There has been a great deal of excitement lately about the Kinect video game console. This console uses the motions of the human body rather than a Wii controller or something like it to control a virtual video game world. Many have naturally thought about its adaptation as a musical controller. I will hold off my applause for a while but I wanted to express a few concerns.
One application would be a kind of 3D theremin. The idea would basically be to map parameters representing 3D space to synthesizer parameters. That's fine and a marginal advancement over the theremin but I would not really call it groundbreaking. An example of what I do find at least a little ground breaking is the Eigenharp. It's still simply parameter mapping but there is a very fine degree of control over the controllers on each pad not to mention the 2D array. Many I have discussed this new technology with have likened it to being an instrument rather than a controller. I agree. Any thing I have seen for Kinect places it more as a controller. That's ok, but its not groundbreaking IMHO.
So what would be? I believe that controllers will truly break ground when they move from controller to gestural controller. What do I mean by that? Simple. We all use gestures. We first use them when we learn to speak. Our own body had a very complex synthesizer built right in. A voice box that acts as an oscillator and our throat, mouth, tongue and lips that all act as filters and our muscles which control these as modulators. But rather than thinking about position in space (the current paradigm be it kinect, Roland D-beam, theremn, ect), all of these are defined by morphology. Confused, ok. Morphology is just a way of describing how something changes over time. This is why I am interested, fascinated even memorized by developments studying the brain. The brain does not think in terms of coordinates in space. When someone for example extends their hand to use we don't start to think, ok, what is the coordinates of their hand. No! We see gesture. The position of the hand, the open hand, the extension of the hand to the other person, a smile, the direction of our eyes, all of these gestures get processed by our brains and our brains interpret them as a handshake.
Now here is the trick, moving beyond coordinates to gesture. Apple has done this a bit with there computers and I even have a Sony Vaio that interprets two quick finger pats on the mouse pad as a mouse click. Now consider a conductor and how, without using any physical device other than a conductors wand, is able to communicate to the orchestra musical information.
This is my criticism of Kinect as a musical controller. I don't see it moving beyond an XYZ controller (yawn) because to interpret gesture takes a very quick computer and some very sophisticated programmers. Do I think we will get there? Sure and Buchla already has done this with with the Buchla Lighening which is a rudimentary gestural controller albiet at a high price. My problem with Buchla is that they want someone to invest a lot of money in a product without even having a manual or sufficient demos to look at first. The demos that are out there really don't explain the gestural interpretation engine and frankly some of them look more like the motions of an escaped mental patient than a musician.
Anyway, I have bright hopes for the future but is Kinect the answer? I don't think so but as I said, I will at least partially suspend my judgement.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Presets and Performances
A comment today from a Twitter friend got me thinking. He said that he did not like presets because they limited his creativity. I guess I can see where that might be true but in many ways, I am moving in a very different creative direction.
First, let me explain how I write music. First, I get an idea and then, I think of the synthesizers I could use to create it. Then I start programming by working with an existing preset and tweaking it or in some cases, developing and idea from scratch. Then I record one layer and repeat the process.
My compositions are often not complex horizontally. What I mean by this is that they are not long and have a lot of part to them. This is fact is my greatest self criticism and is what is going to get me to the presets and beyond.
Once of the reasons that I don't have a lot of parts to a composition is that it's hard to see the whole. I think the reason is that I have to break everything up. I am not playing it at the same time. So is this even possible. Yes, I think so. One way is to use presets and to change them with my feet. This way I can go from one movement to the next. I even want to use a Switchblade matrix router so that I can even change things like effects routing paths on the fly. I also want bass pedals so I can play bass with my feet much like an organists.
So my two paradigms that I am using to create a different type of studio are based on the pipe organ and the other based on the Orchestra. In many ways, these are the same things. But think of a symphony for a moment. A composer can change directions from one measure to the next simply by using different instruments in a different way. Now of course, the composer is not doing this in real time but imagine he/she could. With the type of electronic instruments we have today it's possible to perform works in real time.
It got a whole lot from listening to another Twitter friend, Mark Mosher, at the Electro Music festival for 2010 who was able to perform his works in real time by using various controllers and Ableton Live. The whole experience got me out of the paradigm I used before of piecing music together.
Now a pipe organ fits the paradigm as well. An organ can change while its being placed with stops.
So I now see composition as setting up a performance space and then using this space to create a composition in real time without stopping. Different settings of synths can be programmed to controllers and different presets also programmed and changed using foot switches or buttons.
So that is the direction I am going in. I just wanted to throw it out there and hopefully get a few comments back. I would very much appreciate responses.
First, let me explain how I write music. First, I get an idea and then, I think of the synthesizers I could use to create it. Then I start programming by working with an existing preset and tweaking it or in some cases, developing and idea from scratch. Then I record one layer and repeat the process.
