[sdiy] presets on a modular

[Scott Gravenhorst]

harrybissell <harrybissell at prodigy.net> wrote:
>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.

I hope that this is not a negative comment.  The market always does this, but not
_because_ it's the LCD.  LCD often denotes a negative feeling as if the market
has been disloyal or unfeeling or disregarding of a "higher" value.  The truth is
that markets don't go for LCD, they go for the largest base of potential
customers.  This often appears as LCD, but that is not the reason it happens.

I get tired of the bemoaning against corporations that do this, they wouldn't
exist if they only produced loftier goal products because the price would be so
prohibitive that they'd sell the 6 units that the wealthy can afford and then go
out of business.  

The real problem here is that people, in general, do not discriminate much
between what is good and bad, real and fake.  Most people hearing a digital
rompler piano will say it sounds like a piano, not "piano like".  It is their
"deafness" that creates these market conditions, not that corporations are
somehow evil or subversive.  Yes, they do it on purpose, but not to screw
musicians, rather they do it to survive.  We are lucky to have any commercially
produced instruments at all because if musical talent ruled, we'd have very very
little.  We can thank free markets for the fact that we have at least
functionally crappy synths that we can afford.

And this is why SDIY is necessary.

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-- Scott Gravenhorst | LegoManiac / Lego Trains / RIS 1.5
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