[sdiy] Control Interfaces (was Wakeman)

[Rainer Buchty]

> but why exactly? I mean, a guitarist can always pull a string the exact
> same amount everytime, he can get close.. Why must everything be so
> precise?

Well, the ordinary knob (as in "pot") would be already similarly
imprecise; so "exactly" was more of a term like "easy to achieve hitting
the somewhat same parameter value".

My personal obsession with "exactness" is that e.g. I'm usually pretty
disappointed by live recordings since they sometimes sound significantly
different from what I know from the studio album. And I'm not talking
about the cheering crowd here :)

> My point is, many many 'real' instruments are not polyphonic, so why the
> obsession with polyphony?

Having had music lessons since my earliest ages and having had music as a
major during my first highschool years, my personal impression is that
there is usually nothing more boring than e.g. a single violin.

In an orchestra, those instruments sound awesome. But played alone it's
something I don't really like.

> Perhaps we should drop polyphony in exchange for controlability?

The nice thing with polyphonic instruments is that you can more or less
play an entire arrangement. With a monophonic instrument you need either a
bunch of people (aka orchestra, band), a sequencer or multi-track recorder
to achieve the somewhat same.

Rainer