What Synthesists Want

It started off, as most things do with me, quite naively. It was then, as is quite proper for the Internet, completely misunderstood and someone chose to be so offended that they left. I had been looking at an article about the Nonlinear Labs C15 which is a software synthesizer designed by the founder of Native Instruments and the creator of Reaktor, Stefan Schmitt, that is essentially built inside its own custom controller. Thus, it has the power and flexibility of a software instrument but wants to beguile the person who can't put away their need for tactile control. It is advertised as being made for people who like playing musical keyboards and now has numerous demos provided by Federico Solazzo on the Nonlinear Labs website. You might be wondering why me looking at an online article about a curious synthesizer caused Internet outrage. It did so because, musing on what I'd seen, I then went to my Facebook group, Electronic Music Philosophy, and wanted to start a discussion and so I proposed, in the manner of a debating contest, that "the most powerful synthesizers available today are software synthesizers". I was referring to their possibilities, flexibility and "bang for the buck" qualities. It unleashed a deluge of commentary (and one person leaving the group).

Nonlinear Labs C15, a software synth in a box.

John Bowen, who was the first official Moog clinician before moving to work with Dave Smith in 1976 (he's responsible for pretty much all the Sequential Circuits presets thereafter) and later worked with Korg (he was product manager for the Wavestation and helped voice the Korg Z1), in the past few years designed and brought to market his own synthesizer called the Solaris. The Solaris, I saw advertised in one video I watched about it, was said to be a hardware synthesizer designed to be like a software one. This about face from the usual claims of synth manufacturers, a territory that is chock full of software designers telling you how much like hardware their digital plugin sounds, was jarring at the time and it stood out from the crowd of those hawking their products. It's what? Its a hardware synth that wants to emphasize how like software it is? I'm pretty sure I remember John Bowen saying this on a video I watched. This claim must surely have set all sorts of alarm bells ringing for some. I have never played a Solaris so I cannot comment on what it is like but I understand that it has some pleased owners. Some, so I read, were a bit baffled by its complexity.

The Solaris, designed by John Bowen

Perhaps the people in charge of Roland heard of the Solaris too. Bowen went through many iterations of the Solaris before he finally produced the one which would be the production version. So maybe somewhere in some dark room at the Roland headquarters in Japan some eagle-eyed soul saw this claim of being a hardware synth but with the functionality and features of a software one and a light bulb clicked on above their head. What Roland did was invent what they call ACB which stands for "analog circuit behavior". This is a fancy term for the modeling of all the componentry of an analog circuit in order to compile a digital recreation of it. This process is the basis of all the Roland Aira devices of the past few years as well as the Boutique recreations of the much more analog Jupiter 8, JX-3P and Juno-106 and the new flagship System 8. These are hardware devices which contain what are essentially soft synths. Indeed, the System 1 and System 8 synths use what are called by Roland "plug out" synths which can also be used as soft synths in a DAW environment. Its an interesting concept and in some contexts I'd have cause to criticize it. But not today.

The Roland System 8, essentially several soft synths in a custom case.

Autechre are a leading avantgarde electronic act beloved by many and with a hardcore fanbase of often tech savvy people. They have evolved to work exclusively with Max/MSP, a software platform which enables them to essentially build whatever devices they need. Thus, they have the flexibility to design a rig that is a custom fit for exactly what they want to do musically. In interviews they claim to have lost interest in hardware synthesizers with throwaway comments such as that they have not even bought a hardware instrument for at least 5 years. In this they are not like their fellow fan favourite of the electronic intelligentsia, Aphex Twin. He has a well known love for all things hardware and software. For Autechre, though, their move into software is simply led by their musical desires. As they have said, what they want to do can only be done if they can build their devices in a custom way from the ground up. Digital software is the only game in town for that. Autechre have said that they could not replicate in hardware the things they can do in software. Its food for thought when they are making music that many would regard as "cutting edge". In distinction to many electronic musicians like them today, you never see any pictures of Autechre posing with the latest hardware super synth or a giant modular rig. Their musical dictates have led them to some outwardly unimpressive code in a box. 

The above was just a few examples of developments in instrument design and usage from the present. As I write all three of the instrument types I named are current products and Autechre are going strong having toured and released a 5 part, over 4 hour long album in 2016. So I have been talking about the contemporary electronic music scene here. But, of course, this isn't the whole story. Yet its notable in an electronic music world that is more recently noted in headlines for its "return to analog" or even just to hardware that software platforms are still going strong. And I suspect there is a hidden multitude of software users out there. In 2009 Native Instruments launched their product Maschine, a groove-based software platform that destroyed the old hardware platform of the Akai MPC for a while. Akai have had to painfully reinvent the MPC as a result but now we find it has re-emerged as what is essentially a DAW in a stand alone box. It can be argued that the invention of Maschine was also a factor in Ableton's creation of Push, a pad controller for its Live software. All the power of Live or Maschine is in the box, as the modern parlance has it. The controllers are saps to the human need for a feeling of direct control over the machine. The same can be said for the recent development of so-called MPE controllers such as the Roli Seaboard or the Linnstrument. They are ways for modern players to catch up with the expressive potential of digital synthesis in the box.

Now although you may have been deceived into thinking by the previous five paragraphs that I'm here to big up software synthesis in this blog, you'd be wrong. I take no sides in any hardware/software battle  and much less in any analog/digital debate. I think those debates are pretty much pointless just as many people do. I think that electronic music is about sounds and any device that can produce sounds is alright by me. I am platform agnostic. This means that my original thought which presaged the debate that was had was heuristic and exploratory in intent. It was meant to tease out the issues and find out what was at stake. I think that people who make electronic music should think about this because it helps them to define where they want to go and what might be useful in doing that. Fortunately, the electronic music community is full of lots of thoughtful people who do exactly this in both physical and coded domains. There are Facebook groups for designers of hardware and software instruments and seemingly growing communities of electronic music makers who want to try their own hand at creating things custom built by them, for them. This is all to the good. 

But within that same community I divine that some lingering prejudices do remain. One, of course, is to value presence over absence, to value tactile physicality. This, I think, is why some come to the defence of hardware over software at any mention of the latter. Immediately, comments appear about the tactile nature of hardware, the fact that a certain user "just doesn't feel right" using a mouse and how its not the same or as much fun. I hear this. But I also note this isn't really a musical criterion. Its an ergonomic one and that doesn't mean its unimportant. It just means its not a musical criterion. Its nothing to do with sound or sonic possibility. Its to do with you as a person. I personally dislike touchscreens and I am profoundly annoyed by the recent moves to push this technology and make synthesis dependent on touching a screen. But if I heard music that had been created by others whilst touching screens it would be irrelevant to me. The touchscreen is not a musical issue in this respect but an ergonomic one for the person who uses a touch device or touch-enabled synthesizer. Some people in my debate mentioned how they disliked DJs on laptops but as a DJ who used a laptop and used CD players before that I can report that over 20 years of active research leads me to the conclusion that such people are the odd ones out because I never recall anyone mentioning it to me at a party or disco. I do recall lots of people laughing, dancing, smiling and generally having a sweaty and enjoyable time. As a listener you just experience sound. If you listen to analyze where it came from and critique it on the fly you're a very strange bird indeed. Especially at a disco.

In the course of the debate that my original comment initiated there were some insightful points and relevant comments. I had never meant to suggest that software synthesizers were the be all and end all. Such a statement would have been as dumb as saying the opposite. When talking about sound any and all sources are in play for they, together, constitute the whole of the possibilities. But we live in a finite world and so this necessitates choices. Some users of modular synthesizers, specifically Eurorack, wanted to argue that their modulars could go head to head with soft synths in the power, flexibility, functions and features stakes and hold their own. This might very well be true if you have a setup of Richard Devine proportions but how much did that cost and how much space is it taking up? There can be no doubt here that in software one can pack in features and functions (and expandability) in no space at all since its simply code. To replicate that physically would require a large wallet and a large space... and it wouldn't then be portable. (Richard Devine's live rig is much smaller than his studio setup.) You can now buy software that emulates Eurorack modular in any case and the only limitation is your CPU. In other places I have criticized a software like Softube Modular but now I find, in this context, that actually you can have modular synthesis but its in your computer and you don't need to worry about power rails blowing or rack rash.. or your wallet so much. Want another LFO? Just click and you've got one.

