where next with software instruments?

[kuniklo]

Who said it had to be "knobs and sliders." Once you have a display you could do anything you wanted. Naked woman. Caress the parts correctly and get a sweet sound... wrong... DISTORTION. (just think what pinching motions are possible with multitouch!) Maybe a volcano! Mix the lava! It's up to the imagination of the UI designer. Once you have a touch and pressure sensitive display the only thing you're missing is force feedback...

I hear what you're saying but I think the reason none of these have turned out to be all that exciting is that you're still just manipulating one or a few parameters in more or less proportional directions. We can do something much more organic with the CPU we have available now.

I don't think cars are a great analogy either because they're being optimized to perform a practical task. Art is inherently irrational and impractical.

[aMUSEd]

[aaastronomer]

nothing in the real world is beyond being improved by technology!

Wow. Nothing?

(i) wouldn't someone, far more skilled as artist, having the same technology be a better graphic artist than you (presuming equal knowledge of the technology)? especially if a haptic interface was involved?

(ii) there is one flaw to the application of electronics in music--performance. i remember, once, very much liking gary newman's music (e.g., ), then i saw him perform...wonderful one key at a time keyboard technique. oh, well, the tune was good and the staging was perfect!

(i) Not necessarily. The "art" is in your head/heart. A specific skill set is not a prerequisite (or a substitute) for a wonderful imagination.

(ii) I've seen as many fantastic performances by "electronic" musicians as I have "traditional" instrumentalists. I've seen as many tedious performances by "traditional" instrumentalists as I have "electronic" musicians.

skilled 'artist' = "wonderful imagination".

[aaastronomer]

Anything is possible, what I am suggesting is that it is unlikely to allow us to do anything we cannot already do fairly easily and most comprehensively. i.e. Any roadblocks you encounter are almost certainly in your head. The tools and workflows are already available to get from A to anywhere, its just a matter of finding the right approach to get there.
I don't feel there is any area of my work where I am constrained by my tools. I can do sound design, writing, arranging and production to best of my ability. I think if I want to improve my results any further, that improvement will come from me getting better, not the tools.
You'll hear it on our new album, the improvements in hardware have freed us to do a lot of things we maybe wouldn't have tackled before. We have some huge noise-scape pieces, orchestral type stuff going on and arrangements that I don't think I could have pulled off 5 years ago without either bringing my PC to its knees or ending up with an undifferentiated mess. I see 90% of it as being down to both of us getting better at what we do and the hardware improving to a point that it supports our vision much better. Whilst the other 10% might be the result of access to better tools, a lot of that has also been enabled by gruntier hardware allowing us to use tools that might not have been viable on an older machine. My synths are a good example - I've been able to ramp up the polyphony and unison to wherever it needs to be, rather than find a compromise between the perfect sound and the limits of my CPU.

sounds not so much like a failure of technology, but a failure of imagination. no one knows what new paradigms new technology will reveal. back in the 1950s there was a military comms net, but no one could have imagined the world-wide-web! (there was the idea of the noosphere, but that was more ideology than a description of the possible.) it is quite possible that the next generation of sequencing s/w will have anticipatory capabilities and be able to enhance your performance and composition in ways you couldn't have imagined (because you don't have the database). imagine performing with a 'shadow ensemble' which could take any improvisation in your performance in new diretions or even change the set-out structure of the piece you're playing in ways you would approve of because it can interpret your style of performance. this sort of s/w is in experimental development now.

[Dean Aka Nekro]

maybe meaningless shit like this:

http://www.tufts.edu/programs/mma/emid/

found it in latest sound on sound mag, more specifically this:

http://www.tufts.edu/programs/mma/emid/ ... ronNME.mov

Arty bullcrap IMO and 'because we can'. To me it offers nothing of actual musical value and the software used is nothing new at all bar some of the Wi Remote conversion stuff but it aint music software as in you need something to make a noise with also

[sonicfire]

what the..... heck is that

[Dean Aka Nekro]

Might be a Max/MSP creation by looks of it?

[aMUSEd]

It's a modified version of Gaugear which is a Reaktor ensemble - just seemed like a good example of a more visual and aesthetic approach to manipulating a synth. The coloured squares can be rearranged as you wish to create different sounds and harmonies. Think of it as musical Mondrian

[BONES]

Its just blind-folding the user and I see little or no benefit at all in something like that. It gives you less control and obfuscates the process to a point that you would probably never to be able to use it as a tool. I don't want to see what happens when I move a coloured square, I want to set resonance and modulate the cutoff frequency with an envelope to create a precise result. If I just wanted to f**k around and not get anything done, I'd go back to Fruityloops.

sounds not so much like a failure of technology, but a failure of imagination. no one knows what new paradigms new technology will reveal. back in the 1950s there was a military comms net, but no one could have imagined the world-wide-web!

Anyone who reads science fiction would disagree. In any event, what has the www allowed us to do that we couldn't do before? It has made doing a lot of things more convenient and possibly cheaper [although my monthly access costs me a lot more than I ever spent on magazines and phone calls]. Overall though, I don't feel it has revolutionised my life in any great way. I'd actually say mobile phones have had a far greater impact on society, and the're still just phones at the end of the day.

it is quite possible that the next generation of sequencing s/w will have anticipatory capabilities and be able to enhance your performance and composition in ways you couldn't have imagined (because you don't have the database). imagine performing with a 'shadow ensemble' which could take any improvisation in your performance in new diretions or even change the set-out structure of the piece you're playing in ways you would approve of because it can interpret your style of performance. this sort of s/w is in experimental development now.

