Mizzell" <lesmizz at bellsouth.net>
To: "synth-diy" <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 10:02 AM
Subject: RE: [sdiy] Wakeman


>
> :: If a new instrument has any depth, it will take work to develop
> :: virtuosity.
> ::
> :: That will turn off many people whose idea of a "good" instrument
> :: is: Makes you famous and rich with no effort.
>
> In my humble opinion:
>
> It's a shame too, in my opinion. At this point in time, if you put a
Triton,
> a Motif and a Fantom in a room together, could many of us actually tell
the
> difference between them? And what's Kurzweil really been up to? The
V.A.S.T
> System, while perhaps a little deeper than the other three, is getting a
> little long in the tooth too, huh?
>
> The "Big Four" above seem to be lacking in innovation at the moment,
intent
> on releasing repackaged versions of previous products that will have more
> appeal to the masses than something a little more adventurous. But then
> again, can you blame them? Their main concern is their bottom line, not
> releasing unique products for the few "tweakheads" out there (like most of
> the folks reading this....) that might actually bother to learn how to
> really use them.
>
> Yamaha had a few amazing and inventive products: But....
>
> Yamaha pretty much dropped the ball on FM. I'm thinking Brian Eno was
about
> the only FM virtuoso out there. How many people *really* programmed new
> sounds for these instruments? The Yamaha SY99 was probably their "FM"
> crowning achievement - but how many folks actually figured out how to use
> the FM structures *with* the onboard waveforms?
>
> They tried again with another amazing FM instrument, the FS1R, but it
didn't
> gain much popularity either. Amazing sounds, but almost impossible to
> program without a degree in rocket science.
>
> Both the FS1R and SY99 were innovative instruments with an amazing amount
of
> depth, but very few folks ever figured them out or even scratched the
> surface of what could have been done with them.
>
> Korg had their chance twice too. First, by releasing the Wavestation, the
> successor to the Sequential Circuits Prophet-VS. They could have followed
> this up with a more advanced version with filters and such, and it would
> have been a killer instrument, but instead of taking the next logical step
> they just dropped the idea entirely.
>
> Their second chance was the Z1.  This was an amazing synth. Although
> technology from this unit has trickled down into other dumbed-down
products,
> nothing since that Korg has made has come close to the power the Z1 had.
>
> I'm not saying that the industry has completely stagnated. The Hartman
> Neuron is a good example of a new cutting edge hardware synth (though
based
> on software). A handful of hardware designers like Grant and Paul and a
few
> others are trying to take the next step with modular synthesis by
> introducing new modules performing functions simply not possible during
the
> heyday of the Moog Modular (Wiard Noise Ring or MOTM Cloud Gen anybody?)
and
> a number of other smaller companies are happily producing niche products
> with cult followings.
>
> To be honest, I see more really cool innovative stuff being done with
> software than hardware at the moment.  The development cycle is far less
> expensive and it's easier for the "little guy" to make some real progress
if
> they've been working on something neat enough. Take ABSynth for example.
> Basically written by one guy, and then picked up by Native Instruments.
This
> is my main weapon of choice at the moment, and I've hardly scratch the
> surface of what can be done with it.  There's plenty of other software
> products out there as well pushing the envelope.
>
> Actually, if you ignore Korg, Yamaha, and Roland...it's a pretty exciting
> time right now. There's an amazing wealth of synthesis methods available
to
> us if we're willing to embrace our computer a little more with even more
> cool stuff just around the corner...and the modular market gets more
> interesting as we move along as well.
>