Softube Modular, which is an emulation of the Eurorack hardware format and some actual Eurorack manufacturers have licensed models of their modules.

So what do synthesists want? Well if the discussion that I started is any guide, and it may or may not be, they want functionality but not at any cost. They also want a certain sound quality... which shouldn't be confused with sound quality as an absolute. Some seem to want a kind of sound as opposed to "the best sound", whatever we decide that might be. (I think thats why people want Minimoogs, for their sound. In terms of mere functionality they are less appealing.) In my discussion some said digital plugins had the best sound possible whereas others said hardware couldn't be beaten for sound. Synthesists also seemed to want "musicality" which sounds very like an amorphous, subjectively-judged quality to me. Those who spoke most about musicality were those trying to make some point against software which, so it seemed, they thought was not as musical as something they could touch. 

Some synthesists conceded that, in terms of the most possibility for the least effort, software was clearly the king. There are numerous platforms (Reaktor and Max/MSP being just two) in which you can essentially design entire synth rigs to your own specifications. No hardware setup can match that since you are always stuck to the limitations of the hardware devices as they've been designed by others. But at the same time many noted that the limitations of a physical world are not bad. They are good. It is not necessarily the creative ideal that you have every function and feature at your fingertips for then you will simply achieve overload which is creatively destructive and you become a synth collector rather than a synth user. 

Some synthesists, and I have my suspicions that this might actually be a silent majority, wanted the convenience of a format in which you can save things, including the most complex of software patches. And your modular machine from the future can't do that. The same people wanted to live in a land that was not bound by physical limitation in the same way that a person with hardware is. These same synthesists wanted a device which could do additive, spectral, granular, formant and virtual analog synthesis types and have the ability to morph between the types on the fly. We are very much in the software realm here. 

In the end synthesists want a lot of different things and they aren't always the same. But this is good since, when it comes to sound, variety is strength and is the factor which makes music as a whole as interesting as it is. The cold, dull world would be the one in which all music was the same.

If you want to read the full unexpurgated discussion that inspires this blog, with comments supporting all sides, you'll need to join Electronic Music Philosophy. 

Which Synth Manufacturer is Getting It Right?

We're currently half way through the Autumn (or Fall as our American friends call it) and new synths have been released in the run up to Christmas. After the festive period all eyes will turn to NAMM a month later, the biggest music equipment trade fair, when music tech companies present their wares for the coming year. This is when secret projects (and sometimes unfinished ones!) get revealed to the public for the first time. Its then we get to see what new delights, damp squibs and more of the same but packaged differently the manufacturers have got up their sleeve. Its easy to get caught up in this kind of thing and you can turn into a person just surfing the wave of hype from one product announcement to the next. Needless to say, this is not really the point of being interested in synths or gear more generally. Not that Behringer have paid much attention to that this year with possibly the longest and most dragged out teaser campaign for a synth we've seen for many a long year. One has to hope that when the much discussed Deepmind 12 gets into real people's hands it delivers for it could surely be a disaster if for any reason it doesn't.

Thinking about all this set me thinking about the synth world in general and the various options that people interested in synthesizers have should they want to buy one. This, in turn, lead me to survey the various manufacturers and then a question came to mind. This question was to ask myself which manufacturers, over a period of time, seem to be getting things right and which seem to be producing duds or misses or just things that people don't seem to want. Now, of course, this all very much depends what people want from a synthesizer if they are going to judge if various companies are giving them what they want. But I tried to think broader than this. I was not asking myself which company is making the synth that I like. I was, instead, trying to ask myself which companies were and weren't providing a range of good quality instruments and I was thinking broader than myself in doing that. For example, lots of people seem to like Novation's groove box, Circuit. Personally, it doesn't impress me very much but I wouldn't necessarily hold that against Novation. Many others do seem to like it and that seems fair enough. So what I'm saying here is that in my deliberating I'm trying to see past the end of my own nose. Of course, I won't be able to cover every company so if I miss one its because I've made my own choices. And so with that I'll start my wander through synth world.

Let's start with Korg. Only today they have released a monophonic version of their Minilogue called the Monologue. This is yet another analog instrument and Korg have for a number of years now been fueling the analog fix people seem to have been requesting in their own way. This even extends to resurrecting analog classics like their own MS-20 or Arp's Odyssey. They've also not neglected those who want to make music but have limited budgets. Their Volca range is now well established with 6 models in the range so far and they also have an updated Electribe range. Via its analog modeling synth, the King Korg, we get to its workstation, the Korg Kronos, now in its second iteration. This is probably the best workstation out there right now if that is your thing. It contains models of some of their old synths too in the Polysix and MS-20, the latter of which can be played polyphonically here unlike the real thing.

                                                               The Korg Monologue

I'll be honest and say that Korg have for years seemed to me like a solid company if you are a synth fan. They always seem to have decent ideas that are well delivered. There aren't as many misses it seems to me. They are a bread and butter synth company in that they will always give you something you can work with. Granted, they may not always offer the flashiest products but they won't let you down either. A Korg instrument is always a decent bet. This is probably why in my time being interested in synths I've always had multiple Korg instruments to call upon. Sure, there are better things but Korg are a company who are a business and so they balance innovation with value. In doing so they supply solid workhorses at all levels of the marketplace. Perhaps, though, we could say that in recent years they have lacked an absolute killer instrument. Korg rarely make that one synth that just stands out from the crowd. But they do make best selling ones as their M1 and Microkorg are amongst the best selling synthesizers of all time.

And so we turn to their Japanese neighbours, Roland. Here my comments can only be controversial since Roland have chosen to take a very specific tack away from current popular consensus which is in favour of analog instruments and gone down the route of digitally modeling circuits from their old instruments (which were analog) in an attempt to present them new to the public. And so we have the Boutique series of digitally modeled polysynths and their Aira range which presents old classics like the TR-808 and TR-909 and the TB-303 in new guises. It is, I think, somewhat controversial that they have done this although they certainly seem to have found some following for these products. Others, however, are somewhat dubious about a company whose only idea seems to be to reissue things they had done before. These products came after the Jupiter 80, an expensive performance synth based on Roland's "Supernatural" synth technology which is also in their products such as the Integra 7, a rackmount synth presented in the somewhat older sound module format. The Jupiter 80 was widely panned, not least for pretending to wear the clothes of something it wasn't - the Jupiter 8. Thus, critics of Roland point out that they don't seem to have many new ideas. Roland themselves seem to say they don't want to just mimic everyone else and so they will happily go their own way.

                            The Roland JD-XA and System 8 together

My view on this is that Roland have seemed lost in the wilderness for 10-15 years now. Back in the 1980s they were at the top of their game with synths like the Jupiter 8, the drum machines mentioned above, the Juno series of the 6, 60 and 106 and even keyboards like the D-50 and JD-800 moving into the early 90s. In the 21st century Roland have seemed to have many fewer hits (the V-Synth being the most notable) and plenty of misses. There seems to have been an ideological vacuum at the top of the company and they haven't presented charismatic, must have instruments to the public. ACB, Active Circuit Behavior, which is their current analog modeling technology that the Boutiques and Airas are based on, seems to be their current answer to this ideological problem. This has allowed them to produce several instruments and devices at the cheaper end of the market and, to be fair, these products don't seem to have been too bad. Meanwhile, in a higher price bracket they have produced instruments like the JD-XA, an analog/digital hybrid instrument, and the System 8, a larger synth based on Aira technology which can host multiple plugins (or plug-outs, using their terminology). The System 8 will host models of the Jupiter 8 and Juno 106 natively as well as a third plugin synth as well as the System 8's own sound engine. I find these latter two synths interesting curiosities at the very least. Can we say that Roland are finding their mojo again? They certainly seem to be trying to.