My compositions are often not complex horizontally. What I mean by this is that they are not long and have a lot of part to them. This is fact is my greatest self criticism and is what is going to get me to the presets and beyond.
Once of the reasons that I don't have a lot of parts to a composition is that it's hard to see the whole. I think the reason is that I have to break everything up. I am not playing it at the same time. So is this even possible. Yes, I think so. One way is to use presets and to change them with my feet. This way I can go from one movement to the next. I even want to use a Switchblade matrix router so that I can even change things like effects routing paths on the fly. I also want bass pedals so I can play bass with my feet much like an organists.
So my two paradigms that I am using to create a different type of studio are based on the pipe organ and the other based on the Orchestra. In many ways, these are the same things. But think of a symphony for a moment. A composer can change directions from one measure to the next simply by using different instruments in a different way. Now of course, the composer is not doing this in real time but imagine he/she could. With the type of electronic instruments we have today it's possible to perform works in real time.
It got a whole lot from listening to another Twitter friend, Mark Mosher, at the Electro Music festival for 2010 who was able to perform his works in real time by using various controllers and Ableton Live. The whole experience got me out of the paradigm I used before of piecing music together.
Now a pipe organ fits the paradigm as well. An organ can change while its being placed with stops.
So I now see composition as setting up a performance space and then using this space to create a composition in real time without stopping. Different settings of synths can be programmed to controllers and different presets also programmed and changed using foot switches or buttons.
So that is the direction I am going in. I just wanted to throw it out there and hopefully get a few comments back. I would very much appreciate responses.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Which comes first, the genre or the music?
Those who know my musical tastes will know that I am not one to limit myself to one particular musical genres. While I write ambient and experimental music, I have a great affinity to listing to and studying the greats of jazz and classical. These two genres stand at rather opposite ends of apporaches to music or at least until the 20th century regarding classical.
Classical music has always taken a certain pride in its rigor. To be a great classical musician and/or composer, one must spend countless hours studying and playing the music of the greats and understanding the music theory behind their works. At first, classical music was very constrained and fell within fairly narrow parameters. If one was to be a master, one has to work within the narrow guidelines but also do so with creativity. Of course, this was more than possible and the greats such as Bach created created musical works that followed the well worn path of the music that had some before with its limitations but also its possiblities for great expression and beauty.
As classical music progressed, the rules became less important and creativity seemed to flourish as composers and musicians found new musical territory to explore. This culminated in the early 20th century with composers like John Cage who broke completely with tradition. Rather than following the past, he challenged it.
The 20th century avant guarde is also very much tied to the advent of electronic instruments. As technology offered hope for the future, composers like Karlheintz Stockhausen saw entire realms of unexplored electronic methods to create sounds that had never been heard. Early electronic music became the age not of organized notes that conformed to musical standards as in Bach's time but a brave new word of the Pierre Boulez coined "organized sound".
As jazz was using melodies and chords to provide broad harmonic constructs of expression, so to, electronics provided a means of expression. The line between composer and scientists seemed to blur. Artists like Stockhausen where asking questions of "what if" perhaps hoping to pave the way to some new synthesis of sounds that would be the pallet for an new age of music expanded far beyond the limitations of traditional instruments.
With the advent of the Moog Modular Synthesizer and Buchla's electronic music system and electronic music box, the ability to create complex electronic voices was now possible with a bit of a learning curve to climb and money to invest. At first, synthesizers were large the purview of universities and therefore, the use of these instruments stayed well within the confines of a carefully studied academic approach.
But Bob Moog did not want the synthesizer to remain locked in the ivory towers so he made a cheaper and more accessible instrument. This much smaller synthesizer was called a Minimoog. The Minimoog could easily be used on stage and it was for hundreds of bands. The Minimoog and a plethora of synthesizers that followed after.
But as music became accessible it left the ivory tower and moved to the recording studio. Electronic music had entered mainstream pop. Now pop music was not dictated by well footnoted treatises on the experimental wanderings of a Buchla Music Box but rather dollar signs. The more one could crank out hit album after hit album, the more dollars one could make but not just the musicians but the producer. So the pressure was put on putting the genre before the music. Music moved from the experimental seeking a genre to a genre that defined musicians and in many ways, limited their creative choices.
For a while, progressive rock found some bolder territory where they could both make hit records but also do something experimental and artistic but soon, following the leader seemed to dominate especially when the age of low cost computer memory made samples all the rage even to this day. Samples defined a game of musical follower the leader and soon, each time a new sound was used, it became all the rage for a new set of copy cat songs. And electronic music, that held the hope of exploring entire new musical universes, was dominated by sample driven music.
Now that is not the whole story and it was my pleasure in going to the 2010 Electro Music Fest to see that he age of experimentation is alive and well. Many web sites now provide music on the internet which reach into a much broader scope. The music appears to be leading the gerne again and this story is far from being over. In fact, now that someone can make quality recordings at home and then sell them on the internet makes the influence of the sample peddler/bankers far from the only game in town.
