[sdiy] Ways for innovation

Fri Jan 22 17:38:34 CET 2016

How many Casio sk-1s are still out there?

In my opinion my volca is better quality than that...
You are correct on this point, however there is one important difference...
The instruments of today seem to be built to fail, just like much of the
other items being manufactured. The craftsmanship and quality which went
into the Minimoog has very little comparison with modern electronic
instruments. I would love to see, forty years from now, how many Volca's,
Microbrutes, and microkorgs (as examples) are still functional. I know my
microkorg, which was purchased new around 2002, is pretty much reduced to a
module now. The keybed began to fail within a couple years of regular use.
Also, in the time of the Minimoog, there were very few options for entry
level electronic instruments. I wasn't really speaking of an instrument
which costs $1795 as being a toy though.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Ways for innovation
From: Simon Brouwer <simon.o at brousant.nl>
Date: Fri, January 22, 2016 9:55 am
To: synth-diy DIY <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>, Rutger Vlek
<rutgervlek at gmail.com>, spivkurl at wearerecords.com

Hi,

But you have to consider the low cost of those "toy" instruments...

I found mention of the original price tag of a Minimoog, in 1975: "$1795
CDN (which would be roughly equivalent to US dollars in those days)."
According to
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1795&year1=1975&year2=2015
that amount, corrected for inflation, would amount to almost 8000$.

Even for the original 1795$ you can still buy pretty serious musical
instruments, let alone for 8000$.

Best regards

Op 22 januari 2016 om 16:27 schreef spivkurl at wearerecords.com:

My feelings on this are definitely related to the mobile, single serve,
throw away culture which has taken over. There a far more people creating
music (with varying degrees of success) on their phones and laptops, than
there are people using real hands on instruments these days. No matter how
often I try to explain to people that a piece of software cannot recreate a
performance on a real instrument, I always have a bunch of people snapping
at me... they express their unfounded claims about how a digital waveform
is that same or "higher resolution" (uh I hate that) than an analog
waveform... they talk about the challenges of recording a real
instrument... they talk about the cost. For me, it all seems like bad
priorities, both for the musicians and the companies selling things for
making music. Being a hobbyist and being a serious musician are generally
two different things (money making completely aside). A huge amount of
people want to skip from being a hobbyist to being a famous "producer" (I
hate that too), and they don't seem to know the first thing about the
process to get from point A to point B, nor are they willing to make
investments of time, practise, and money. These things will have to change
for the whole idea of electronic music/instruments to change. I can see
glimpses of it from time to time, for example the resurgence and
diversification of synth modules available. Many electronic instruments
made recently seem barely better than toys, and sometimes worse (in the
case of vintage toys). If you can't even bother to put a line out on your
synthesizer, then maybe you should not to be making synthesizers... am I
right?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [sdiy] Ways for innovation
From: Rutger Vlek <rutgervlek at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, January 22, 2016 8:32 am
To: synth-diy DIY <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>

Hi guys,

I've been reflecting on business and innovation in the music branch a lot
lately, and also discussing with friends and I thought it might be nice to
see how people respond here.

The thoughts were basically coming from an evening of joy with my Nord
Modular G2, which I think is one of the most ground braking synths in
recent years. With ground braking I mean... musically. Recently synths have
become more affordable and more portable, but that's not what I'm talking
about. I'm talking about really new sounds, new ways of musical expression,
a next step for the synthesizer as a musical instrument. However, the Nord
Modular G2 sold rather badly, and production was stopped prematurely if my
sources are correct. Recently, prices on the second hand market have been
going up again, so in time the innovation is appreciated.

This leads me to believe that the market for an truly innovative product is
very small, until it has really been adopted as the new standard (MiniMoog
anyone). This also means, financially, there's very little motivation for
companies to innovate. So I was thinking, what about crowd-sourcing
innovation or making a platform that supports this? In a way, this is
already happening with all the open-source projects and knowledge sharing
on fora like muffwiggler. But I feel a hardware platform is lacking for
these innovations to reach the less scientific of us who just like to
"play"!

One of my personal pains is the lack of alternative to MIDI. Why, in this
modern era, is there still no high-resolution version of MIDI standardized?

The other is: why is there so little hardware that helps integrating the
hard work of the many DSP hobbyist making great code. Where is that hybrid
synth with an open-sourced FX engine?

Why does my 150 dollar phone have a better screen than my 3000 dollar synth?

And my last personal pain: why is hardware life span so short on present
commercial products? If I have a synth with a great keyboard with
aftertouch (which is removed from more and more keyboards as a cost-saving
measure) and a lovely set of controllers, why throw the hole thing, while
the only part that needs an upgrade is the CPU board + DAC to support the
latest audio quality and CPU-hogging new algorithms?

I like to be realistic about things financially, but this is my musicians
heart speaking.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!

Rutger
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