I'll be honest - he seems to be a prime example of someone focusing too much on the tools rather than the creative process.
All his best, legendary, stuff came way before he got this awesome setup, his recent stuff hasn't been very well received. You don't need a ton of expensive equipment to create excellent electronic music.
That's entirely true, and I don't think he's doing all this "to make better music". But as a true audio geek, that's something that's extremely fun and cool to do if you can afford it. It's like people building insane gaming stations with lots of lights and crazy decoration. It won't make them better gamers, but it's a great hobby.
As mentioned in the video, you can emulate all of these in the computer anyway, but if you've got the money, why not create something cool like this?
As a former amateur audio engineer I really liked seeing all the analog modulators, and putting them all in one area is crazy.
I see it as the equivalent of a shoe closet for sneakerheads. He can finally afford all the cool super tech audio engineering stuff he's always wanted but makes little impact on the output and popular success.
Correlation is not causation. Maybe he's just not interested in what other people think anymore and wants to play with cool toys rather than express some artistic vision. That actually is somewhat explicitly his style. He disdains criticism and doesn't have to prove himself to anyone. He's a gamer and personality more than an artist.
Looks a bit like one of JunkyXL's setups. Fortunately for mankind there is no way you can make better music with a setup like this compared to a poor man's basic setup. Most 'poor' people are lost when they happen to become 'rich'. It's a (mouse) trap. You'll see this over and over again..
When was the last time you went somewhere (other than a concert) and saw a live musician? When was the last time you saw a hung up original painting or drawing. I see drawings and paintings far more often than musicians, especially with electronic music.
I think what I've said is fairly accurate, some people just use ready made software like garage band and feed it samples from "real" instruments, sometimes they don't, but it doesn't change my point much.
What is your point? Are you implying that people thought electronic music was otherwise difficult or expensive to produce? Did you think people didn't know you could write code to generate sound?
...Or are you just being reductive and showing off your programming knowledge?
Analog synths are a good way to differentiate though. It would be very difficult to replicate an analog synth patch even if you knew exactly how it was set up.
It is true that simple software can generate interesting audio effects. However, I think the parent comment underestimates the appeal of modular synthesizers.
I really believe that there are sounds that are achievable most easily with a modular system. One example that springs to mind: the west-coast school of additive analog synthesis often uses circuits classified as low-pass gates (more or less combining the low-pass filters and voltage-controlled amplifiers of east-coast subtractive synthesis). SuperCollider is one of the most actively-developed systems for experimental audio synthesis, and the only plugin emulating low-pass gates I’ve found is in one of the SuperCollider developers’ personal sandbox repo. A google search indicates that apparently someone has written a PureData low-pass gate emulator, but I can’t speak to its quality. My point is, not everyone who wants to try to make music in one of these systems is going to want to write their own C++ or FAUST plugins, or compile a buggy early version of a plugin. So it seems to me that if you want to just make the sound, a eurorack modular system might be the most accessible way to do so.
And I also think the music people make using modular systems is ideally consumed in a manner very different from, say, EDM tracks on soundcloud or spotify. If you are in the bay area, I highly recommend attending Robotspeak’s regular Church of the Super-Serge concerts to get a sense of this (one performance I enjoyed a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Xn6IbItT8). Members of the eurorack synthesizers group on facebook are also constantly posting little snippets of modular music. This stuff isn’t for anyone, but it is certainly interesting. Patches people create on modular systems are ephemeral and meditative, so they're often described as sand mandalas. The user explores the capability of their collection of modules, they find an appealing or interesting sound, and develop some minimal accompaniment around that sound. The graph of possible connections in an even medium-sized eurorack system is quite large, and there are many manual controls on each module (at minimum 3-4). “Saving” a patch involves painstakingly recording each knob setting and patch connection. Re-creating a patch exactly is therefore quite challenging. So people leave their system patched, come to the show, and perform a single 10-20 minute long composition. That’s the set. Very idiosyncratic, hit-or-miss, but usually interesting, at least. I hope this conveys some of the unique appeal of putting together a large modular systems.
In principle, you're mostly right. And its true, there are folks who do make music entirely on their laptops, successfully, and a lot of it.
