Wendy Carlos on Bob Moog (2005)
wendycarlos.com
wendycarlos.com
I almost forgot I was reading the article from a hacker news link, and not just from my own searching!
I have two of her albums: the hard-to-find CD of Peter and the Wolf she did with "Weird Al" Yankovic (the whole thing is a delightful spoof), and Switched-On Bach 2000, where she revisited her original electronic music album with modern synthesizers and authentic Bach tunings. (The liner notes are an education in themselves!)
How Wendy Carlos Changed Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16077589 - Jan 2018 (43 comments)
That and Blade Runner OST really hold up.
Omri Cohen recently hosted the Mycelium Symposium where many creators showed some interesting possibilities using VCV Rack.
He was one of those wonderful people who was happy to show you how to do something, without showing off or making a big deal of it. Figuring out what was wrong in a voltage controlled oscillator - cool stuff for this undergrad.
Reminds me of how, in those days of analog electronics, an oscilloscope was the debugging tool of choice...
Anyway, it died due to mismanagement, but talk about geek heaven. Would love to see such a broad event again sometime.
Her site makes me want to change the style of mine and go back to old school design paradigms.
(Another great site when you need a little nostalgia boost is Space Jam: https://www.spacejam.com/)
A place where I think this still happens is Darkglass and Neural DSP where Doug Castro leads teams that create great musical products in collaboration with artists. They just released the Quad Cortex digital guitar effects pedal/platform which is getting high praise. (Anxiously awaited I just got mine as part of a the first batch of a preorder).
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. To me it says the impact of music has only grown and I don't think we've began to scratch the surface of understanding of what it really communicates and does for people, and how it does it (stop me before I get metaphysical). The increasingly wide reach and accessibility of the craft with a select of standout talents to me says renaissance.
It's just a function of many instruments becoming commoditized, which is overall a good thing. I bought a new electric guitar for under $200 last year and it played great out of the box. That didn't used to be possible.
It was horrible and I would play until my fingers would bleed, then quit for the day. I learned to play on that for years. It made learning a battle, not just a challenge.
It's another league entirely these days.
I would argue to the bitter end about instrument construction and argue that "good" instruments are indeed better than the commoditized versions of the same, but for people starting out and coming up and even recording they're fine tools! Memorable is Mike Campbell absolutely tearing it up on an Epiphone Florida Gators LP special AKA a cheap novelty guitar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e25p0Y3Vd38).
But I to explain my original point further: It's not as simple as just being a function of the commoditization. That is undeniably what's happening, but the why is, at the root, a demand that didn't previously exist, and not just for novelty or aesthetic but playability. The need for playability and a pleasing sound follows adoption, and widespread adoption is what I think signifies renaissance. There are more capable musicians than ever, and even through the noise there are more capable productions than ever, in all manner of genres and tuned to all manner of tastes. Similar to how printing brought music to the wider public and a generally supportive environment for the arts during the period of the (capital R) Renaissance.
He also had input into Novation Bass Station II: https://novationmusic.com/en/news/bass-station-firmware-v414
AFX Mode
Electronic music legend Richard James, aka Aphex Twin, has already played an instrumental part in the Bass Station II story, having provided guidance for the implementation of the micro-tuning added with Firmware v2.5. His conceptual contribution to v4.14 is even more profound, however.
Letting his imagination run riot, Richard envisioned the decidedly radical notion of having a discrete set of synthesis parameters assigned to each note of Bass Station II, either variations on a ‘seed’ patch, or disparate sounds designed to constitute a chimeric whole. Although this sort of thing could already be kludged using very fast program change messages, having multiple sounds active at the same time would clearly be a far more creative and efficient system.
AFX Mode is the realisation of James’ out-there concept. Put simply, it lets you modify your Bass Station II patch on a key-by-key basis. Use it to introduce subtle changes to a sound as you play up and down the keyboard; divide the keyboard into multiple zones (one per key if you like!), each playing its own sound; or create entire drum kits in a single preset for triggering manually or via the Arpeggiator. It’s a truly inspiring feature that really does open up a whole new world of sound design and performance possibilities.
https://novationmusic.com/en/synths/afx-station
the thing to remember is that this was written before 2005, that might have been the state of teh world then.