Moog Music are, in many respects, the granddaddy of synth companies. Bob Moog was probably the guy who started the whole commercial synthesizer business off. We should note he started off making a modular synthesizer though and that the Minimoog, a cutdown version of this, came later. Incidentally, you can now buy new Minimoogs again. The company that lives on in Moog's name has periodically come out with many interesting synths in the last few years. The Sub 37, which built on the Sub Phatty, is a very capable instrument and its Mother 32, a synth that can sit on a table or in a Eurorack system, makes the Moog name available to synth fans at the lowest price ever. They do still crank out the odd huge modular system too though and were, until recently, cranking out Moog Voyagers, the successor to the Minimoog. Their range of synths is not the biggest but then Moog have gone for the compact but classy approach to synth making and they trade on the idea of quality. And, of course, their products are analog as befits a company named after a man who invented the first commercially viable analog synth. It can be said that with Moog you usually know exactly what you are getting and it is important to the company that whatever they produce is quality.

Arturia were once known as a software company that produced software models of classic synths. Some did not like these models (I saw Dave Smith in one interview saying he thought their Prophet 5 sounded nothing like it) but then the French company went and changed everything when they brought out a hardware mono synth, the Minibrute. This synth was an instant hit because it was cheap and it sounded different to other mono synths, having a brash, ballsy sound provided by a single multi-wave oscillator (with various wave shaping tricks available for each wave) and a Steiner-Parker filter to which was added the "brute factor", the old Moog trick of sending the output back through the synth again to provide overdrive. Building on the success of the Minibrute, they brought out an even smaller mono synth, the Microbrute, and now they've added a much bigger mono synth, the Matrixbrute, which boasts a huge 256 button matrix on its large front panel. This latter synth is aimed to be the king of mono synths but has seemingly suffered from being introduced to the public before it was ready for prime time. Still, this is not bad for some software developers working in the shadow of the Alps. It certainly seems that they are not afraid to have ideas and try things out although there have been grumbles about the build quality and availability of their instruments. Taking this into account, it seems best to advise caution regarding their gear and the need to allow them time to bed it in properly. 

Elektron are perhaps one of the major successes of the synth world in the 21st century. Founded just before the turn of the century in 1998, they have released a run of innovative instruments based on their own, unique thinking about how to design synths and electronic instruments. At first, these were all digital but starting in 2013 they have moved into creating analog instruments with digital control, all paired with their unique sequencer in table top instruments (save the Analog Keys, which is a keys version of the Analog Four). Indeed, if table top synths or "groove boxes" are your thing then Elektron are probably the Rolls Royce of this market at the moment. Their instruments are premium priced but also feature packed. And the feature set of their instruments is probably one of the contentious issues about them. When someone like Alessandro Cortini describes your instruments as "awkwardly structured" as he does of their sampler device, the Octatrack, then you have to admit that Elektron devices are certainly idiosyncratic. 

This fact may have deterred some from taking the plunge and I can certainly say from personal experience that coming to an Elektron instrument cold is a frustrating thing. There is undeniably a learning curve in the first few days and weeks of owning their gear since everything is done their way or not at all. That said, if you know one of their instruments then, in some sense, you know something about them all as their philosophy carries across their range of gear. I have not really heard anyone complaining about the sound of their instruments and the sequencer they have, capable of multiple parameter locks per step over 64 steps, is still today more powerful than many in other manufacturer's gear. Recently, they have introduced Overbridge technology which enables analog instruments to essentially become plugins in a Digital Audio Workstation on a computer, a first of its kind, making these unique in a studio environment. If you have the money I don't see why you wouldn't buy their gear.. provided you are prepared to learn their way of doing things.

Dave Smith Instruments is the latest company to benefit from the design skills of Dave Smith, formerly of Sequential Circuits back in the day. In the last few years DSI have concentrated in premium quality synthesizers such as the Prophet 12, Prophet 6, Pro 2 and OB-6, the latter a joint project with Tom Oberheim. Their market seems to be the pro gigging and studio musician and although they do produce cheaper products this has never really been their focus. You get the impression that Smith just wants to make the best synths he can. Another collaboration, this time with Roger Linn, produced the Tempest drum machine back in 2011. This was another feature-rich, premium priced product. The products themselves are in some senses fairly conventional and the major advancement in recent years has been adding ever more granular methods of control. Smith introduced a character section to his Prophet 12 and Pro 2 synths which allowed more control over the tone of the synth and the screens on these synths were cleverly designed to make sound designing intuitive. The Prophet 6 and OB-6 were call backs to greatest hits of old from Smith and Oberheim respectively and these were both well received as premium synths of today with an authentic heritage. Smith's synths also seem to enjoy a good reputation in the pro music community such that they justify their prices at the higher end of the market.

Analogue Solutions will probably be the least well known of the synth companies I mention here in this brief tour of synth world. They produce boutique analogue synths loosely based on classics of the past but each with their own unique tone. This ranges currently from the Nyborg 12 and Nyborg 24 through to the Telemark and Leipzig-S, the latter a brutal synth originally designed with percussion in mind, and on to premium synths like the modular Vostok Deluxe and Polymath. These synths are definitely meant to stand within a wholly analog tradition and you can tell that they are made by people who venerate the Moogs and Arps and Oberheim SEMs of old. The company is also actively engaged in producing Eurorack modules and so have feet in both the fixed architecture and modular synth camps. Being wholly devoted to analog synthesis, the focus of these synths is on the production of a distinct analog tone. If that is your thing then these boys deliver the goods.

                               The Analogue Solutions Polymath

Of course, there are other manufacturers besides the few I've been able to mention here in a relatively short blog. Feel free to mention any others of note, in good or bad senses, in the comments. What is clear from even this brief survey though is that synth buyers do need to beware when buying things. Some manufacturers may have a dodgy reputation or seem to have run out of ideas whereas others chug along producing reliable and solid if unspectacular instruments. And then there is the fact that some will be better at some things than others. At the end of the day, of course, its what you do with what you've got that counts. A name is just a name and having Item X piece of gear guarantees nothing.

Put Your Back Into It

In a recent blog I discussed the outside perceptions of some regarding those who use modular synthesizers. Now while I don't want to repeat or rehash that particular topic, I do want to continue on from it a little bit today since I myself was in receipt of a new wave of thinking about it when I read a comment thread about another blog I'd written on a different subject. That comment thread contained the cogent and sensibly argued thoughts of a number of synthesizer fans who were not necessarily also fans of modular synthesizers. At first I was rather surprised about this. Surely all fans of synthesizers are also fans of modular synths, I unreflectively thought. Modular, after all, is the holy of holies of the synth world, is it not? The best form of synthesis. Apparently this is not at all the case as the thread I was reading contained a number of synth fans, even synthheads, who had no love for, or interest in, modular synthesizers. One particular comment, which characterized those who like modulars as "introspective people interested in technical achievement" as opposed to their fixed synth brothers and sisters who like having fun playing tunes, perhaps captures a flavor of this discussion.

As usual in discussions of this nature, nothing I'm going to argue here in my blog today should be taken as a must or a directive. And no one whose thoughts I quote or report on should be taken as thinking anything other than that people can follow their interest however they like. This goes without saying even though, often, it still needs to be said. That said, as I read further into the comment thread I just mentioned I became more intrigued. Someone described an emphasis on modular synthesis as "backward looking" and suggested perhaps many of these people wanted to imagine they were in Berlin in 1974. Another critical comment was that, it seems to some, modular synthesis has more to do with train spotting and tinkering with motorbikes than with music. A further suggestion was that the staggering breadth of possibility contained in many modern modular systems was not matched by the depth of thought going into using the equipment and making patches. This gives the possibility of making two charges: first, that someone's modular system is merely an ego trip, a "look at what I've got" big dick contest and, second, that having a large modular system is an empty boast if you can't make anything beautiful, musical or profound with it. "A cacophony of noise" was another comment lobbed casually the way of the sounds coming from modular synths.