There's a visceral, physical aspect to music-making, however, that begs for tactile feedback. Some people really need that out of their instruments. That's why, in the case of electronic music, the big old modulars are making a comeback.
Because if you try the same on a big analog modular you won't get very far at all - less far than you can get with code, given that very basic singing synthesis was already a solved problem back in the 1960s, and systems like Vocaloid have been commercial products for more than a decade now.
...Which is the core problem with analog synthesis, whether it's a modular or a box-of-knobs synth: it's the synthesis equivalent of writing code in BASIC.
You can do it, and it's good for certain kinds of jobs.
But even though a wall of knobs and wires looks like the last word in musical openness, it actually puts some very rigid limits on the complexity and sophistication of what you can do. And worse (IMO) it trains you to think inside those limits instead of encouraging you to explore beyond them.
But even though a wall of knobs and wires looks like the last word in musical openness, it actually puts some very rigid limits on the complexity and sophistication of what you can do. And worse (IMO) it trains you to think inside those limits instead of encouraging you to explore beyond them.
To me, this statement implies that you either don't understand what a modular synthesizer system is or you haven't kept up with the times. I mean, you literally build your own system by choosing your own components and patching them together however you want. You're free at any time to pull the patch cables and start over. Add one new module changes the entire system.
Other than the fact that you need to be able to plug it into something, I can't imagine anything being much further from the definitions of rigid and limiting. It would be like calling Pure Data limiting because it's a visual programming language. I don't know, it just seems silly to me.
There's a ton of small outfits in the Eurorack space doing really great stuff. To any one who is curious I'd suggest checking out some manufacturers like Make Noise, Mutable Instruments, ADDAC System, Modcan, and there's just too many to name.
Comments
I'll be honest - he seems to be a prime example of someone focusing too much on the tools rather than the creative process.
All his best, legendary, stuff came way before he got this awesome setup, his recent stuff hasn't been very well received. You don't need a ton of expensive equipment to create excellent electronic music.
That's entirely true, and I don't think he's doing all this "to make better music". But as a true audio geek, that's something that's extremely fun and cool to do if you can afford it. It's like people building insane gaming stations with lots of lights and crazy decoration. It won't make them better gamers, but it's a great hobby.
As mentioned in the video, you can emulate all of these in the computer anyway, but if you've got the money, why not create something cool like this?
The video actually claims at 05:10 that they can create sounds that can't be created digitally.
As a former amateur audio engineer I really liked seeing all the analog modulators, and putting them all in one area is crazy.
I see it as the equivalent of a shoe closet for sneakerheads. He can finally afford all the cool super tech audio engineering stuff he's always wanted but makes little impact on the output and popular success.
My point was actually that it seems to have a negative impact on his output.
Correlation is not causation. Maybe he's just not interested in what other people think anymore and wants to play with cool toys rather than express some artistic vision. That actually is somewhat explicitly his style. He disdains criticism and doesn't have to prove himself to anyone. He's a gamer and personality more than an artist.
IMHO the audio nerd version of a huge garage filled with sports cars and old timers.
Looks a bit like one of JunkyXL's setups. Fortunately for mankind there is no way you can make better music with a setup like this compared to a poor man's basic setup. Most 'poor' people are lost when they happen to become 'rich'. It's a (mouse) trap. You'll see this over and over again..
The modern musical instrument is a diaphragm controlled by a stream of real valued position samples.
There's absolutely no need for anything complex to play it, you can write simple C programs to generate all kinds of bizarre and beautiful effects.
And all of visual arts is thousands of colored pixels which can be arranged at will with something as simple as MS Paint.
Your comment comes across as reductive grandstanding.
When was the last time you went somewhere (other than a concert) and saw a live musician? When was the last time you saw a hung up original painting or drawing. I see drawings and paintings far more often than musicians, especially with electronic music.
I think what I've said is fairly accurate, some people just use ready made software like garage band and feed it samples from "real" instruments, sometimes they don't, but it doesn't change my point much.
What is your point? Are you implying that people thought electronic music was otherwise difficult or expensive to produce? Did you think people didn't know you could write code to generate sound?
...Or are you just being reductive and showing off your programming knowledge?
