Don't try too hard to fight the tool you are using. Keyboards came
out and people did try to use them to make 'real' sounds, and as the
technology progressed they were able to achieve that to some degree--
that's when old-school analog came back into fashion.... People
started to celebrate the synthesizer for what it was-- a
device... and electronic device... .with it's warm juicy tones, like
my two Juno 106's.... and people that were trying to emulate real
instruments went back to actually using real instruments.
Champion analog? Play with your analog synths to your hearts content...
Software brings about a whole new list of possibilities. They made a
whole slew of analog emulation plugins to appease the obligatory
naysayers that it was all the same. It's a new tool... and just like
synths have had more than their share of mindless candy coated
gimmicks, so too will people use their computer no further than what
is right in front of them... as people explore further and discover
new sounds that are inherent in the computer we can begin to
celebrate the software for its own unique properties and personality.
Dale
At 01:32 PM 9/2/2006, Brian Prince wrote:
> it's the lifeless,stiff, ear-scratching bright sound that is the problem..
It's possible to make a digital track sound convincingly analog in any
decent software package. Soft saturation on the EQ, tape compression, add
a little hiss ... nobody will know the difference. Record an analog track
to a computer at a sufficient bitrate and it still sounds analog. The set
of acoustic characteristics responsible for the old-school flavor are
degradations (in the technical sense) which can be applied procedurally in
a digital production environment.
But I think that the over-use of such techniques is, more often than not,
a little tacky. It's like printing a digital painting on canvas to try to
make it look like an oil painting. It's difficult to make good,
forward-facing art if you're constantly ashamed of the tools you were
using.
Techno's godfathers were *proud* of the synthetic nature of their
instruments. They didn't try to make their strings and basslines sound
real.
Techno, for me, is about putting the soul of the future in the listener's
face. It's about bangin' the robo-beat with whatever you can get your
hands on. I draw much of my inspriation from the compositions and feelings
of the old-school, not the recording gear and cabling thereof.
- bp