Now partly I view these comments as a matter of taste. Some people just don't like abstract music, random sounds or music without melody. It might be suggested that these people are themselves limited in their tastes and their imaginations regarding what is musically possible. But its quite banal to say this. Surely, as we discuss "taste" for the twelve millionth time, we realize that people like what they like and that's all good? Your freedom to like what you like is balanced up by everyone else's ability to like what they like as well. So that discussion isn't very interesting and goes nowhere. It also the case that not everyone will be on the same page musically. This is a good thing because without it there'd be no variety. More interesting than these things are criticisms of what is made of ever more complex modular systems and the not matching the expectations of some who expect fantastic sounds from fantastic machines. Why, think these people, shouldn't I expect something fantastically musical from this very complex and often very expensively assembled machine? Instead, all I'm hearing is beeps or, whisper it quietly, fart noises. Is this a reasonable expectation? I'm going to say no, its not.

There are today numerous kinds of synthesizers. Hardware. Software. Fixed architecture. Modular. Analog. Digital. Even hybrids like the Roland JD-XA. There are numerous manufacturers. You can get synths in many different colors (to some it matters if their synth is silver or black!). And all this is before you even get to do anything with any of them. One thing I think we need to note is that a fixed architecture hardware synth is not a hardware modular synth. They are different things. So should they be required to produce the same noises or kinds of musical output? I don't think so. This is especially the case where the fixed synth more often than not comes with a keyboard attached and the modular probably doesn't. Having a keyboard attached or not does make a difference. 

Some synth commentators have made a big thing out of this citing a "player's paradigm" that comes from Bob Moog's decision to have a musical keyboard attached to his modular synth and a "machine music" paradigm that comes from Don Buchla's design decision not to have one. And, certainly, it should be pointed out that playing music on a keyboard is but one form of musical expression and data entry. Its just one form of data entry for an electronic musical instrument. Its not the whole game. Its one way to get sounds from a machine. (Moog himself had sequencers besides a keyboard, for example.) Of course, not having a keyboard doesn't mean you need ditch traditional music theory either. There are, for example, modular sequencers that are still quantized to traditional scales even in very modern Eurorack systems. But no one is mandated to use these either. We may summarize all this by saying that there are at least two paradigms for playing synthesizers: by hand on a keyboard as a player and more machine-like by conducting the machine itself, as it were. Both are legitimate methods. And, of course, there are others. But they might not lead to the same music or sounds!

One reason people use modular synthesizers, I think, is that they are boxes of possibility. If I have a fixed architecture synth I can only do what it will let me do and, as a cutdown version of an earlier modular product (Moog, for example, built his modular before he refined it down to build a Minimoog. Alan R. Pearlman built his Arp 2500 before his cutdown Arp 2600 and then his cutdown of that, the Arp 2800, later renamed the Arp Odyssey), this will be less than I could do with the full modular synth. If my synth has a keyboard or other input device I can only play the notes, and with the expression,  this device can produce and I can only make the sounds the architecture of the synth allows me to play. With a modular synth, perhaps in perception more than actuality, it seems as if you can do more. It can create things that your fixed synth couldn't do. (Lack of a keyboard may also mean I couldn't do the things it can do too.)

But, in the perception of some, that doesn't always happen. Modular synthesists always seem to come up with the same beeps and farts (its alleged). And not much else. There are people who really think this because I've read and heard them saying it. Perhaps you are a modular synthesist who thinks this is wrong, a defamation of modular synthesists in general. Perhaps you are thinking that keyboard synthesists only ever come up with melodies and chords and that's a fair point. But surely the point common to both sides here is that people tend to certain sounds and kinds of sounds regardless of their instrument. Both instrument environments are limits as much as they are possibilities. What we need in both cases is players with deep minds rather than synths which are called "deepmind". The instrument will rarely do it all for you although there are numerous interesting self-generating patches that can be made with a little thoughtful patching. For the truth is that the best fixed architecture synth in the world or the most expensively assembled and complex modular system devised will be nothing but a damp squib in the hands of an unimaginative user. And as things become more popular so the talent pool will inevitably become more diluted.

Now, of course, there are always guiding paradigms in place when thinking about music. Everybody has in their head an idea of what "music" is and what it isn't. Quite often this is thought of broadly, or in the mainstream, as "a tune" and I'll freely admit that this idea rubs me up the wrong way. I think its very backward to have something like a synthesizer in your hands but then all you can think to do with it is write melodies. Again, a melody is just one thing you can do that is musical and not the whole of music. I'm quite a fan of Kosmische Musik, the German music that was often entirely electronic that was produced from the late 1960s and on into the 1970s. Much of this, at least at the start, was quite abstract and not really very melodic. (So abstract electronic music has always been with us!) I'm thinking of things like Popol Vuh's "Affenstunde" or the early albums by Kluster (later changed to Cluster). There's even Tangerine Dream's first album "Electronic Meditation" to consider here. All this was just abstract electronics noises. But it was still both profound and beautiful in my ears. It was from this type of environment that the "Berlin School" sound first invented by Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream (lead by Edgar Froese) developed. This music's development was partly influenced by the technology as well. There were no digital synths in these days. It was all analog. So there was no saving anything. You couldn't really change patches because there was no comprehensive system to do such a thing. You had to create sounds and then weave them together into things of substance on the fly.

I find this an incredibly useful insight musically. At their best I think this is what all synthesists of any kind do, whether using fixed synths or modular ones. That is why I personally take the Kosmische artists as my role models. They are mixing sound design, technology and their own creative minds together to come up with something and they've had to stretch themselves to do it. I wouldn't describe their output as "beeps and fart noises" even though many people with similar equipment might make that kind of noise today. To me it sounds like designed soundscapes or even modern electronic classical music (which is what Morton Subotnick wanted to make too). Of course, the technology has moved on. Now, today, even in modular systems there are ways to save and store (or at least record and playback) things. I regret that a little. Part of the reason why the electronic music of the past at the start of this current era of electronic music with its commercial synths and recordings sounded the way it did was because of what you couldn't do as much as because of what you could. All the sound sources were analog too. Today many might be digital. But I note that especially within modular synthesis it doesn't seem to be so controversial today whether a module is analog or digital anymore. Meanwhile our fixed synth brothers and sisters still often seem to have flame wars about whether this new synth that's come out is analog or digital. System 8 anyone?

                       Tangerine Dream at Coventry Cathedral in 1975

Taking the Kosmische artists as my role models it makes me want to put such banal and ultimately unresolvable discussions to one side. I listen to their works and read about how they did it and it seems to point a sensible way forward both in terms of the technology and the sounds. They were masters of combining things together and of being agnostic about things we might now in Internet forums find reasons to have interminable arguments about. They could and did combine machine generated sounds with leads played on keyboards. They would combine things on tape with things played live. (They had to. They only had two hands!) It was an attitude, in my naive mind at least, of making the best of what you've got, taking smaller parts and creating a greater whole from them. It was about making an effort. We have, I'm sure, all seen pictures of the giant multi-synthesizer stacks of gear from their performances. Much of that, in today's modular world, could be combined into much smaller cases. But the question many people would ask is if many of our modular synthesists today make even half as much out of the gear that we have at our disposal as they did back then. And this is not just about kinds or styles of music. Its about taking what you've got and making something worthwhile out of it. Of course, in the end we each decide whether something was worthwhile for ourselves but there is, I think, that sense we all have of knowing that we tried to achieve something beyond us with our musical gear, the sense that we have stretched ourselves. This, I think, is the criticism at the heart of the "beeps and fart noises" comments we often see and hear. And we may be able to lie to others about that. But we can't lie to ourselves about it.

