[sdiy] Moogey jitter - the old times were the oldest.

[Rainer Buchty]

>I don't believe that all sounds have to be "new".  I believe that there
>are new uses for things that have been heard.  Consider a violin.  How
>many pieces have been written for violin?  It's not a new sound, why
>then do people listen to it over and over?

I think you need to differentiate between instrument and music.

The search for new instruments (and therefore a new sound) isn't exactly
new. Today we take the pianoforte or clarinets and saxes for granted, 
but they are just a couple hundred years old.

And here people also basically refined existing concepts e.g. by adding
holes, valves, slideable tubes, introduce powerful compressors instead
of a measly lung, or alter the way of dealing with strings (bowing,
picking, hammering; rastered vs. un-rastered finger board vs. keyboard). 
Or just cram a hole lot of several instruments into a big cabinet and 
let them be controlled by a punch-card or punch-disk program (I recently 
visited the Museum of Music Automatons in Bruchsal, Germany; quite 
impressive!)

Then came electronics and "we" were able to introduce a completely new
sounds, which in the end evolved into a similar "set" of basic sound
generation which are "traditional subtractive" using analog(-like)  
oscillators or sample playback, "additive", FM, and "others"  like
granular, or dedicated synthesis methods.

>I believe that it's not so much what cool weird new sound you can make
>(although that _can_ be wonderful), it is what you do with sound that
>matters most.

Fully agreed. But people always were on the hunt for that new, unheard 
sound or just improving older instrument concepts as shown above.

And this is probably what bugs Paul: while the 70s, 80s, and partly 90s 
were the era of exploring new synthesis concepts (i.e. inventing new 
instruments) we nowadays somewhat stagnate in trying to reproduce "the 
good old sound" instead of going back hunting for that new, unheard 
sound/synthesis.

And maybe this is where frustration starts, cause what will there be
next? We've seen analog computing (-> analog synth), sample playback,
FM, additive synthesis, wavetable and granular synthesis, physical
modeling, neural networks -- all commercially exploited with more or
less success.

The same situation as with traditional instruments.  

So what's coming next?  Is there still "new" sound to explore or are we
at a point where the "instrument for the masses" doesn't need further
refinement and it comes down to individual instruments?

>I say: "Ignore the nay-sayers".

Amen to that :)

Rainer