These days people often tend to assume they want the valve / tape sound without really knowing why. They've become an imagined shortcut for people - slap on tape emu and get "glue", rather than think too much about gain staging, EQing, arrangement...
don't forget plain ol' dirt, too. getting things nice and gritty.
as a bit of an outsider to hardware synths - especially vintage synths, how do people go about discovering for themselves what these different types of models are like to actually use?
with great difficulty, closest you're going to get without knowing someone with one or being able to try before you buy is watch people demo on youtube or listen to demos on vintage synth or wherever else you can find something. i tend to prefer youtube because you can actually see them doing it.
what are everyone's thoughts on the emulation vsts? I was having a chat with someone recently who was saying although decent enough plugs, they're not as good as native instruments (especially massive) which are actually exploring the potential of getting the best interface and so forth...
imo it doesn't matter about emulation so much because for the time being no plug has nailed it's attempted emulation. i agree with your friend that usability is key because for the most part, there's a pretty good sound quality standard amongst most softsynths out there. so yeah, massive is good because it's quite intuitive but it's by no means the best. it's really down to what you find pleasing to your eyes. the gui of a plug plays a big role in whether i choose to use it or not a lot of the time. some things are cool
because they're ugly, some plugins don't even have a gui and i use ableton's generic gui thingy because they do shit that i can't find elsewhere. But generally, a nice, uncluttered and easy to understand gui is where it's at. especially for synth programming. admiral quality's poly-ana is one of the most frustrating guis for me because the sound of the synth is so nice and rich. but it's a complete eye-fuck. top tip for nice analog-ish sounds tho
I don't really love looking and reading up on synths cos it causes me a fair amount of angst cos it's knowledge far beyond my comprehension at the moment. Been umming and aahing for years about whether to get a hardware synth - looking at moog/dsi especially - but don't know how much it would really help me in the creative process because of the unflexibility of it and routing complications and so forth.
obviously if you go for something proper old school then you're looking at extra learning curvature, first thing is that they don't sync up with your host, so you're going to either have to play in the part or sample bits and then sequence them with your sampler. it's hard to do this at first but definitely a good thing. it's going to give your shit more mojo than some guy clicking a mouse with all his shit aligned to a grid (possibly with some swing quantise afterwards which again is a grid of it's own) there are midi to cv converters which let you do some basic sequencing but they add to the cost (worth it if you can afford it tho) if you get something not quite as old then you might have midi implemented but a lot of synths with midi aren't fully analog, so you may or may not be defeating the point. one of the few active companies who do fully analog w. midi are studio electronics. i just got an
atc-1 not so long ago and it's really really great. i've tried to avoid sequencing it and just playing it in but because i've been itb for like 10 years it's hard to move otb. oh, and i got a knob box to control the cc shit.
My main incentive for getting hardware would be to get me away from a computer screen when I make music. (The sound too, of course, but that goes without saying.)
i really would prefer to move away from the screen as much as poss too. i mean, that's one of the main problems i'm finding is that i'm relying on my eyes almost as much as my ears when making.... -music- !! aside from the obvious difference in sound between hard and software, the main thing for me is the hands on aspect. i'd go as far to say that having a bank of knobs outweighs having a real moog filter. if you can afford both then great! but yeah, having a knob that has cutoff written under it and one that says resonance next to it and being able to tweak them both in real time and having an organic response to that is way more satisfying than any other configuration. this is what makes you inspired and therefore more creative. of course you can get a knob box for your software too, but just like those blocks of midi, the resolution of that software cutoff filter is still aligned to a finite grid.
But then sometimes I read someone like omar-s who's stuff sounds incredible completely rejecting software etc.
omar s is funny because his shit sounds so nasty. he's totally analog but he mixes down to mini disc! he definitely sounds like he knows his shit inside out tho... a
lot of the detroit cats are
very purist when it comes to a lot of things. i find it a bit silly to be so fixated on it. plus i know theo and moodyman play shit out by people who didn't make their shit with all analog equipment.
but i do believe that part of the magic of detroit music comes from the fact that they are very musically open minded people who like to play their shit in live. osunlade is another guy who i read in a recent interview doesn't quantise. again, his shit is very very compelling and i believe with him it's also down to the organic human-ness.
always been of the belief that it's best to just understand your tools inside/out and just get the best out of them...
...I've read untold amounts of stuff on the internet (gearslutz is somewhere I don't want to look at again altogether much)...
...I guess above and beyond, reading and believing everyone else's thoughts leads to anxiety, and the only way forward is to really become intimately connected with your tools for creating what you wanna do...
yeah, this. i've stopped reading gearslutz too. also trying to stop reading shit like machine love on resident advisor etc. in fact the less i read about other people's music the better because it's so hard not to be influenced in some way by them. software or hardware. doesn't matter as long as you know it well enough. happy mistakes are cool too but i think the main guys out there who's music is still relevant 20 years later knew their instruments intimately. of course you need to explore and you can definitely come up with some crazy sounds using things like paulstretch and weird sounds in IR plugins and whatever else esoteric type shit you have lying around, but when it comes down to it, you need to know what you're doing and what you're trying to say.
:slanted:
i think?
