Mellotronists

> From: "jonesalley" <jonesalley@...>
   > Sender: Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com
   > 
   > I'm pretty sure that I never suggested the DX was a bad instrument.  

Not at all...  Remember when I said that with digital synths, after 25
to 40 years of digital music development that the best they can do is
to make bad copies of great instruments that are no longer in
production?  I wanted to point out that the DX-7 is an exception to
that.  The DX-7 was a digital synth that involved wicked creative use
of the technology, it wasn't trying to be a cheap copy of something
it's not, and that sort of character, innovation and joyful
exploration is rarely seen in digital synths.

   > There's no reason that a programming interface should be in
   > Sanskrit, and that was the choice that Yamaha made, quite
   > possibly in part to try to lock up their market share.

Actually there is; FM synthesis, by its very nature, is roughly
equivalent to Sanskrit.  That the price you pay to use FM.  There are
no filters, and the Bessel functions that describe the waveform
warping are weird as all hell.  So it's not really Yamaha's fault.

   > The learning curve is a good thing, but if it is so steep that it
   > interferes with creating music, it doesn't get climbed by many.

Sure, but there are ways around that.  After all, many acoustic
instruments have much steeper learning curves and people have always
invested the time and effort to learn to play those.
			  
One way is for the student to be rewarded each step of the way as they
progress up the learning curve.  That way they're encouraged to
practice, explore, and delve in deeper to learn more.  

  -- Don

-- 
Don Tillman
Palo Alto, California
don@...
http://www.till.com