Hello all,
I usually just lurk here, not being a tron owner, or even a musician in
the usual sense of the word, but the recent discussions about "that
sound" and the idea of developing a digital tron substitute have made me
do some thinking about what it is that I find so compelling about the
sound of these things. (Oops - thinking again. Usually means trouble).
I agree with the consensus about what That Sound is. But there are other
sounds that have just as much an emotional impact on me. Sounds that can
only come from one of these machines. Something to do with translating
the performance of some instrument, like say a saxophone, to a keyboard,
and allowing the player to create a sound that couldn't have been
created by the original sax player. One finger, one sax. Three fingers,
three saxes. Keyboards articlulate and blend sounds in a completely
different way than one or three sax players.
Okay, any sampler can do that. But there's still something that can't be
duplicated. There's a fat quality to the sound. Something warm and
organic. Mysterious. Something that for whatever reason can't be created
with a digital sampler. It must have something to do with the tape and
the heads and the preamps. (Norm Leete proposed a theory once that had
to do with the goodness of the sound being proportional to the number of
asynchronous tone generators - or something like that - and I agree
completely).
And yet there's still something more: knowing that something that sounds
so incredibly sweet is actually coming from some guy with a box that has
more in common with a sewing machine than a flute or a violin or a
saxophone. I think that's just as important. It's weird that such a
wonderful sound can be made by such a mechanical contraption. Maybe
that's why the non-savy listener doesn't get it.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
http://www.maytag.homelinux.com/sound.htmlThis is the bridge from Aimee Mann's "It Takes All Kinds". Listen for
the alto saxes. M2 Chamberlin played by Patrick Warren.
Does anybody else feel this way about it? (i.e. the discrepency between
the sound and the works in the box) Or have I just been drinking too
much wine?
Bob S.