[sdiy] Radio Shack catalogs

[Rainer Buchty]

On Wed, 12 May 2010, David G. Dixon wrote:

> 1) Again, reading Analog Days, I was struck by an anecdote reported in 
> the final chapter.  According to Yamaha, nearly every DX7 which was 
> returned to the company for repairs in the 1980s came back without a 
> single user-programmed patch on it.  Their owners were confining 
> themselves strictly to the factory-programmed patches.

No doubt. The DX7 must be the machine with one of the most horrible user 
interfaces ever built.

And, no, the Jellinghaus programmer didn't help much.

> 2) When I was a kid, I can remember going to music stores and playing for
> hours (when they'd let me) on Minimoogs, ARP Axxes, KORGs, Oberheim OB-Xs,
> etc.

For me it was a little bit later, more along the lines of Siel Opera 6, 
Korg Polysix -- and the later machines Korg Poly61 or Elka EK22.

And, yes, Opera 6 and Polysix where machine I really liked to *fiddle* 
with -- where e.g. the EK22 was a machine, I merely played the presets 
(and "waveaura" still is a great sound :)

This kind of "pocket calculator" interface pretty much took away all the 
fun of *synthesizing* and reduced the machines to what's called 
"Preset-Schleuder" in German (roughly translating into "preset 
catapult").

> Far from inviting experimentation, these machines actively discourage 
> it!  It is nearly impossible to get decent sounds out of most of these 
> machines without spending hours of facetime with the owner's manual.

So it has become worse again? Digital interfaces like on e.g. the Yamaha 
SY77 or (especially) the Ensoniq ESQ1/SQ80 I find quite a good 
compromise. Easily accessible parameters, no "dial the right number, 
then select its value".

And in some cases there's just no way you could go back to twiddling 
knobs. After all, an SY77 voice can have up to 4096(!) parameters (4AFM) 
There's no way you could get this *easily* with knobs.

> Also, in my humble opinion, the fact that one has no choice but to 
> start from a (typically awful) factory patch on an "analog emulating" 
> machine is just horrible.

With complex synthesis, however, I'd argue that this is maybe a better 
way than starting a sound from scratch.

> 3) Back to Analog Days again, it was pointed out there (and elsewhere) 
> that the monophonic analog synthesizer created the "keyboard hero" who 
> could finally stand toe to toe with the guitar heroes of the day. 
> However, once keyboards went digital, polyphonic and preset, keyboard 
> players faded into the background again.

Now why do I have this picture of the "Politics of Dancing" video in my 
mind :)

> Now, one almost never hears a "keyboard solo" -- or a guitar solo, 
> for that matter.  In fact, I maintain that the digital revolution has 
> not only destroyed synthesizers, but has nearly destroyed music in 
> general, at least from the perspective of those of us who actually 
> care more about the guys standing behind the singer than the actual 
> singer.

I think the major problem here is that bean-counters think that sampling 
is a good replacement for real instruments. Which isn't true. A piano is 
a piano is a piano -- no matter how many Gigabytes of sample storage you 
throw at it. Same goes for guitars, and of course entire orchesters.

Which, in term, also means that a synthesizer is an instrument of its 
own with its very own distinct sound -- and reducing it to a playback 
device of pre-recorded sounds just takes away the fun.

Rainer