So where do we go from here? Will music now lead the way rather than the genre. How often are genres defined by someone simply doing something and the rest following. What is a genre other than a self imposed copying of someone's style with the hopes to be creative enough to break out of the box at least a bit. But then we have the new avant guarde. The musicians who value creativity more than copying the crowd.
But now I come to a dilemma. I was going to post a video of a musician flailing around with Buchla Lightening rods. It was not the carefully crafted sounds of someone like a Morton Subotnick who has learned to master the Buchla Music box and take listeners to another world. No, it was someone who at least seemed to me to have little musical experience and spent a large sum of money on Buchla Lightening. Now granted, some other videos were more musical than this poor example but the one I am thinking of, was nothing more than a child playing on a toy drum. I did not post it because I am not trying to disparage anyone in particular but to merely point out a problem.
I find it myself when I have a wealth of ways to make music and find myself lost in possibilities. I myself do have some musical training and I have found that those musicians who have some training themselves often make better music than those musicans who resemble more the flailing musician with lighting rods in the video I am talking about.
Experimental music is always as risk, when it puts the music before the genre and in doing to gets lost in a sea of possibilities. The music should come before the genre but in a thoughtful and skilled way. I am not suggesting that we either follow the way of mass produced pop music or the rigor of the Baroque period with its well crafted fugues but I am suggesting that we talk about music that is being created and try to learn some skills that will help the better experiments to begin to forms into genres or perhaps better said, musical paths that show promise. I myself would rather try to focus on a few genres that I create and learn how to explore them with some skill and forethought than to drown in a sea of the latest gadgets and believe me, I am very guilty of that. Perhaps, at least for a time, I want to go deeper instead o broader and try to find something lasting and worthwhile creating, even if it does mean I have to spend some time practicing and really learning how to use the wonderful instruments that I have that make those wonderful sounds. Perhaps, learning to use what I have will become the contraints that define a deeper creativity born of skill rather than drowning in the possiblities.
Classical music has always taken a certain pride in its rigor. To be a great classical musician and/or composer, one must spend countless hours studying and playing the music of the greats and understanding the music theory behind their works. At first, classical music was very constrained and fell within fairly narrow parameters. If one was to be a master, one has to work within the narrow guidelines but also do so with creativity. Of course, this was more than possible and the greats such as Bach created created musical works that followed the well worn path of the music that had some before with its limitations but also its possiblities for great expression and beauty.
As classical music progressed, the rules became less important and creativity seemed to flourish as composers and musicians found new musical territory to explore. This culminated in the early 20th century with composers like John Cage who broke completely with tradition. Rather than following the past, he challenged it.
The 20th century avant guarde is also very much tied to the advent of electronic instruments. As technology offered hope for the future, composers like Karlheintz Stockhausen saw entire realms of unexplored electronic methods to create sounds that had never been heard. Early electronic music became the age not of organized notes that conformed to musical standards as in Bach's time but a brave new word of the Pierre Boulez coined "organized sound".
As jazz was using melodies and chords to provide broad harmonic constructs of expression, so to, electronics provided a means of expression. The line between composer and scientists seemed to blur. Artists like Stockhausen where asking questions of "what if" perhaps hoping to pave the way to some new synthesis of sounds that would be the pallet for an new age of music expanded far beyond the limitations of traditional instruments.
With the advent of the Moog Modular Synthesizer and Buchla's electronic music system and electronic music box, the ability to create complex electronic voices was now possible with a bit of a learning curve to climb and money to invest. At first, synthesizers were large the purview of universities and therefore, the use of these instruments stayed well within the confines of a carefully studied academic approach.
But Bob Moog did not want the synthesizer to remain locked in the ivory towers so he made a cheaper and more accessible instrument. This much smaller synthesizer was called a Minimoog. The Minimoog could easily be used on stage and it was for hundreds of bands. The Minimoog and a plethora of synthesizers that followed after.
But as music became accessible it left the ivory tower and moved to the recording studio. Electronic music had entered mainstream pop. Now pop music was not dictated by well footnoted treatises on the experimental wanderings of a Buchla Music Box but rather dollar signs. The more one could crank out hit album after hit album, the more dollars one could make but not just the musicians but the producer. So the pressure was put on putting the genre before the music. Music moved from the experimental seeking a genre to a genre that defined musicians and in many ways, limited their creative choices.
For a while, progressive rock found some bolder territory where they could both make hit records but also do something experimental and artistic but soon, following the leader seemed to dominate especially when the age of low cost computer memory made samples all the rage even to this day. Samples defined a game of musical follower the leader and soon, each time a new sound was used, it became all the rage for a new set of copy cat songs. And electronic music, that held the hope of exploring entire new musical universes, was dominated by sample driven music.