Or it may be that modular synth world really is a train spotting, mending your motorcycle club. In which case its not really so surprising that people who want to make music and put some effort into it are turned away from it.

Bleeping Modular Synths!

As I checked my various timelines today for what was happening in the world, a process which involves reading articles on music websites, watching videos and listening to people's new tracks, I came across a reference to an old interview on the Sonicstate website. For the purposes of this blog it doesn't matter who it was with except to note that they were modular synthesists of the Eurorack variety. The video interview itself is quite lengthy and interesting and there was also some music showcased along with it. My interest was peaked even further though when I ventured into the now ever-present comments section that seems to accompany almost any internet posting anywhere. Here I started to find somewhat puzzling, critical comments about both the interviewees and what it was they were doing, i.e. making music with modular synthesizers. (They had a huge, wall-sized, Eurorack setup.) I bring this up and, indeed, make a whole blog out of it today because it seems to me that there are some general criticisms of the whole genre of modular synth (that is, of the music and of the users) that are out there these days that are spread by those with chips on their shoulders or grudges to bear. I personally regard them as the preservers of an unseemly conventionality. But I want to try and address them. If you use modular synths too you may find the following discussion pertinent to what you do. Or you may not.

The first kind of comment I want to address is the kind that suggests, sometimes with regularity, that modular is somehow "being pushed down people's throats" these days. If this is the case, and I only say if, this is because, as Jean-Michel Jarre said in an interview recently, that "electronic music won". What he meant by this was that in the past the idea of making music with electronics itself was frowned upon. For a number of years, even into the 80s when people tried to stop those such as Gary Numan from doing what they do, electronic music was regarded as somehow not "proper". Again in the UK, as with Numan, Depeche Mode, who have since gone on to become the most popular electronic group of all time and lately with considerable amounts of modular gear at their disposal, were, at the start of their career, never given any credit or due in their own country. Their music, being electronic and all synths, was regarded as somehow insubstantial and fluffy. "Just Can't Get Enough" was laughed at not regarded as a pattern for future musical output. It certainly wasn't regarded as amounting to anything. However today, as Jarre pointed out in the interview, all music is basically electronic. The balance has swung from guitar music to synth music. The procedures for even making music have become significantly more electronic and involving of electronic devices. Very few people today, in the modern electronic environment, would even blink at the idea of synths or synth music. Today you are regarded as dangerously weird or "old school" if you don't use a computer and software as some part of your process.

So what then of modular synths "being pushed down people's throats"? Well the particular complainant who made this comment goes on to suggest that the problem is that a lot of modular synth music is "just noise sequences with no real substance". Is this the Depeche Mode complaint rearing its head again? It may well be. However, what this also is is an example of a value system in operation regarding what is regarded as worthwhile (or substantial) or not worthwhile (or insubstantial) when it comes to electronic music. That the language is a matter of substance or lack of it is interesting to me because it makes me ask what "music with substance" might actually be and, thus, whether this is a goal that the modular synthesist should have. Clearly, this person hears a lot of modular synth music and regards it as effete and ephemeral, fluff that gets blown on the wind. The suggestion is that it is ultimately meaningless. Now that is as maybe and, at this stage of the blog, I don't want to suggest for a second that the charge of being insubstantial might lead to the notion that something becomes meaningless. But, further, I also don't want to be forced to the conclusion that to make music that was meaningless, even if you did, would necessarily be such a bad thing. 

But let's back up a little. Another commenter accuses those in the video interview I referred to as being "noodling hipsters" and those in the modular synth community might be familiar with this casual insult. He suggests that they, and possibly a wider community of those like them, have "no musical inclinations beyond hoarding gear and making it bleep". Ouch! I wonder if anyone's Spidey sense is tingling after that warhead has been detonated? It must be said that when one surfs the various forums and internet places where modular synth fans go there does seem to be plenty of people with little musical output and plenty of gear they never seem to put to more than minimal use. Now, of course, we are not autocrats here. People can do with their things, or not do with their things, exactly what they want to do. But the charge seems to be that some modular synth users, and, by extension, the group as a whole, are collectors of stuff more than they are active music-makers. Does this accusation ring any bells with you, I wonder? We are starting to build up a critical picture of modular synth fans as people chasing an insubstantial cool factor, people who obsess over stuff and discuss gear but without producing anything that matters. Perhaps more evidence in this direction might be the preponderance of modular synth users who make 5 minute "jams" recorded on their camera phones as opposed to full length pieces of music which they have honed and crafted and produced as works of art in their own right. Some would certainly say so, it seems.

This charge of being "noodling hipsters" or collectors of cool things bites further when its suggested, as it was in the comments I refer to, that "such people give electronic music a bad rep". This makes us ask what we as modular synth users want to be known for. Are we to be considered as the electronic music equivalent of model train enthusiasts, collecting all our stuff, making sure it looks just right and then privately playing with it and maybe going online to discuss various layouts and technical specifications of equipment? Are we merely people with an interest who show our stuff to other people and then endlessly talk about it? Is this what being into modular synths is all about? For some it may well be and I don't wish to denigrate that. Above all else in this blog I will hold to the view that people can make of their resources what they will. However, this does beg the question of image and public perception. It makes us ask what modular synthesists want to be known for and perceived as. If modular synthesis is a subsection of electronic music and, thus, something with a musical purpose in mind where does this fit in amongst the collecting, noodling and discussing?

Now in the past couple of years I have become more interested in what might be generally described as abstract electronic music. Sometimes this blurs into flat out noise and certainly things that could be described as atonal. I like everything from drones and soundscapes to chaotic glitches and musical uses of harsh static. I embrace the chaos that can be inherent in a modular system or setup in which you can deliberately set out not to be tuneful. This, I argue, has always been there from when people started picking up their synths at the end of the 1960s. It is a constant and authentic branch of modern electronic music. I have written blogs about this before and suggested on some of those occasions that there was a bias in society against this due to cultural factors which canonize certain forms of music at the expense of others. I still think that this analysis has some truth to it. However, not everyone agreed with me. To persist with the Sonicstate link, sometime guest on their Sonictalk podcast show (and synth demonstrator and vintage analog enthusiast of note), Marc Doty, wrote to me concerning one blog I wrote (on his Automatic Gainsay Facebook page) that he believes that music "isn't a cultural choice" but, instead, "an evolutional outcome". He then goes on to write of his belief that human beings have "connections to organized sound and resonating vibrations that go deeper than their choices". He thus thinks we are, quite naturally and reasonably, drawn to tonal sounds, harmonic relationship and, thus, melodies and chords. I found what Marc had to say deeply fascinating. I wasn't convinced but nevertheless.

I mention all this because what you believe about things conditions how you will approach others, things that you come across daily. This, indeed, is how we humans are able to handle our daily lives at all. We process things based on what we already think and believe. Some of these things may help modify some of the beliefs. Most are just churned up and processed by the beliefs we already have. And so it is with electronic music too. Now I have to say I have noticed that the aforementioned Mr Doty has, at times, seemed to be quite critical of especially Eurorack users with his view of what it is he thinks they are doing and why. I don't intend here to critique or repeat any of this. Marc, I'm sure, is big enough and eloquent enough to speak for himself if he wants. But reading something of his deeper beliefs about music and sound it at least makes some consistent sense with those other things. It is easy to see why he is critical of some things in the light of where he seems to be coming from even if you think he gets the whole thing wrong! Marc is able to give an explanation of why he favours tones, melodies and chords over noise, incoherence and chaos being the fan of electronic sounds and music that he clearly is. This is important to me because I will always value a reasoned argument I don't agree with over a casual insult that comes from out of the blue. I don't ultimately believe that Marc has explained things adequately in what he wrote to me on Facebook nor why some, maybe many, people like making noise instead. Maybe one day he will give a talk or write a paper doing just that. But what of the criticisms I've collected up here from one random internet posting? Where do they fit in?

