[sdiy] presets on a modular

[harrybissell]

Hah... Paul , if you keep this up you are going to be punished by being locked
in a small room with a Yamaha DX-7

I agree totally with your statement (from a purist point of view) but it is
extraordinarily
clear that 99% of the worlds musicians don't see it this way.

They DO see the synth as violin, piano whatever... because the stereotypes of
the music
listening public do not like to be challenged. Think of some reviewer in a
rag-mag... He says
"the brass-like synthesizer work reminds of a ..."

(aside... were there Monotypes before stereotypes ?)

Probably a large number of musicians use that "catagorize as familar instrument"
to keep the
patches in their brains as well.

The modular promise was 'sounds we have never heard before' .... too bad in real
life
we preferred those we had heard before on a 99:1 ratio... and the market
responded to the
lowest common demoninator.

H^) harry   (going to play the cliche'd rock guitar sound now... :^)

Paul Maddox wrote:

> Don,
>
>   So ok, go buy a minimoog, set a sound you want, the rip off all the knobs
> except the filter cutoff.
> Now you have your piano..
>
>  The point is a Synth isn't just a single sound, or type of sound, its got
> hundreds of 'basic' sounds and 100's of varients there of.
>
>  Why am I explaining this? I don't understand why people can't see that a
> synth is a totally different beast to a 'violin' and you just cannot compare
> a synth to a violin or piano.
>
> Paul
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Don Tillman" <don at till.com>
> To: "Paul Maddox" <P.Maddox at signal.QinetiQ.com>
> Cc: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
> Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 4:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] presets on a modular
>
> >    > From: "Paul Maddox" <P.Maddox at signal.QinetiQ.com>
> >    > Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:08:17 -0000
> >    >
> >    > I struggle with this.
> >    > How many 'real musical' instruments have multiple sounds?
> >    > A piano, err no, A flute, err no, maybe a violin, err no...
> >
> > It's not the best example, but yeah... A piano has a soft pedal, which
> > implements an alternate softer sound by moving the hammers closer to
> > the strings.  And the middle pedal, which does different things on
> > different piano models.  Some pianos have been built with a material
> > that can be moved between the hammers and the strings for an alternate
> > sound.
> >
> > Harpsichords have multiple manuals, stops, and dampers.  Vibraphones
> > have a switch for the motor.
> >
> > A violin has presets to the extent that it can be played arco
> > ("bowed"), pizzicatto, or with a bridge mute, or with the back side of
> > the bow, or some alternate bowing techniques, or some alternate
> > tuning.
> >
> > Flutes are easy enough to carry around that most flute players just
> > swap between flutes.  Same with harmonicas.  The lesson here is that
> > when the musical instrument is sufficiently small, it's much easier to
> > carry multiples than to build up a preset switching system.
> >
> >    > > Consider what other Musical Instruments do for presets; guitars,
> >    >
> >    > guitars don't have presets?
> >
> > Guitars have presets in the way they select between pickups for
> > different sounds, between preset volume levels, between pickup mixes,
> > and between tone control settings.  Compare the electrical design of
> > the Gibson Les Paul to the Fender Stratocaster and the Fender
> > Jaguar/Jazzmaster in this regard.  Or the stereo wiring on
> > Rickenbacker guitars.
> >
> > Part of the design of guitar electronics is how to get from a good
> > chording ("rhythm") sound to a good soloing ("lead") sound without
> > losing a beat, or how you balance pickup mixing capablity with the
> > ability to easily get from one sound to another.
> >
> > Guitar stomp boxes basically work like presets.
> >
> > And old older guitar amplifiers had presets in the form of reverb and
> > tremelo footswtiches, later amps had channel switching, and more
> > modern guitar amps have more exotic switching features.
> >
> > Yes, you can learn a lot from guitar players.  :-)
> >
> >    > > organs,
> >
> >    > organs have 'ranges' that you can add/remove, again, no presets.
> >    > You can't have a 'Big juicy organ' button that turns on all the
> stops, you
> >
> > Organs have stops, drawbars, the preset keys on the lower octave of a
> > Hammond B3, etc.
> >
> > Leslie speakers have a switch to select between stopped, a low speed
> > and a high speed.  And it turns out the transitions between these
> > presets were more musically profound that the sounds themselves.  What
> > can we learn from that?
> >
> >    > > other keyboards, etc.
> >    >
> >    > define keyboard.
> >
> > Clavinet, Mellotron, etc.
> >
> >   -- Don
> >
> > --
> > Don Tillman
> > Palo Alto, California
> > don at till.com
> > http://www.till.com
> >
> >