Sounds like what Casio and Yamaha have been doing with their consumer devices for decades to me. Just evolution. Move along, nothing to see here.

[kuniklo]

Its just blind-folding the user and I see little or no benefit at all in something like that. It gives you less control and obfuscates the process to a point that you would probably never to be able to use it as a tool.

On the contrary. Gaugear is a great example of what I'm talking about. You sacrifice some low level control in exchange for a new way of working. I wouldn't want Gaugear to be my only synth but I've gotten some useful sounds out of it I *never* would have come up with the usual way. Maybe they wouldn't be useful in *your* music but the great thing about music is that we can all express ourselves in our own ways.

[pdxindy]

sounds not so much like a failure of technology, but a failure of imagination. no one knows what new paradigms new technology will reveal. back in the 1950s there was a military comms net, but no one could have imagined the world-wide-web!

Anyone who reads science fiction would disagree. In any event, what has the www allowed us to do that we couldn't do before? It has made doing a lot of things more convenient and possibly cheaper [although my monthly access costs me a lot more than I ever spent on magazines and phone calls]. Overall though, I don't feel it has revolutionised my life in any great way. I'd actually say mobile phones have had a far greater impact on society, and the're still just phones at the end of the day.

Only you can say whether something has revolutionized your life. However, your life is only 1 life.

The World Wide Web has been a revolution in information sharing. When the US tried to overthrow the Venezuelan government some few years back, the corporate media, complicit in the act, lied about what was going on. Independent reporters, reporting over the internet, got the truth out widely enough, and fast enough, that it affected world perception and the outcome.

The ability of people to share information has been a powerful social force that was previously much more under the control of governments and big corporate interests.

Governments, even ones as powerful as the US government, have less ability to control information and public awareness and, for example, can no longer expect to overthrow the government of another country and keep it hidden until months later. The essentially realtime aspect of the web has been a huge step forward for social democratization.

[BONES]

Why is it that you would not have come up with those sounds otherwise? And how did you do it? If it is just a different way of mucking about, that is one thing but what if you get it 80% of the way there and find you cannot be precise enough with the settings to get it perfect - wouldn't you find that frustrating and ultimately useless? I certainly would.
80% or more of the presets I create for our instruments are sounds I would never, ever use myself but that doesn't preclude me from creating them. I just go with the flow - tweak a few things here and there and follow wherever those changes lead. Once I have a decent range of sounds I can start using Genetics to mutate them into other useful sounds. Usually what I get from Genetics is no more than another starting point for more tweaking but it gets me to a different place. I suppose I could use the Randomizer to do that too, but I find Genetics more targeted. But that is all for development work, they are not tools I would otherwise use at all. With instruments I download, I usually start from a preset and make deliberate, thought-out changes to bend it to my needs. Sometimes a preset will spark a riff or something that eventually builds into a song but every song has maybe half-s-dozen instruments, so at least 5 times out of 6 that is not of any importance.

[kuniklo]

Why is it that you would not have come up with those sounds otherwise? And how did you do it? If it is just a different way of mucking about, that is one thing but what if you get it 80% of the way there and find you cannot be precise enough with the settings to get it perfect - wouldn't you find that frustrating and ultimately useless? I certainly would.

The specific advantage of Gaugear over other synths is that I would never have come up with the same kind of sound *transformations* with another synth. Each point in the curve is accessible by other means but the path of the curve itself is unique. This is what I'm really getting at - navigating among the points in the sound world map in new ways.

Also, I don't need precision for some sounds. Control is good when you need it but sometimes more than anything I need *less* control on my way to something new. Isn't this essentially what you're doing with Orion's genetics tool?

[Perimeter Sound]

I hear what Bones is saying loud and clear. I got Replicant hoping it would be some kind of A.I. machine ha-ha, but ultimately - it's barely usable randomness (and it is very straight forward and controllable). Maybe someday, with enough copied human input, be it midi or maybe just .wav files or whatever the program is able to get the most "organic information" from, the machines will be able to "create" something worth hearing. As it is, they are only just these days able to even come close to recreating the nuances of a physical instrument, at least expression/performance-wise. That said, sometimes some wacky Reaktor ensemble or some freaky KvR plug-in might be just what's needed to make you think you have a new idea and get you moving to work on a track, same as going shopping boosts some people's (usually women statistically) mood. Something new can be nice, but it doesn't always have to be external, some new (internal) thought or idea, or just allowing yourself to play a bit, can be all the inspiration you need. Then you'll be glad you have those old fashioned vsts, with their bog standard controls that you know so well, so you can move ahead inspired and already armed to the teeth with sound possibilities.

[pdxindy]

I hear what Bones is saying loud and clear. I got Replicant hoping it would be some kind of A.I.

There are two ideas getting mixed up here. Generative music, and interface improvements...

Personally, I am not interested in something that creates music for me. I am interested in developments that allow me to interface with the computer environment in more fluid and organic ways.

The less time I am spending considering the interface, the more time I am spending in a more creative, visceral, spontaneous mode. I find that preferable. Yes, I can do fine as is. Yes I think there is room for improvement... thus my interest in what Kuniklo is speaking about.

cheers