Analog synths are a good way to differentiate though. It would be very difficult to replicate an analog synth patch even if you knew exactly how it was set up.
It is true that simple software can generate interesting audio effects. However, I think the parent comment underestimates the appeal of modular synthesizers.
I really believe that there are sounds that are achievable most easily with a modular system. One example that springs to mind: the west-coast school of additive analog synthesis often uses circuits classified as low-pass gates (more or less combining the low-pass filters and voltage-controlled amplifiers of east-coast subtractive synthesis). SuperCollider is one of the most actively-developed systems for experimental audio synthesis, and the only plugin emulating low-pass gates I’ve found is in one of the SuperCollider developers’ personal sandbox repo. A google search indicates that apparently someone has written a PureData low-pass gate emulator, but I can’t speak to its quality. My point is, not everyone who wants to try to make music in one of these systems is going to want to write their own C++ or FAUST plugins, or compile a buggy early version of a plugin. So it seems to me that if you want to just make the sound, a eurorack modular system might be the most accessible way to do so.
And I also think the music people make using modular systems is ideally consumed in a manner very different from, say, EDM tracks on soundcloud or spotify. If you are in the bay area, I highly recommend attending Robotspeak’s regular Church of the Super-Serge concerts to get a sense of this (one performance I enjoyed a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Xn6IbItT8). Members of the eurorack synthesizers group on facebook are also constantly posting little snippets of modular music. This stuff isn’t for anyone, but it is certainly interesting. Patches people create on modular systems are ephemeral and meditative, so they're often described as sand mandalas. The user explores the capability of their collection of modules, they find an appealing or interesting sound, and develop some minimal accompaniment around that sound. The graph of possible connections in an even medium-sized eurorack system is quite large, and there are many manual controls on each module (at minimum 3-4). “Saving” a patch involves painstakingly recording each knob setting and patch connection. Re-creating a patch exactly is therefore quite challenging. So people leave their system patched, come to the show, and perform a single 10-20 minute long composition. That’s the set. Very idiosyncratic, hit-or-miss, but usually interesting, at least. I hope this conveys some of the unique appeal of putting together a large modular systems.
There are two discussions that have been beaten to death many a time on any forum discussing production of electronic music:
Hardware vs Software (which I would compare to the discussion of a data center in the cloud vs hardware on premise)
and Analog vs Digital
Everyone loves to think they are controversial...
In principle, you're mostly right. And its true, there are folks who do make music entirely on their laptops, successfully, and a lot of it.
There's a visceral, physical aspect to music-making, however, that begs for tactile feedback. Some people really need that out of their instruments. That's why, in the case of electronic music, the big old modulars are making a comeback.
True, in theory
Now create a C program that reproduces a person singing, with all the variables that a real singer can act upon
That is not a useful comparison.
Because if you try the same on a big analog modular you won't get very far at all - less far than you can get with code, given that very basic singing synthesis was already a solved problem back in the 1960s, and systems like Vocaloid have been commercial products for more than a decade now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDsJCJ02184
...Which is the core problem with analog synthesis, whether it's a modular or a box-of-knobs synth: it's the synthesis equivalent of writing code in BASIC.
You can do it, and it's good for certain kinds of jobs.
But even though a wall of knobs and wires looks like the last word in musical openness, it actually puts some very rigid limits on the complexity and sophistication of what you can do. And worse (IMO) it trains you to think inside those limits instead of encouraging you to explore beyond them.
To me, this statement implies that you either don't understand what a modular synthesizer system is or you haven't kept up with the times. I mean, you literally build your own system by choosing your own components and patching them together however you want. You're free at any time to pull the patch cables and start over. Add one new module changes the entire system.
Other than the fact that you need to be able to plug it into something, I can't imagine anything being much further from the definitions of rigid and limiting. It would be like calling Pure Data limiting because it's a visual programming language. I don't know, it just seems silly to me.
There's a ton of small outfits in the Eurorack space doing really great stuff. To any one who is curious I'd suggest checking out some manufacturers like Make Noise, Mutable Instruments, ADDAC System, Modcan, and there's just too many to name.
Moving a knob with your hands as you mix it with other sounds gives better control than just configuring parameters in a program
Which is easily remedied by using MIDI controllers.
George Lucased.