Now that is not the whole story and it was my pleasure in going to the 2010 Electro Music Fest to see that he age of experimentation is alive and well. Many web sites now provide music on the internet which reach into a much broader scope. The music appears to be leading the gerne again and this story is far from being over. In fact, now that someone can make quality recordings at home and then sell them on the internet makes the influence of the sample peddler/bankers far from the only game in town.
So where do we go from here? Will music now lead the way rather than the genre. How often are genres defined by someone simply doing something and the rest following. What is a genre other than a self imposed copying of someone's style with the hopes to be creative enough to break out of the box at least a bit. But then we have the new avant guarde. The musicians who value creativity more than copying the crowd.
But now I come to a dilemma. I was going to post a video of a musician flailing around with Buchla Lightening rods. It was not the carefully crafted sounds of someone like a Morton Subotnick who has learned to master the Buchla Music box and take listeners to another world. No, it was someone who at least seemed to me to have little musical experience and spent a large sum of money on Buchla Lightening. Now granted, some other videos were more musical than this poor example but the one I am thinking of, was nothing more than a child playing on a toy drum. I did not post it because I am not trying to disparage anyone in particular but to merely point out a problem.
I find it myself when I have a wealth of ways to make music and find myself lost in possibilities. I myself do have some musical training and I have found that those musicians who have some training themselves often make better music than those musicans who resemble more the flailing musician with lighting rods in the video I am talking about.
Experimental music is always as risk, when it puts the music before the genre and in doing to gets lost in a sea of possibilities. The music should come before the genre but in a thoughtful and skilled way. I am not suggesting that we either follow the way of mass produced pop music or the rigor of the Baroque period with its well crafted fugues but I am suggesting that we talk about music that is being created and try to learn some skills that will help the better experiments to begin to forms into genres or perhaps better said, musical paths that show promise. I myself would rather try to focus on a few genres that I create and learn how to explore them with some skill and forethought than to drown in a sea of the latest gadgets and believe me, I am very guilty of that. Perhaps, at least for a time, I want to go deeper instead o broader and try to find something lasting and worthwhile creating, even if it does mean I have to spend some time practicing and really learning how to use the wonderful instruments that I have that make those wonderful sounds. Perhaps, learning to use what I have will become the contraints that define a deeper creativity born of skill rather than drowning in the possiblities.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tear Down the Wall
I never got to know my great grandmother in person because by the time I was born, she had already passed away. But my father has told me stories about her. Like many of the Irish who lived in Boston at the time, she did not really have even two dimes to rub together but one of her great sources of entertainment and enlightenment was to go to the local library and bring back a stack of books that she would then devour over the week and return the next week for another stack. I have little doubt that if she went to a University and mingled with the whose who walked the hallowed halls of the ivory tower, she would have found a group of her peers even though her small Boston apartment was never adorned with a diploma from one of the great higher learning institutions.
Now I understand that people with degrees often find a ready group of people that can relate to them and that different intellectual disciplines often develop their own vocabulary and knowledge of advancements in the field. I do the same with music. Now mind you I have no degree in music (I have degrees however), but I have learned from experience, a lot of hand on practical experience and a have done a lot of reading and talking to people in the field about many things about synthesizers. With people I often talk to on Twitter for example, I can talk about the VCS3, VCOs and VCAs and most will know exactly what these things are. They know who EMS is and Robert Moog and Donald Buchla. All this is natural and good.
However, I am always open to learning something new. I like my grandmother, am not so interested in getting a nice new piece of paper on my wall but rather, getting a new stack of books (in my case often put in my own bookcases) and read and learn. Or to sit in front of a soft synth or a hard synth and play music. Music that speaks to my heart and I want to share with others.
IMHO (degrees or no), we can all learn from one another and frankly, if someone has a degree or not, I don't really care. It's why I rarely share what diplomas I have. My great grandmother did not have any degrees from higher learning institutions as I do but I would rather go back in time and be able to spend an hour with her than with the great minds of the universities. She had a practical knowledge that I think the world is losing. The Irish are some of the greatest writers because they learned the art of poetry, music and story telling by sharing it with their friends at the local pub. They learned to paint with words and notes not because they had a degree but from telling stories and playing music.
I posed a tweet the other night about the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" which is, as I said, not really about either zen or motorcycles but has a lot to say about metaphysics. I know, not a word that you hear discussed much these days although I bet my great grandmother knew what it is. Metaphysics is the study of being, of what something is, the underlying essence of things.
The academic mind tends to break things down into small pieces so that each knows their own piece but often not the whole and so they only see the trees and not he forest. They see a drop of water and not the ocean or even the world of life that can exists in a single drop of water from that ocean. A person can only know something by knowing it from all sides and then, putting it all together and then, and only then, understand it's essence. I will tell you my take on music and the brain. That is why so many parts of the brain light up when music is being played.
