The Horizons of Instrument Design: A Conversation with Don Buchla (1982)
keyboardmag.com
keyboardmag.com
The professor there claimed that the instrument was relatively useless since it couldn't produce a diatonic scale. I proved him wrong by using attenuators to dial down the sensitivity of the oscillator inputs to the point where they could be fine-tuned to recognizable notes on a twelve-tone octave.
Fun times!
I don't think the problem stems from the technology used or the musical ideas at play, but rather the fact that something like a Buchla or Max or whatever invites solitary improvisation, which rarely ends well. My criticism extends to all the bullshit made on conventional modular systems with standard keyboards as well. It's too easy to have fun and forget to write an actual song.
So I'm interested in hearing these tools used in a collaborative and polished setting. There's still a lot of potential there.
Here's Richard Boulanger playing some weird 3D controller (made by Max Mathews I think?) The piece is in Bohlen-Pierce scale. Yet it still sounds heartwarming and musical. I need more stuff like it in my life:
Like any other musical technique, improvisation takes time to master. In my view, this is simply a matter of the difference between a skilled performer/composer and an unskilled one. No surprises there; a skilled improvisor will keep you interested and avoid the meandering and drawn out "wank" that characterizes unskilled improvisation.
Of course, meandering and drawn out music has its place too, but I find it easy to tell when it's applied intently and for good reason and when it's not.
Set it up, get an account, and add all the free plugins - then manage the plugins in the app, and voila - rejoice at having literally a THOUSAND new Eurorack modules to play with, virtually, for free...
Beware: modular synthesis is addictive and frustrating in equal amounts. Its a form of analog computing - meaning you won't get good results unless you program it from the ground up. But if you do, and if your system can handle it, you can gain access to a world of sounds that would normally have required thousands of dollars of investment .. truly one of the greatest value software packages out there at the moment. Can't thank Andrew Belt (VCVRack developer) enough for building the system he has, and delivering an open and easy model for people to use in exploring synthesis.
What's really interesting is the fact that a lot of the physical hardware manufacturers of Eurorack modules have embraced VCVRack as their sales promotion/prototyping/demo platform. So many great Eurorack modules are now available for free in software versions specifically for VCVRack ..
I really enjoy West Coast sounds, they are different from ordinary subtractive sounds, they can be a bit "cold" sometimes but if you strike the right balance you get crisp tones, you can create percussive sounds using the natural "pluckiness" of the vactrols and you can get really wild with waveshaping/FM.
Besides Morton Subotnick, some artists that have used Buchla and Serge synthesizers are Suzanne Ciani, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Alessandro Cortini.
Edit: another interesting aspect is the fact that Buchla and Serge synths contained ideas that influenced later synths like the Yamaha DX7 and the Casio CZ101 (and today, many successful contemporary synths are also based on those ideas). Often articles about the history of synthesis declare that "East Coast synthesis won" but that's not really the case.
First of all, the Germans are winning. The synth market would have fallen to pieces if there weren't so many German manufacturers making cool synthesizers. Americans play guitar, Germans prefer keys. This wouldn't be a problem except that most of the German synthesizers are physically designed by a single individual - and his horrid design choices have propagated throughout the industry. Such things as having knobs placed too close to each other, such that you can't grab one with thumb and forefinger without also disturbing another. Or having LED's that wash out the panel so you can't see anything under low light (stage) conditions. Or, endless menu's to scroll through. Or, you know, different brands looking altogether too similar, since their designs were copy/pasted from the same designer.
Another weird thing about this industry is that everyone thinks standards suck until they themselves invent one, and expect everyone else to comply with it. Synthesizers with, functionally, the same basic engine are nevertheless entirely incompatible with each other.
There are two kinds of synth user: players and tweakers.
Players want better factory presets and don't care about making great new sounds as long as they have their rhodes and DX mono bass and so on - tweakers throw away the factory presets and want a better editing interface. This would be fine, except there is a secondary market of 'consultants' who write all the factory presets for most synth manufacturers, and they don't want their territory encroached on by tweakers. So, they have a lot to say about how complicated the UI should be, in order to protect their business model, and this propagates throughout the whole design phase, such that most synth UI's are a dogs breakfast of 'conveniently left out editing features that are not necessary because everyone just uses presets anyway'.
Its a very interesting market to observe from a tech perspective. Musicians are a fickle lot - 2 million new musicians are made every year (school music programs) which means that even if your product is mediocre, the new market bodies don't know better - you can get away with producing mundane things in those conditions. Musicians spend on average $500/month on new music gear (until GAS wears out/they get married), which means there is always a new toy to play with, even if its all been done before, so many times over.
Interesting what you say about players and tweakers. Personally I think that's a bit too binary, but it is interseting to see softsynths with more intuitive UI's finally coming out, like Pigments from Arturia.
Every synth manufacturer has to make this conclusion at some point. A surprisingly large number of synth customers never get past the presets - its a dirty little secret of the business.
Not that there's anything wrong with this, of course - but it does make designing a "one UI for all" kind of difficult. It also explains why so many of the 'big manufacturers' focus mostly on player- interfaces, eschewing the work required to make more detailed editing surfaces.
However this is all changing - look at companies like Modal, who led the way with providing as sophisticated interfaces as necessary for both end-user types ..