He also wrote one of the first samplers people use ableton for IIRC
Seems like FOSS is more resilient to the effect that Wendy noted has, almost, made a farce of the synth market.
https://bitbucket.org/doughammond/guitarix-foot-remote/src/m...
I give the example of MOD particularly in this case because falkTX* not only works for MOD but helps develop JACK (and DPF, Carla, KX.Studio, etc.).
For another DIY solution that uses mod-host, what the MOD and Zynthian devices use for LV2; https://github.com/auto3000/pedalpii / https://github.com/auto3000/meta-pedalpi / https://github.com/Rezzonics/pedalC2-dev-platform
a) they are AMAZING (Zynthian is truly an extraordinary project - as is MOD, which is included in the zynthian distro incidentally) and,
b) these projects are available for you to put on your own hardware .. which is an ideology which runs counter to almost every other hardware manufacturer today, operating in the synth business ..
It should be noted, also, that this open attitude and sharing/caring is what good musicians do. Music is one of those realms where the maxim 'information wants to be free' is true, with every single note.
I know, which is why I said "mod-host, what the MOD and Zynthian devices use" ;)
The guitarix-foot-remote project is awesome, it's only part of the package and not really got the same scale of use with the customer/developer feedback loop that the first poster (and I) wanted to focus upon. Development seems to be stalled, so I'd rather direct folk to more active projects.
The Zynthian has co-ordinated a stack with UI etc, and artists use it, and they give feedback, and MOD/falktx wrote part of that stack and I think MOD has a larger market share, so IMHO I think it's a better example about that kind of customer/developer relationship.
And a shout out to https://github.com/brummer10
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/magazine/electronic-music...
If you've got a modular synth rig and kids in your house, I'd posit that you are very much our future.
The real future is software, especially composition integrated with DSP. Not aimless generative nonsense based on randomly reshuffling arrays and maybe snapping them to a harmonic grid, but complex, composed architectures of sound.
Some of them may not even have a bass drum on every quarter beat - a bit radical, but who knows what the future holds?
1970s-style modular synthesis has been making a comeback over the last... 20 years. (It was a slow comeback at first).
I agree that the impact of synthesizers was diminished during the "preset era" of the 1980s until almost the present, but interest in re-taking control of synths is growing (just look up "modular synthesis" on Youtube to see many examples) and I expect that we're on the cusp of having synthesis become interesting again as artists sort out what to do with all the new stuff.
The hardware is simply an interface. The preferred interface for most musicians.
Eurorack is completely booming at the moment. We are quite literally living in a synth golden age. everything from very boring Behringer clones of old synths to all the cutting edge DSP in Eurorack and wacky combinations of audio synthesis techniques, its all there.
I seriously think the current era of modular synths and analog devices is to quantum computing what radio electronics kits of the 50s and 60s were to the personal computer. We're only a decade or two from a quantum Hewlett-Packard or Woz-Jobs garage-style project. That time goes by very fast.
The GGP post stating that we’re somehow in an ebb-tide of synth programming quality and musicality probably doesn’t have much of an ear to what’s being created.
but don't get me wrong, 12-tet is an incredible accomplishment on its own. but it's what it is because of (now obsolete) physical constraints of instrument building.
I've been trying to think about how to go beyond 12 tet for years. I recently read this quote on a (unrelated nothing to do with music) book[1] "So it's a bit like a piano that has a meta-key that lets you add new keys." which summarizes my goal better than I've ever been able to.
[1] https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Don%27t+Teach+Coding%3A+Until+Yo...
That "aimless generative nonsense" brings plenty of joy to its creators and listeners and for many there are more important goals than "complexity" (which is generally considered a bug not a feature in other areas).
This includes the four Switched-on albums, as well as such rarities as her collaboration with "Weird Al" Yankovic: Peter & the Wolf/Carnival of the Animals – Part II.
I think the excellent and dystopic sounding Clockwork Orange soundtrack is available digitally though.
Adding a few sine oscillators to the MIT PDP-1 (yes 1) and then togging them really fast to build up notes and scores.
A video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Led4jL-DnPk