[sdiy] Advice

[Glen]

At 01:55 PM 2/3/04 , Richard Wentk wrote:

>People use 303s to create a kind of music that its designers never 
>anticipated, and if they have to use processing to do that - so what?

Soooo....   If you are designing a completely NEW synth, you might want to
make the envelope generation circuitry flexible enough to provide nearly
any type of dynamics the end user might want.  ......That's what.   ;)


>>Perhaps in the future we should design synths with this idea in mind?
>
>Absolutely not. The whole point of the exercise is that engineers are 
>usually the worst people in the world to try to anticipate in what creative 
>ways musicians are going to abuse their ideas.

You miss the point entirely. I am suggesting that envelope generation
circuitry be flexible enough to get the sort of sounds that people
currently have to resort to compression to achieve--while at the same time,
providing a vast array of alternative envelopes and dynamics. In other
words, BROADEN the machine's capabilities--instead of making the
architecture so inflexible that 95% of your end users feel the need to
"correct" the dynamics of your synth with an external compressor. This
isn't about limiting an end-users choices. It's all about opening up new
opportunities for the end-user, within the synth itself. What could be
wrong with the combination of more flexibility and control?



>If I were to play rock guitar (which I don't, particularly) I'd rather find 
>my own fuzzed up sound than rely on someone else to put only one kind of 
>option into a guitar. 

See, you've got the whole idea exactly backwards. I'm suggesting expanding
the feature set of a synth, to offer more options--including the potential
to do away with an external compressor, if you want.


>Unlike engineering, there is no right answer, most flexible parameter 
>space, or most likely compromise. It's all up to individual interpretation 
>- and that's the whole point of all of it.

Which is exactly why I think we should consider expanding the capabilities
of envelope generators and related circuitry to get exactly the envelope
and dynamics the individual player prefers, straight out of the synth--with
ideally no external processing required for the majority of end users, the
majority of the time.


later,
Glen Berry