Music can also be seen from many directions. It is theory, notes and scales and tempos and the like. But it is also emotion and mystery. It speaks both in conterpoint but also of sadness and longing or the joy of summers day. It speaks a language all its own. I can approach music from the perspective of neurology, psycho acoustics, psychology, music theory, electronics even physics. Each can tell me something but none on their own capture the essence.
When I allude to the Carolian rabbit hole, I am trying to invite people down a hole that will show them a world below the surface of academic disciplines that they seem to cling to with such fervor. One of the reasons I love the first Matrix movie (the 1st, the writers kind of blew it after that) is that we each live in our own matrix. We have a vocabulary that we may share with a particular group of people, or knowledge, or experience. And like the movie, it's ok sometimes to enjoy taste of the steak, but there is more to the human experience than that and to experience it, we have to leave our matrix.
We hold up our degrees and believe that only those in our small circle have something to say or contribute to our jobs and our life but the truth is, in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway ways and tenement halls". Perhaps, we have only to listen and the silence will speak to us.
Now I understand that people with degrees often find a ready group of people that can relate to them and that different intellectual disciplines often develop their own vocabulary and knowledge of advancements in the field. I do the same with music. Now mind you I have no degree in music (I have degrees however), but I have learned from experience, a lot of hand on practical experience and a have done a lot of reading and talking to people in the field about many things about synthesizers. With people I often talk to on Twitter for example, I can talk about the VCS3, VCOs and VCAs and most will know exactly what these things are. They know who EMS is and Robert Moog and Donald Buchla. All this is natural and good.
However, I am always open to learning something new. I like my grandmother, am not so interested in getting a nice new piece of paper on my wall but rather, getting a new stack of books (in my case often put in my own bookcases) and read and learn. Or to sit in front of a soft synth or a hard synth and play music. Music that speaks to my heart and I want to share with others.
IMHO (degrees or no), we can all learn from one another and frankly, if someone has a degree or not, I don't really care. It's why I rarely share what diplomas I have. My great grandmother did not have any degrees from higher learning institutions as I do but I would rather go back in time and be able to spend an hour with her than with the great minds of the universities. She had a practical knowledge that I think the world is losing. The Irish are some of the greatest writers because they learned the art of poetry, music and story telling by sharing it with their friends at the local pub. They learned to paint with words and notes not because they had a degree but from telling stories and playing music.
I posed a tweet the other night about the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" which is, as I said, not really about either zen or motorcycles but has a lot to say about metaphysics. I know, not a word that you hear discussed much these days although I bet my great grandmother knew what it is. Metaphysics is the study of being, of what something is, the underlying essence of things.
The academic mind tends to break things down into small pieces so that each knows their own piece but often not the whole and so they only see the trees and not he forest. They see a drop of water and not the ocean or even the world of life that can exists in a single drop of water from that ocean. A person can only know something by knowing it from all sides and then, putting it all together and then, and only then, understand it's essence. I will tell you my take on music and the brain. That is why so many parts of the brain light up when music is being played.
Music can also be seen from many directions. It is theory, notes and scales and tempos and the like. But it is also emotion and mystery. It speaks both in conterpoint but also of sadness and longing or the joy of summers day. It speaks a language all its own. I can approach music from the perspective of neurology, psycho acoustics, psychology, music theory, electronics even physics. Each can tell me something but none on their own capture the essence.
When I allude to the Carolian rabbit hole, I am trying to invite people down a hole that will show them a world below the surface of academic disciplines that they seem to cling to with such fervor. One of the reasons I love the first Matrix movie (the 1st, the writers kind of blew it after that) is that we each live in our own matrix. We have a vocabulary that we may share with a particular group of people, or knowledge, or experience. And like the movie, it's ok sometimes to enjoy taste of the steak, but there is more to the human experience than that and to experience it, we have to leave our matrix.
We hold up our degrees and believe that only those in our small circle have something to say or contribute to our jobs and our life but the truth is, in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway ways and tenement halls". Perhaps, we have only to listen and the silence will speak to us.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Do Sounds Have Meaning?
I just listened to this great interview with John Cage again:
In this interview, Cage claims that sound has no meaning.
I think the question as to if sound has meaning or not relates to the very old philosophical question that if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound. If the meaning of sound is that the molecules in the air vibrate when it falls then yes, it makes a sound. If one where to leave a recording device in the forest when the tree fell it would also produce a recording of those vibrations. But if one means by sound what we associate sound with in language, our experience of the sensation of sound, then no, the tree does not make any sound.
It is impossible for us to hear a sound the way a recording device records it. Each time we hear a sound our brains not only filter it, but try to make sense of it. There is a psychological theory refered to as pareidolia
In this interview, Cage claims that sound has no meaning.
