On 3/27/07, Thomas D. Cox, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 3/27/07, David Powers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Tom, have you ever programmed a digital keyboard from the 80's or
> 90's?
yes, in fact i have a yamaha tx81z. which i almost never use because
of its lack of ease. compared to the sh-101 which is probably the most
intuitive synth i own, which gets used constantly because of how easy
it is to make a sound, and have it sound good.
> Now, I can:
> A. Instantly map any knob on my controller to any
> synth/effect/Ableton/whatever parameter I want, with a choice of
> programs to use. It can even be done with 100% non-commercial, free
> software.
> B. With a very small amount of work, build my own synthesizer, if the
> synth I'm using is missing some functionality I want. Again this could
> even be done with free software, though it might not be quite as
> elegant a solution. The closest thing I ever had to this in the past
> was playing around on the Moog modular in college. In that case you
> had to be in the class, and you had to sign out little blocks of time
> in order to use it.
but see, IMO neither of those really has results that matter in the
music. sure, a good synth sound is nice, but how many parameters are
really necessary for that? even modulars IMO start to take away from
the more important things in the music. was it the parameters used for
the synth sound that made "strings of life" so awesome? of course not!
the same thing goes for rock people who spend all this time trying to
emulate their favorite guitarist's tone. the guitarist was a bad mofo
not because of his tone, but because of those ill riffs he was
playing.
tom
First of all, your argument was about whether things were intuitive.
Now you are saying it doesn't matter if things are intuitive. But it
does matter because I can spend MORE TIME MAKING MUSIC and less time
doing setup and unimportant technical stuff. So that kick ass riff, is
gonna kick more ass, cus I could focus more on it.
Also your point of view is very "non-techno", in my opinion, it's
basically anti-techno. your ideas of music sound a lot closer to what
I'd expect a rock person, or even a hippie/jamband kind of fan to say,
honestly. The whole cult of "authenticity" and intuitive brilliance
and all that nonsense.
IMO what makes techno distinct is that the kind of sound a synth makes
DOES matter - timbre has become an essential part of the composition.
It's the timbre that makes techno something other than 70's funk and
disco, really.
In fact 20th century music as a whole, including classical and jazz,
really brought about a shift that made timbre equal to rhythm, melody,
and harmony as a music element. And in fact, in math terms those
things are indeed related. So you basically want to go back to the
19th century ... how very punk rock of you ... ;-)
PS> I don't really ever need to hear Strings of Life again, I don't
know why people like it so much.
~D