People get into modular synthesis for many reasons and, to my mind at least, its legitimate to get into modular synthesis for any reason you want. If you want to build the world's biggest modular synth decoration on your wall then go for it. Its no skin off my nose. But most people are, at least nominally, getting into modular synthesis for so-called musical reasons. Now this may just be for the "noodling" that my commenter above has frowned upon. But so what? It seems to me that the modular synth, of any format, lends itself to this purpose. If one is going to dedicate oneself to using a modular synth then, with there being so many possibilities, one will need to play, in the sense of have fun experimenting, in order to do this. This, it seems to me, is one of modular synthesis's biggest attractions in the world of electronic music. The fact there are so many options openly encourages this play and, to me at least, makes it a legitimate activity. A modular synth can be an activity, like the piano of old in the Victorian parlour, where you spend some of your leisure time just playing. Is that an illegitimate use of electronic music resources, an activity that gives it a bad reputation? I don't think so. There is no law or instruction which mandates you must do anything at all with a modular synth. Buying one or beginning to build a system does not commit you to "serious" or "proper" music and neither does it force you to submit to some traditional or authoritarian notion of what "music" is. No way, Jose.

And now we need to address the issue of "musical substance" once more. I genuinely do not know what this means. I imagine it could mean something traditional, something melodic, something, for want of a better word, "normal". Or mainstream. I crap on that idea. If a modular synth is anything, in my understanding, then it is an exploration tool. It is a device in which you can, deliberately and with some ability, purposefully tread untrodden paths. If you have one I think you should do this because, apart from anything else, its one way to guarantee that you will sound like no one else in a world where sounding like someone else seems, for many, to be the safest path. In a recent episode of Divkid's "Modular Podcast" I was delighted when the artist Scanner (also known as Robin Rimbaud) spoke to the effect that music is about finding your own voice in your equipment. I could not agree more with him. I would equate this with "musical substance" in that then the music at least becomes about something. It becomes about you, your interests, your experience of the world. 

But I have a bigger point here. And this is that I don't think music need have any substance. It need not have any meaning. It can be effete, ephemeral, empty, pointless and void of any sense. The demand that things have meaning is perhaps the most conventional demand of all. In this context, it is the nihilist, the person who does things simply because they can or for a moment's pointless fun, who is the rebel. And with a modular synthesizer you can certainly, and constantly, do this. You might not even know how you did it and never be able to repeat it. (Repetition is another conventional notion.) But so what? Why does, and why did, the music ever have to mean something? Why must it have a point, a substance? Why must anyone take the box of chaos that is a modular synthesizer and then regard it as something to be tamed, made safe, made conventional? Why not go the other way and simply enable it to express its inherent desire to blurt forth randomness into the void? This plea for substance is the death of possibility on the altar of conventionality. It is the desire that we all play it safe so as not to seem too "other".

In the end, I believe, the criticisms I found are merely expressions of the value systems of those who hold them. These people had their own ideas of what music is and of what they regard being musically valid as. But these ideas and beliefs can only ever extend as far as their own noses. Beyond that there are other ideas and beliefs which you and I are equally free to have and hold. This may be because, as Marc Doty believes, evolution will guide us down a certain path. It may be, as I tend to believe, that you decide to make a certain choice. Choices, of course, are never made in a vacuum. (And so Doty and I may be talking about the same thing from opposite ends.) In my experience each musical life is a great chain of events, of cause and effect, in any case. Due to my interest in electronic music I make a podcast called "Electronic Oddities" and in doing that I am constantly lead from one thing to another in a great chain, all the while discovering new things, things I missed from decades ago, and much else. To me this is the wonder of it all, that there is so much and it is all so different. Not knowing what will happen next, what I will hear next, is the greatest thing about electronic music, this inherent capacity for possibility. That is why I am so attracted to modular synthesis in the first place. Will some people who have a modular synth be "noodling hipsters" just wanting to look cool? Yes. But so what? Much more important to me than any chat about devices, tech talk, "look at my setup" pics or anything else surrounding modular synthesis is the ideas involved in actually making music. "What are you doing with your gear?" is the important thing for me followed up with the question "Why?" 

For me a modular synth should be, par excellence, the instrument for people with ideas and it should be used to musically express them. For me personally the sin would be to have a system and then not use it to see how far you can go with it. But I'm perfectly aware I can only control my own gear and output and no one else's. Its just that to have a great system, as many people seem to, and then not use it to explore sonic possibilities would seem to be a terrible waste. So, to finish, of course we all have our own ideas of what "substantial" music might be for we all have value systems. But these will only ever be ours and our music always expresses them. We should, as Robin Rimbaud said, seek to find our voice through the technology for this is not just a collection of electronics that will always sound the same. The fact a modular synthesizer is a device through which human beings can mediate themselves with the utmost electronic flexibility possible is of vital importance. And to that extent its like anything else. It reveals the person behind it. 

So are you a model train enthusiast, a noodling hipster or a sonic explorer?

PS I have always found electronic bleeps quite profound. Its always about how things are contextualized I find.

John Cage Once Again

If there is a book that has affected my attitude towards music and has actually materially changed my ideas about music and my own musical practice, and there is, then that book is without question John Cage's book "Silence". Specifically, for I can be specific, it is the section near the beginning headed "Experimental Music". It is not a very long section of the book and it is also one of the parts of the book which, I think, it is relatively easy to understand. Both of these factors are fortuitous for other parts of "Silence" I find so dense as to be impenetrable. The section "Experimental Music" I find so fundamental to an understanding of music that I would count it as a great loss if I had never read Cage's words and understood what he meant by them. Before beginning with the meat of my blog I should, of course, say that Cage was writing in the 1950's. His musical situation was not that of our's today. In the 1950's no one had yet built a viable commercial synthesizer and magnetic tape was the cutting edge tool of the day. Cage, we may say, was at that time creating the future. But he wasn't yet in it and we can look back on specifics that he helped to bring about but could not describe in detail as we can today.

So what is so great about this section of the book? I have written about this before and I recommend that you search through my blog to find those blogs too. They may add to what I say here or re-emphasize things. What is so great, if it is to be put like this, is that Cage is not afraid to get embroiled in the big questions about music that many either assume in their ignorance or ignore in their stupidity. Cage is not afraid to take a stance on what music is and should be seen as. This is an important question and all the more so in the 60 years since he wrote in which any number of electronic musical genres have been invented (and, in some cases, passed away again). A definition of what music even is is important and for at least two reasons. It informs what it is you think you are doing if you make music and it gives hints as to how you should do it.

Most musicians and musical writers, even today, are primarily concerned with pitch. When picking up their instrument or sitting in front of it they primarily intend to affect pitches and weave them into a pleasing union. Indeed, many traditional instruments were made specifically as devices to produce and affect pitches as their primary function. Melody and harmony are the endgame. For such people so fixed can their ideology be and so unthinking can their appreciation of music be that it never occurs to them to think that music might be anything else. Music is melody and harmony as a statute. If something is not melodious or not harmonious then it is not music. It does not take a genius to realize that this definition completely destroys the claims of some forms of music to then be music at all. Specifically, these are electronic ones, ones that were coming to birth as Cage wrote. Fortunately, there are others who see things a different way and Cage was one of these. Cage came to regard such music as happily "experimental", including his own, a judgment many wouldn't quibble at today but which, in his day, was controversial.

