I honestly think the same thing is possible with Laptops, but maybe we haven't seen the Ron Hardy or Derrick May of the laptop yet. But it's silly to argue that computers, in and of themselves, are the problem.
agreed. a big problem when switching over to computer, just like from analog to digital, is that the rules change.
the issue is similar to what gareth jones said in an interview about recording with daniel miller and depeche mode: new music goes through a formica stage. some the first analog synths were used to put out things like "switched on bach" where synths tried to mimic and replace each instrument in a classical orchestra. cute, but why bother? it's not an orchestra so don't try because it will fail misreably and sound cheesy (unless that's what you're going for). a convincing trompe l'oeil (or l'oreille in this case) is hard to do and only works in a controlled environment, which music is not often experienced in.
moving from analog to digital we had the same issue, and now again from hardware/sequencer/recorder-based technology to the laptop environment. the tendency is to mimic what's gone before. there is a good deal of laptop music that does not try to be other than what it is, or explores those boundaries rather than trying to make the laptop be a replacement for something else.
analog modelers are pretty amazing, but i'm sorry they're not the same. even the ones that are "exactly the same except without the unpredicatability and the noise" - well, hell, unpredictability and noise are HUGE factors in music.
d.
