MOTM

> What do I think stifled creativity/imagination in EM, and led to rather
> mundane use of synths? The electric guitar of course! Every rock keyboard
> player trying to "imitate" lead guitar type sounds, wanking on
> the pitch bend
> like guitar players of the sixties and early seventies did there
> whammy bars
> and wa wa pedals. So now we had not only guitar players hamming
> it up, but
> keyboard players too!
>
> How's that for flame bait?
> John (guitar W-anker) Barlow

It figures. Barlow is a stooge AND a guitar wanker <g>! Don't blame the
pitch bender. Blame the musicianship (or lack thereof) of the person
attempting to use it. Examples run from the sublime (Jeff Beck and Jan
Hammer duels) to the ridiculous (any Neil Young guitar solo, and any of a
thousand oowee oowee Minimoog solos with glide).

(All time worst synth moment on record - intro to "Ridin' the Storm Out")

IMHO what preset polys did was give the marginally competent keyboard player
a way to get in on the action without ever having to understand the
slightest thing about synthesis. Hence popular music began to abound with
cliches even more than before. Hence the tales of Prophet 5s returning to
the factory for service with nary a factory preset changed. At least earlier
synth wankers had to learn how to twist some knobs and listen to sound in
order to serve up their Minimoog cliches!

A synthesist can make good and unique music with these machines, but you get
out what you put in. Of course, some machines are way deeper than others,
and a dedicated synthesist must seek these machines out. I still love my
Chroma, which I bought brand new when they first came out. It has the
resources and almost the flexibility of a medium sized modular, but not the
UI! I spend the time to program every patch to do something interesting when
I step on any of the 4 pedals or whang the 2 paddles. Periodically I empty
the preset memory to force myself to come up with fresh sounds. It's a
totally different form of performance for me. When I play the Chroma, I play
the keyboard. When I play the MOTM, I play the knobs!

Moe(tm)