The crucial factor in this, Cage finds, having realized that as long as he is alive there will always be some sound even if it is only the flowing of his blood or the high pitched whine of his nervous system, is to turn away from the idea that music is something deliberately done to the idea of music as sounds that are not intended. There will always be these sounds of course and for the musically conventional they would regard their task as to eliminate them as much as possible. But not Cage. Cage sees this fact and these sounds as his orchestra. Cage freely admits that many will see such a turn as giving everything away. If music is not a musician deliberately creating with authorial purpose then it is nothing for many people. But Cage retorts. Cage sees human beings as at one with all the sounds around them. In this context there can be no concept of music as some artificial, deliberate creation. Music is any sounds occurring "in any combination and in any continuity". As I would put this, "Music is any combination of sounds". I summarize Cage's thought here as "Give up music as a collection of deliberately made and organized sounds. Realize that any combination of sounds is music."

It is this "any combination of sounds" idea that seems to scare many people though. And some people do seem bound to their idea of music as something deliberate, an authorial intent, a matter of canonized forms and sanctified approaches. Cage was right to say, even in the 1950's, that some people regard, for example, the use of noise or a random approach to a collection of sounds, as "not music at all". The years between his writing and our present day may have removed some of that anxiety as electronics gave birth to industrial music, ambient music and an appreciation for abstract forms or, alternatively, rhythms which endlessly replicate themselves and morph, seemingly forever. But this is not entirely so. There are still those who regard things without a tune as not music. For Cage I think this would be to focus on the lesser thing (that you can form pitches into melodies) to the exclusion of a much greater thing (that tones and timbres are all around us in any number of naturally occurring combinations). 

For a number of years I have been an enthusiastic fan of the analog synthesizer enthusiast and educationalist, Marc Doty. Doty, known as Automatic Gainsay in the online world and a man who works as part of the Bob Moog Foundation to prosper the legacy of the great synthesizer inventor, Dr Robert Moog, has for a number of years produced demonstration videos for numerous vintage analog synths on his You Tube channel. I freely admit that I have spent hours watching, and re-watching, many of his videos which I find to be both educational regarding the synthesizers he is demonstrating and in relation to synthesis itself. In my way, I have also found many of the videos musically significant as well for I have found music in the tones and timbres that these usually vintage synthesizers have produced. Indeed, I have found no difference musically between the theme songs Marc has written for his videos and his pawing at the keyboard during the demonstrations. Why is this? Its because, like Cage, I am not seeing "music" as the production of deliberately intended tunes. I am not seeing "music" as a matter of deliberation or intention at all. Music is sounds in juxtaposition with one another. And nothing more is needed. 

Of course, it takes a psychological shift to come to this position and Cage sees this. But Cage does not see it as a giving up of anything. He sees it as a gaining of so much more. "One may fly if one is willing to give up walking" is how he puts it. And this is very much how I see it. Recently, not least from watching Doty's videos, I have become somewhat disturbed and a little claustrophobic, musically speaking. I've wanted to shout at Marc as he was demonstrating "Stop flinging all these pitches at me!" I look at the keyboards Marc is demonstrating and there they are in all their fixity with a keyboard attached as the user interface. A keyboard, of course, is an interface primarily designed to affect pitch and in some, but not all, keyboards pitch is all it does affect. How limiting, how narrow, how blind. In contrast Cage talks about "sound space" and the technical possibilities of the use of magnetic tape which, in his 1950's context, was cutting edge. He speaks of being able "to transform our contemporary awareness of nature's manner of operation into art". Now, reading that, can you say that this task is even primarily a matter of pitch? Surely not. 

Lately my own musical output has become what I now refer to as "texture music". When approaching the creation of a piece I look to create the conditions for a piece of electronic music's arrival. But I don't look to play it or even really create it. I try to stand at a remove and let it come to be. I juxtapose things and let them be and let the music come from their juxtaposition just as in nature things are just juxtaposed. You will perhaps not find it surprising that, in this context, I prefer electronic and technological means to do this. Both software and hardware solutions are available today that Cage cannot have foreseen in detail and one wonders what he would have done with them. However, in my own practice I approach music as something primarily of timbral and not melodic interest. I can write melodies and have done so. But this is very rare for me and, frankly, I just find timbre both more interesting and more vast as a range of possibilities. There are only so many notes and people will keep playing them over and over again. But there are endless timbres. So lately I find myself wanting to smash all the keyboards and I want electronic things to play with that make it difficult or even impossible to be precise with. This is not unusual in the electronic arena and instruments from the theremin to certain flavors of modular synthesizer are difficult to play melodically, especially if no precise interface is used. For me the more interesting question is why you would feel the need to play melodically in the first place. Such an urge is surely indicative of cultural teachings and a leaning towards conventionality that I just want to give the finger to. Nature is full of timbres. Our music should be too. I see it as more human.

I see this very much as Cage sees it in the end. Cage talks about a choice between wanting to "control sound" and, on the other hand, giving up the desire to control sound, clearing your mind of "music" and setting about discovering means to let sounds be themselves "rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expressions of human sentiments". I see pitch-based music, music that wants to be a tune, as very much music in the "I am a human who wants to control things" mold. And that kind of music disturbs me. Its not even a question of if such music is "good" or "bad", subjective judgments that are largely meaningless in the end anyway. To me that approach says something negative about human beings themselves and their motives in wanting to act that way. It seems blind to many of the insights Cage raises, not least that we are part of a greater whole and that fitting into this whole, letting things be what they will and being at peace with it, is a greater good than the ability to say "this and this will be so". "Pitch music", as I have started calling it, is narrow music and narrow not just musically but also in terms of what it means to be a human being expressing yourself that way. Cage, of course, did not see music as necessarily about expression and even less so as about meaning. For him sound just was and it was the human task to let it be what it will, to enjoy the intermingling of any and every sound together.

Postscript: I am currently making a podcast series about electronic music, as you may know, and the first podcast came out last Friday. In the course of making the show I have had reason to speak to a few people about putting one of their songs in the show and this has led to fortuitous connections. Thanks to one person I came across the idiosyncratic synths of Rob Hordijk and specifically a little box he made called the Blippoo box. This table top synthesizer seems, to all intents and purposes, to generate random noises which change in entirely unpredictable ways as you either move its 12 knobs or use either the CV inputs (and outputs if you patch it into itself) or the light sensor that is built into the unit. The unit itself is a mix of oscillators, filters, his unique "rungler" circuits and FM possibilities. I've seen more than one comment about this synthesizer that it plays you, you don't play it. I mention the Blippoo box because it strikes me as an instrument encapsulating entirely the kind of musical freedom I was expressing in the piece above. The Blippoo is impossible to play melodically and is nigh on impossible to play in any conventional sense at all and yet it offers seemingly endless opportunities for making sounds you could never imagine and putting them in the context of lots of others. It is an instrument that you can affect but cannot control.

Perfect!

                              Rob Hordijk's Blippoo Box

Electronic Music Culture

Recently, quite spontaneously, I decided to make a 13 episode series of podcasts called the Electronic Oddities Podcast. I think I was probably stuck in a rut with my own work and I wanted a way out, a way to let my creativity and mind flow that wasn't concentrated on producing yet more music of my own. What better way to do this than by concentrating on other people's? The idea behind the podcast is a give a survey of what now amounts to almost 50 years of commercial and non-commercial electronic music, all the way from 1967's "Silver Apples of the Moon" by Morton Subotnick, the first commercially commissioned electronic music album, right up until the present day. (The series goes even earlier than that though with music from "Forbidden Planet" in 1956 and from Pierre Schaeffer and his Musique Concrete in 1948.) Of course, what electronic music even is is a big part of this subject. Most modern music has something to do with electricity in that it is amplified through speakers. The primary modern instrument in popular music, certainly in much of the mid to late 20th century, was the electric guitar where the electric part was crucial to the sound. And yet when we talk about electronic music in the context of my podcast or more generally we do not mean this. We mean music that specifically uses electronics to create or manipulate the sound. 

