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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

The impact of synthesizers is only just starting, imo. I'd argue that a generation of kids are using their musical ear to develop physical intuition for what sine, triangle, saw, pulse and other waves are and how they interact. The principles apply to light as much as they do to sound. When you take the combinatorics and symmetries of music and the physics of waves, you've got the makings of a pretty good intuitive curiosity for analog and quantum computing.

If you've got a modular synth rig and kids in your house, I'd posit that you are very much our future.

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The impact of synthesizers is already over. They were used far more imaginatively in the 70s than they are today.

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?

> The impact of synthesizers is already over. They were used far more imaginatively in the 70s than they are today

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.

Yep. And it’s important to note that advances in software/DSP are not isolated from the hardware synthesis world. There is a lot of innovation in digital modules happening right now.

The hardware is simply an interface. The preferred interface for most musicians.

I've been following Colin Benders (aka Kiteman) on Twitch for years, he's probably my favourite modular user.

you might be a little out of the loop,

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.

Synthesizers in the 70s cost the equivalent of a new car today. In the 80s and 90s, they were out of reach of the majority of creative people, and definitely out of reach of kids. The problem with software instruments today is that their connection to the internet and social media rewards imitation over experimentation. I can assemble a bunch of samples and post it on soundcloud and call it dubstep, and it just creates a landfill of crap to sort through to find anything good. It's cultural noise, it's not signal.

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.

Back in the late 80s-early 90s with the advent of FM, digital recording, samplers and other stuff, people were ditching analog equipment en masse and _nobody_ wanted to buy it except for broke kids, and this gave rise to whole new genres and creative idioms we take for granted today. The modern iteration of this is a kid with a cracked version of FL Studio making weird phonk-hyper-trap. Maybe playing in a band will come back. Who knows, but most of the innovation right now is in the box.

Are you an Autechre fan by chance?

<3 Autechre and basically all of the 90s warp catalogue.

Word. Even their 00’s releases are among some of my favorites.

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.

microtonal harmonic grids free from the rigors of 12-tet (i.e. midi, i.e. the keyboard)

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...

If I ever made a eurorack module, it would be a controller for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_levitation

The funny thing is that outside of keyboards and electronic music, nobody cares about temperament. Most wind and string instruments are for all intents and purposes, untempered. The 12 tone scale is still important -- it produces a roughly consonant scale without excessive complexity. A 19 tone saxophone would be unplayable.

The negativity, cynicism, and sarcasm in this comment regarding a subject I hold dear just makes me sad.

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).

Glad to hear this sentiment. I have a 5U modular system I built long before I had kids. I’ll start a patch, then have my 8-year old start messing with it, enjoy the sound, then talk through what is being changed.

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