[sdiy] Modular - sound or song

[David G. Dixon]

> I like the mammoth rack of buzzing, power sucking, module with real knob
> that can never really be put in the exact same place again so a patch is
> never exactly the same twice.
> 
> John Bowen, in talking about why he decided to build a hardware keyboard
> implementation of his Solaris plugin, he said (paraphrased) I missed the
> feel of turning a real knob to adjust a parameter... or something like
> that
> anyway.

I have a feeling that I will end up like Harry Bissell: more turned on by
building the damn things than actually playing them -- I have my (ever more
neglected) Yamaha grand for that!

But, on knob-twiddling: I thought I was going to have a little taste of
heaven when I bought an Edirol MIDI controller keyboard to use with my soft
synths (Arturia stuff, Native Instruments stuff mostly), but I think I ended
up using it twice.  I hated the feel of the sliders (some of which didn't
even respond), and assigning functions to the keyboard components was a big
drag.  However, when I finally put the knobs on my (highly customized) MFOS
Sound Lab Plus and started twiddling, I knew it had to be analog!  It
doesn't matter that it's a tenth (or less) as functional as digital.  The
fact is, it's ten times (or more) as much fun!  Plus, I'm never going to
BUILD a computer...