The pre-eminent modern electronic instrument is the synthesizer. This replaced the tape recorder as the primary instrument in electronically generated music when it began to be invented as a viable commercial instrument between 1963 and 1966. Subotnick had commissioned Don Buchla to create an electronic musical instrument that he could perform electronic classical music on. But Subotnick did not want to be bound within the confines of a piano keyboard and so Buchla's instrument did not have one. This meant that the music produced was unlikely to be strictly melodic or 3 minute pop songs which needed to have easily repeatable hooks and themes. The instrument Subotnick got was more suited to abstract sounds and exploring the realm of musical timbre. Of course, at broadly the same time Dr Robert Moog had also invented his Moog synthesizer. This did come with a keyboard attached and this enabled Moog synths, and all those that followed this lead, to stay within the prevailing musical paradigm, that based on the chromatic keyboard. Thus, with these two first commercially available synthesizers was set up a distinction which demonstrated something that was to run straight through the heart of all electronic music: your tools determine the boundaries of what you can do with them.

                 Buchla system 100 as used by Morton Subotnick

We can demonstrate this point further in a story told in a BBC documentary about Funk music that I watched recently. The documentary related how Funk was invented in the late 1960s by James Brown and Sly and The Family Stone. This music, in terms of the rhythm, emphasized the 1 and the key to the whole performance of Funk was a rhythm section of drum and bass which emphasized this 1, the first note of the musical phrase. Later on this became replaced by Disco in which a rhythm guitar became the key to the sound (think of anything by Chic that is driven by the playing of Nile Rodgers). But now think what happened in the 1980s. Up until this point the primary dance music of the era had been played by skilled musicians. But in the 1980s viable electronic instruments had been produced that could, in some sense, replace these people. Your rhythm section could now be a TB-303 or an SH-101 and a TR-808. And these weren't musicians playing Funk, Disco or Soul rhythms. They were machines. What you got instead of Funk, Soul and Disco was House, Techno and Electro. The tools and their boundaries and limitations dictated what came out the other end of the creative process. (Hip Hop, of course, would make use of sampling technology too to start to rework the old licks that people had actually played.)

                        A TB-303, your replacement bass player

In today's electronic music culture there are even more choices. People can make electronic music on tablet computers, the latest iteration of something which revolutionized electronic music yet again: the home computer. This particular device acted as something of a leveler and a democratizer in the field of electronic music because a computer was something that many people were likely to have in their homes anyway. Users were, thus, already familiar with the device if not with using it to make music. It was simply a case of buying a music program, installing it and then using it to make your music. But this music wasn't necessarily played. It could just be drawn. This was a world away from the early synths which were created from the ground up from electronics and were based on the model of oscillators and other devices which came from radio studios which is where the early pioneers in the use of electronic sound were originally to be found. At that time electronic music was a niche activity enjoyed only by the rare few and made with cumbersome machines. There was still, however, a physical connection between the music-maker and the physical instrument. Today popular music has been completely overrun by electronic sounds, not least due to the convenience of the computer. As Jean-Michel Jarre has said in his many recent public utterances around his "Electronica" project: "We won". He means that electronic music, once frowned upon and despised, is now the king of the popular music world. This is at least partly because it can be made with stuff already to hand and with the Internet even for free. Like a virus it has mutated and affected everyone. 

It was partly in this context that I decided to create my podcast series. Recently, I rejoined Facebook to get access to a number of the discussion groups that are there of a specialist nature. Electronic music is, or should be, partly about the community. It is good to refresh your own thinking by partaking in the thoughts of others. But on Facebook, as we all know, you also open yourself up to the hordes. And so it is that the other day I came across the latest video of Deadmau5 and his studio full of electronic music bling. Now I wasn't so fussed about the studio itself. Deadmau5 has made his money doing what he choses to do and he gets to spend it how he wants. No, it was more the comments of the young kids who consider themselves his fans that caught my attention. When I see a young kid of 15 or 16 writing in all seriousness that Deadmau5 is "the best electronic musician of all time" then that makes me step back and think "Hold on a minute. Do you know the history of electronic music, kid? Do you know how we got here and who brought us?" The answer, of course, is no, he doesn't. He has no idea that there has been 50 years of electronic music nor of the myriad types of electronic music that have been made in that time. He is not aware of the innovation and experimentation that has taken place in that time. He just likes Deadmau5's four to the floor beat and software sequenced chords. He's allowed to like it. But when he makes bold statements we are allowed to step in and say "Hold on a second!"

Another recent event was the precursor to my podcast series too. I happened to start listening to 80s House and Techno music one day recently. This was music made with hardware synthesizers and drum machines. It was made with hardware only... because there was no software at this time. It had not yet been invented. It would have been recorded to tape as well. All a very physical, analog process. I was struck in that moment by just how full and rich it sounded. I thought to myself that my ears had become used to thinner things with less presence, the result of software and computers coming to pre-eminence. I thought to myself that there may be people who think that software synths and computer sound are normal. I pitied them for not knowing how things sounded "in the old days" because, believe me, it was like night and day how the 80s stuff sounded compared to modern EDM which, to my ears, is weak and sugary. Back then things were dirty and gritty and full of saturated presence. Swedish House Mafia or Avicii do not hold a candle to Frankie Knuckles or Kevin Saunderson in terms of how they sound.

There's another story I can tell. This week has been the music technology trade show in Frankfurt, Musikmesse. This is where manufacturers come together to show their new wares. One of these is a new software which emulates Eurorack modular synth modules. I posted the news story about this new software to a Facebook page for Eurorack users and the response was largely predictable. Lots of people who use real Eurorack synth modules pointed out that doing this in software is actually missing the point of modular synthesis in the first place. 

                     A Eurorack format synthesizer

But what is the point of modular synthesis in the first place? The point is its tactile nature. The complaint was that by making it just another software you maybe replicate how it looks on your screen and maybe even model quite accurately how it sounds with your computer. But you don't emulate the process of using it because one is a hardware instrument and the other is a program on a computer. Someone jokingly said they would need to create a hands-on controller for this new software.... *chuckle*

A lot has been happening to me musically in recent weeks. Another thing that is new is an interest in exploring noise music, a particular flavor of electronic music which is harsh and without compromise. I'm totally clear that it won't be to everyone's taste but there is a community that seems fascinated by it and that interests me. Of course, there is good and bad in all forms of music and this is no less the case here. Its a matter of taking time and stopping to smell the roses to find out which interests you and which doesn't. As one who has an interest in all forms of electronic sound this seems one well worth studying for a while at least and you can be sure it will be featured in my podcast series. This is not least because noise, in the form of industrial music, has penetrated far enough into musical culture in general to have even reached the mainstream and, at this point, it becomes a significant socio-cultural phenomenon in its own right. As I see it, noise shares in something that has been a feature of electronic music from the start, the ability to throw away the script, go off piste and just chart your own course. When you have instruments, from the cheapest, crappiest, circuit bent piece of crap to expertly manufactured super synths costing thousands of your local currency to play with then the sky (or space) is literally the limit. Noise musicians, as with ambient and kosmische musicians, are some of those who have taken this ability and run wild with it.

This is just one reason why I probably like electronic music above all other forms. It has the ability to create new timbres and textures and to keep doing it. You can create something that is yours that nobody else has. Of course, you can also use the presets and create something that other people do have. But that's up to you. I see electronic music as forming a broad spectrum of sounds, potentially as broad as human beings can imagine in fact. With electronic instruments you cannot just create songs or melodies but entirely new sounds themselves. You can create the actual building blocks. The very early pioneers did exactly this with tape machines using noises manipulated to make other noises and then combining them to make longer artistic pieces. Fascination with sound, I think, is at the heart of electronic music and this is what the Electronic Oddities Podcast, I hope, will be all about. In all the many and varied ways that people can now make electronic music, in ever greater numbers, the scope and variety of the possibilities is, perhaps, the most attractive feature of all.

Episode one of the Electronic Oddities Podcast is now available  HERE!