I think the question as to if sound has meaning or not relates to the very old philosophical question that if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound. If the meaning of sound is that the molecules in the air vibrate when it falls then yes, it makes a sound. If one where to leave a recording device in the forest when the tree fell it would also produce a recording of those vibrations. But if one means by sound what we associate sound with in language, our experience of the sensation of sound, then no, the tree does not make any sound.
It is impossible for us to hear a sound the way a recording device records it. Each time we hear a sound our brains not only filter it, but try to make sense of it. There is a psychological theory refered to as pareidolia
Thursday, August 26, 2010
It Just Runs Programs
In trawling the web for comments good and bad about some hard synths out there, I have often come upon the argument that soft synths sound at least as good if not better, and are more powerful, than hard synths and far chapter, so why buy a hard synth?
There are a few reasons. The most significant reason is that the knobs on a hard synth create a musical space that lends itself to real time experimentation. The common response that is, that's true but there are controllers out there now that will give the musician knobs and sliders to control soft synths. Some, even have pre-made mappings to many of the popular synths or some soft synths have MIDI learn to make it easy to map knobs on the controller to the virtual knobs on the soft synth. DAWs also have tools.
All of this is true but its not the whole picture. First, the controller has no visual markings to label the knobs and sliders. Of course, one could create a series of templates but that is a lot of bother. There are also some attempts to improve on the basic paradigm of a controller such as Native Instruments Kore 2 but the fact remains that if you look at the hardware controller, there is no visual cue to what you are controlling so the direct interaction with the synth is lost.
One solution would be do have a very high res set of LEDs that provided soft templates. I am not sure why Native Instruments or someone else has not come up with this. Another problem is that the position of the knobs are still fixed. I have three hard synths. A Moog Voyager, a Korg M3 and a Waldorf Blofeld. Each of these synths have a very unique and very different set of knobs and sliders. The reason is simple. Each of these synths has a very unique character or personality if you will. That is reflected in the design of the keyboard or controller and reflected in the sound. The two are integrated together.
Now soft synths could have their own dedicated controllers and in a few instances they have but they have not gone over well because in the mind of the consumer, they are adding unnecessary cost. I don't really agree with this but the second problem is that if you have a lot of soft synths you would need a massive USB hub which would strain most computers.
So that's the first reason that soft synths fall short of hard synths.
Also realize that is possible to stack at least three keyboards. This is not the same as snazzy MDI controllers with keyboard splits. One has a full range on each synth whatever that range might be.
Now onto the financial argument that they are so much cheaper. OK, but what about those upgrades. Isn't that part of the game. I've played it. The company comes out with an upgrade and well, even if it's not all that significant, well, one just has to have it.
Now in some cases hard synths companies want money for upgrades but they don't come out as much and in some cases, like the Korg M3 for example, they are free which includes new samples. Add say three upgrades to a soft synth and that cheap synth has nearly doubled in price!
The final advantage I wanted to point out is often overlooked but important. Go look at the back of any hard synth and there are usually a whole wide range of in and outs. Often, sound can be routed differently to different sets of outs. Ins can also be used in different ways. On the Korg M3, the entire synth is an effects processor and through the audio ins it can process external audio and also resample it. Most soft synths have a meager set of effects. The Korg M3s effects are vast and powerful and directly tied to the hardware, yes, all those knobs and sliders. It even is more powerful than that but I will not get into that.
So if you find an extensive set of soft effects and add on a few upgrades for the synth and effects and your getting up price prize a lot closer to hardware.
The bottom line is that the ability to route audio to other hardware is something that soft synths and DAWS do not do all that well. Yes, I know about Reason and some other products as well but these attempts are not nearly as good as the ability to use a patch bay or even a more sophisticated matrix audio router like the "switchblade". One aspect of any hardware based system is that it is in a sense a modular itself. Combine it with a modular or with effects pedals and the possibilities expand far beyond the meager possibilities on soft synths.
The most significant part of it is there is something kind of magical about hardware. It lends itself to experimentation and for the reasons mentioned it can be rivaled by generic controllers. What is it worth? That's something each musician or composer has to decide. For me, its worth it. I see value in soft synths and frankly, some of my soft synths do things my hardware can't but I see it as supplementing not replacing my hardware.
There are a few reasons. The most significant reason is that the knobs on a hard synth create a musical space that lends itself to real time experimentation. The common response that is, that's true but there are controllers out there now that will give the musician knobs and sliders to control soft synths. Some, even have pre-made mappings to many of the popular synths or some soft synths have MIDI learn to make it easy to map knobs on the controller to the virtual knobs on the soft synth. DAWs also have tools.
All of this is true but its not the whole picture. First, the controller has no visual markings to label the knobs and sliders. Of course, one could create a series of templates but that is a lot of bother. There are also some attempts to improve on the basic paradigm of a controller such as Native Instruments Kore 2 but the fact remains that if you look at the hardware controller, there is no visual cue to what you are controlling so the direct interaction with the synth is lost.
