MOTM

On Tue, 24 May 2005, paulhaneberg wrote:

> I would agree that the potential customers for a project such as this
> would be small.  If it was to be done as a book, I would suggest it be
> done as a published on demand project.

<rant>

I think the market would be larger is some elbow grease where put into the 
book to make it an attractive thing to pick up. All of the books I've 
found on the topic don't exactly scream "read me!" I think it's sort of 
self fulfilling that way.

So, speaking to the group at large as to "where have all the synthesists 
gone?" comments, that's easy: they left your genre of music (figuratively 
speaking, I don't know what you all listen too...) That is to say, they're 
not writing popular rock music.

Living in the bay area at least, I can tell you they're writing ambient, 
alternative, electro, d&b, psytrance, dub, industrial, and other 
side-stream genre's that don't exactly get much airplay.

There's a rather large group of people currently engaged in trying to 
figure this synthesis stuff out all over again. There's a lot of 
twenty-somethings (such as myself) currently re-inventing the wheel. We 
don't really know what we're doing, we're not sure how to get there, but 
there's enough of us to keep Native Instruments, Access, Propellerheads, 
etc in business.

And speaking from experience, a lot of us really need a helping hand in 
certain departments. A good chapter on making a nice rolling baseline 
patch would do a lot of local SF artists some good. How to make a 
convincing string on a Virus would make some budding industrial producer 
really happy. How to get nice kicks out of Reactor for a dance artist, 
etc.

There are plenty of synthesists, they're just not trying to re-create 70's 
era psychedelic rock anthems (of which I'm guilty of...) Heck, most of us 
weren't even born then. I've got crates of music that doesn't have a 
*single* naturally occurring sound in them. (Let's leave the debate as to 
weather any of it is worth listening to for another day ;)

Of course, I talk a big talk, but I don't know what to do about it either. 
Whenever friends come over I sit them down in front of the MOTM and let 
them get their hands dirty. It takes a while, but they start to get it, 
and then they're usually very excited. I don't know what this would look 
like in book form, and my guess is that until someone who is passionate, 
daring, and can write gooder grammar comes along, the status quo is going 
to remain.

...and hey, maybe that's okay.

</rant>

> I'm personally interested in expanding the number of people who are
> doing real synthesis.  I think, especially taking into account the
> prevailing attitude towards synths at the moment, that real synthesis
> is in danger of going the way of the Krumhorn. (which I'm sure Elhardt
> could synthesize)

My interest in understanding how to do "real" synthesis is largely based 
on a desire to understand the rules in such a manner that I can break 'em 
beyond recognition ;)

> I'd like to see more of us sharing what knowledge we have.

That's a damn fine solution ;) I'm currently struggling with methods for 
creating different timbred sounds beyond FM/ring modulation. This feedback 
thing is interesting, but I'm not sure how to get the most out of it.

--mikes