One solution would be do have a very high res set of LEDs that provided soft templates. I am not sure why Native Instruments or someone else has not come up with this. Another problem is that the position of the knobs are still fixed. I have three hard synths. A Moog Voyager, a Korg M3 and a Waldorf Blofeld. Each of these synths have a very unique and very different set of knobs and sliders. The reason is simple. Each of these synths has a very unique character or personality if you will. That is reflected in the design of the keyboard or controller and reflected in the sound. The two are integrated together.
Now soft synths could have their own dedicated controllers and in a few instances they have but they have not gone over well because in the mind of the consumer, they are adding unnecessary cost. I don't really agree with this but the second problem is that if you have a lot of soft synths you would need a massive USB hub which would strain most computers.
So that's the first reason that soft synths fall short of hard synths.
Also realize that is possible to stack at least three keyboards. This is not the same as snazzy MDI controllers with keyboard splits. One has a full range on each synth whatever that range might be.
Now onto the financial argument that they are so much cheaper. OK, but what about those upgrades. Isn't that part of the game. I've played it. The company comes out with an upgrade and well, even if it's not all that significant, well, one just has to have it.
Now in some cases hard synths companies want money for upgrades but they don't come out as much and in some cases, like the Korg M3 for example, they are free which includes new samples. Add say three upgrades to a soft synth and that cheap synth has nearly doubled in price!
The final advantage I wanted to point out is often overlooked but important. Go look at the back of any hard synth and there are usually a whole wide range of in and outs. Often, sound can be routed differently to different sets of outs. Ins can also be used in different ways. On the Korg M3, the entire synth is an effects processor and through the audio ins it can process external audio and also resample it. Most soft synths have a meager set of effects. The Korg M3s effects are vast and powerful and directly tied to the hardware, yes, all those knobs and sliders. It even is more powerful than that but I will not get into that.
So if you find an extensive set of soft effects and add on a few upgrades for the synth and effects and your getting up price prize a lot closer to hardware.
The bottom line is that the ability to route audio to other hardware is something that soft synths and DAWS do not do all that well. Yes, I know about Reason and some other products as well but these attempts are not nearly as good as the ability to use a patch bay or even a more sophisticated matrix audio router like the "switchblade". One aspect of any hardware based system is that it is in a sense a modular itself. Combine it with a modular or with effects pedals and the possibilities expand far beyond the meager possibilities on soft synths.
The most significant part of it is there is something kind of magical about hardware. It lends itself to experimentation and for the reasons mentioned it can be rivaled by generic controllers. What is it worth? That's something each musician or composer has to decide. For me, its worth it. I see value in soft synths and frankly, some of my soft synths do things my hardware can't but I see it as supplementing not replacing my hardware.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
On Happy Accidents
Rather than posting a whole slew of tweets on Twitter, I thought it best to blog. I have been thinking lately about happy accidents in the history of music synthesis. What I mean by this is that often, what works musically is often more the result of imperfections than perfections. Perhaps, this might even apply to governing nations, but I digress.
To explain what I mean by this, consider the Moog Ladder Filter. In order to get the cutoff desired, a lattice of filters was necessary to design the Moog Ladder Filter. This results in distortion. Moog did not mind this but realized that the distortion, while from a purist point was undesirable, but from a musical perspective, it was desirable. So much so that this filter became a kind of musical legend.
Another example is that of oscillators for analog synths. The reason for all three waveforms that are usually used (square, sawtooth, triangular) is because these waveform are easy to approximate using the discharge of a capacitor. The corollary to this happy accident is that these waveforms have particular harmonic properties that make them useful.. For example, the square and triangular waveforms have no odd harmonics which make them effective for mimicking woodwind instruments, especially the square, because of the harmonic and physical characteristics of those instruments. Sawtooths provide a very broad spectrum waveform that can then be filtered to create very musical effects combined with envelopes.
Another example spurred on a whole musical industry from blues to rock, to hard rock to heavy metal. Back in the early days, amplifiers used tubes (and some still do) because there were no transistors. When tubes got hot, they distorted (well, even before that but the heat enhanced the effect). But they did so in such a way to enhance harmonics in a musical way. Amps today use several stages of amplification which creates another type of sound. The why however is not so important as the fact that it is musical. There is also what is called sag in amps which has to do with the power supply but it creates a drop in power that is part of the signature sound of some amps.
Pickups on guitars are another example. The more windings one has on a guitar makes the signal not only a lot stronger but also more distorted combined with an amp. Again, for some types of music this is desirable.
Natural instrument are perhaps the best example. Instruments are expressive (much more so than electronics without a lot of help) because when a note is first played, the physical system which creates the oscillations is not in equilibrium. This creates noise which, in a brief time, changes to a stable waveform. What we actually find expressive and interesting about an instrument is not the static waveform (which is actually kind of boring) but the first part of the note we call the transient. This is what we identify often with musical virtuosity.
From a purists perspective, the stable physical system which creates a stable sustained waveform is what is attractive perhaps on an intellectual basis but its the imperfection of the transient that creates the magic.
So there you have it. That is my walk though the happy accidents of music.
The flip side of course is that those things that might seem theoretically relevant, may not be musical. My example of that is additive synthesis. I will not go into it here but I am in rebellion against what I would call the Fourier illusion. My basis for this is actually because I have a mathematical background and believe that he whole concept of harmonics is defunct to some extent. It can be a useful tool but in some sense, its only a model of reality, not the true reality. Granular synthesis is coming closer to the true reality but much like the physics of a particle being a wave and a particle, the same applies to these models of sound.
Not to inject a lot of politics into my musical blog, I try to keep this separate, but consider a society. People come in all shapes and sizes with all sorts of problems. If we embrace that which is imperfect, then things work. Yes, we know there is greed but if its directed towards making a good product that can help people than that is a good thing. Yes we know that some people are not healthy but perhaps helping those people actually makes us better people. I know there are those in our government, some at the very highest level, who believe that government can create an earthly utopia without injustice, hunger and suffering so they try to force people into a mold of what they believe Perhaps, in some odd way, its those things that we struggle with, those imperfections, that may just be the happy accidents that help to bind us together.
Just a musical musing for a somewhat tranquil Sunday morning for me.
Hope all enjoyed.
To explain what I mean by this, consider the Moog Ladder Filter. In order to get the cutoff desired, a lattice of filters was necessary to design the Moog Ladder Filter. This results in distortion. Moog did not mind this but realized that the distortion, while from a purist point was undesirable, but from a musical perspective, it was desirable. So much so that this filter became a kind of musical legend.
Another example is that of oscillators for analog synths. The reason for all three waveforms that are usually used (square, sawtooth, triangular) is because these waveform are easy to approximate using the discharge of a capacitor. The corollary to this happy accident is that these waveforms have particular harmonic properties that make them useful.. For example, the square and triangular waveforms have no odd harmonics which make them effective for mimicking woodwind instruments, especially the square, because of the harmonic and physical characteristics of those instruments. Sawtooths provide a very broad spectrum waveform that can then be filtered to create very musical effects combined with envelopes.
Another example spurred on a whole musical industry from blues to rock, to hard rock to heavy metal. Back in the early days, amplifiers used tubes (and some still do) because there were no transistors. When tubes got hot, they distorted (well, even before that but the heat enhanced the effect). But they did so in such a way to enhance harmonics in a musical way. Amps today use several stages of amplification which creates another type of sound. The why however is not so important as the fact that it is musical. There is also what is called sag in amps which has to do with the power supply but it creates a drop in power that is part of the signature sound of some amps.
Pickups on guitars are another example. The more windings one has on a guitar makes the signal not only a lot stronger but also more distorted combined with an amp. Again, for some types of music this is desirable.
Natural instrument are perhaps the best example. Instruments are expressive (much more so than electronics without a lot of help) because when a note is first played, the physical system which creates the oscillations is not in equilibrium. This creates noise which, in a brief time, changes to a stable waveform. What we actually find expressive and interesting about an instrument is not the static waveform (which is actually kind of boring) but the first part of the note we call the transient. This is what we identify often with musical virtuosity.
From a purists perspective, the stable physical system which creates a stable sustained waveform is what is attractive perhaps on an intellectual basis but its the imperfection of the transient that creates the magic.
So there you have it. That is my walk though the happy accidents of music.
The flip side of course is that those things that might seem theoretically relevant, may not be musical. My example of that is additive synthesis. I will not go into it here but I am in rebellion against what I would call the Fourier illusion. My basis for this is actually because I have a mathematical background and believe that he whole concept of harmonics is defunct to some extent. It can be a useful tool but in some sense, its only a model of reality, not the true reality. Granular synthesis is coming closer to the true reality but much like the physics of a particle being a wave and a particle, the same applies to these models of sound.
Not to inject a lot of politics into my musical blog, I try to keep this separate, but consider a society. People come in all shapes and sizes with all sorts of problems. If we embrace that which is imperfect, then things work. Yes, we know there is greed but if its directed towards making a good product that can help people than that is a good thing. Yes we know that some people are not healthy but perhaps helping those people actually makes us better people. I know there are those in our government, some at the very highest level, who believe that government can create an earthly utopia without injustice, hunger and suffering so they try to force people into a mold of what they believe Perhaps, in some odd way, its those things that we struggle with, those imperfections, that may just be the happy accidents that help to bind us together.
Just a musical musing for a somewhat tranquil Sunday morning for me.
Hope all enjoyed.
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