where next with software instruments?

[mcnoone]

In the not so distant future we will not be using fingers to control anything on our computers. When quantum computers are available, we will control everything on the computer with our eyes. This technology is already available to big government, then sooner or later to the general public. Playing an on screen keyboard with my eyes...hmmm.

[Vectorman]

Indeed, one could only subscribe to the notion that being able to play an instrument is passe if one is spending all of one's time within the microcosm of electronic music (and even there, only certain genres of electronic music at that). Those genres still account for a fairly small slice of the pie in terms of all the music being made in the world today.

In most other musical genres, a greater degree of human feel and emotional connection than is readily achieved by entering notes with a mouse on a computer screen is widely considered desirable. Hell, there are fans over on the Rush message board decrying the fact that the band triggers samples during live shows, saying that everything at a Rush show should be played live even if it means leaving out some of the parts from the studio versions of songs. I bring that up as a reminder that opinions run just as strong at the other end of the spectrum amongst those who prefer musical performance and detest that which is "programmed."

The thing about step time entry is that, while the part is being "entered," playback is stopped...so you're not listening to or responding emotionally to anything. You don't get the kind of natural ebb and flow and emotional arc that would just happen intuitively if you were performing a part while the song was playing back...expressive nuances that occur naturally as the song is playing, in response to what's happening in the music on a moment-to-moment basis.

That kind of immediate connection to the music is obsolete? Perhaps for a small subculture who make and listen to industrial and a few other types of electronic music, but for the majority of musicians and music listeners? I think not.

[fabi]

DISCLAIMER: lunatique, in the following post the use of 'you' is not directed at you as a person at all!!! i just think digital painting is a great area in which to observe how important decent human to pc interfaces are.

As for control, you have 5 fingers on each hand. You could use a fader controller to control 10 parameters in real time.

I can tell you right now that most today's computer musicians can barely control three parameters at the same time--most can't even play an instrument that requires any kind of separate limb/finger independence. the keyboard is one of the easiest instruments to play yet some can't even go beyond "one-finger'plinking" on it. Ten parameters at the same time? Hell no.

I wonder why it's so hard for people to understand that current interfaces could be improved. look at graphics tablets. When drawing/painting on the computer would you REALLY want to be limited to tweaking one parameter at a time? Would you REALLY only want to control the x-axis when drawing? or maybe x and y which would still f**king suck five ways to sunday?

Are you really telling us that you'd rather create a painting such as this one using knobs and sliders or writing code rather than picking up a digitizer and using it much in the way you would have with a pen or brush? and how much fun is it to use brushes quickly and intuitively that in the real world simply could not exist or function like they do on the computer?

why should it be any different for computer music?

go ahead and try painting this with a mouse and tell me how much as good it has been as using a nice human to pc interface...

[Lunatique]

go ahead and try painting this with a mouse and tell me how much as good it has been as using a nice human to pc interface...

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have nice interfaces, but there has to be a limit on how many before it just becomes a confusing mess. We may have ten fingers, but if trying to make all ten of them do different things would likely be humanly impossible. The piano is played with all ten fingers, but at least they are performing very similar motions of striking a key--with only variation of speed, strength, and position. If those ten fingers were to do ten totally separate actions, it just would be way too much. I don't think a human being can handle it at all.

Today, the most comprehensive control setup I can think of is when a highly expressive patch that utilizes the keyboard, expression pedal, breath controller, mod/pitch wheel, ribbon controller, and damper pedal, and I don't think I've ever seen a patch that requires the use of all of them at the same time, and that's only 6 controllers, and they are all quite different from each other, thus less confusing (unlike ten fingers trying to control totally different things).

So anyway, that's just my view on the matter.

And yes, I've done painting with a mouse before I got a tablet. It was horribly frustrating, but I managed to produce some good stuff with it anyway--good enough for professional work. I would never try it again though if I could help it.

[Shy]

fabi: no one's telling you anything like that. But are you telling us that drawing is the same as playing an instrument? I'll remind you that to draw you need to hold a pen/brush/whatever and move it around. To control a musical instrument, like say, a piano, you have to use your arms and 10 fingers to play the keys and your legs to press the pedals. When playing a saxophone, there are countless ways to blow, and you also move your fingers. Simple maracas, without constantly feeling the instruments, you can't play them. You manipulate the way the seeds inside them move by shaking them in different ways. You can't even compare using a tablet to using a real brush and canvas. You do have precision and comfort with a tablet, but you can't feel the brush on the canvas and it's not nearly as real and "intuitive". There is hardly anything in common between drawing and playing a musical instrument, so why even say something like "would you rather paint with knobs and sliders"?

I didn't just mention moving several sliders at once, it's just a suggestion for what's one of the most intuitive ways that are -currently- available. I referred to future developments as well. The conclusion, as mentioned, is that "maybe great control is physical control. And maybe not. Maybe it's your preferences and aims that count, and maybe musicians express themselves in many different ways and what's next for software instruments doesn't necessarly have to be one thing or a bunch of things in order for the -entire- virtual instrument world to be considered progressed. Instruments are individual first of all. What's available reflects what's been attempted and what's been demanded."

I think far too many useless comparisons are being made. You will never replace a real canvas and brush with any digital tools, and you will never replace a real violin with with digital tools. You can emulate them and have fun doing that, but the process will be different and the result will be different. Innovation will come from someone some time, when someone actually knows what the hell kind of control it is they want.

[fabi]

yeah. i know it doesn't translate a 100%, i just think it's very strange to argue, and some have come across that way, that in the end it's only talent that counts.

for certain kinds of music keys may be nice. but if you're playing melody and chords with both hands, how are you going to use the mod and pitch wheels? Doesn't always seem to be a problem, though.

Regarding drawing, I wouldn't say 'you will never replace a real canvas with any digital tools'... Of course one might. If someone sees what they can do digitally with somewhat familiar tools - still room for improvement there, but at least we are beyond the mouse now and even tilt and angle are available in addition to pressure sensitivity - I am sure some may end up choosing one over the other, just as people have chosen to pursue computer music over acoustic instruments. Many combine both.
I know that for me doing digital drawings will never be the same thing as the more traditional approach. i didn't say 'the same as the REAL thing' - one is as real as the other, they have their own unique merits that are difficult if not impossible to duplicate or at least imitate in the other realm - again, that goes both for music as well as drawing and painting.


I also agree that doing ten different things with your hands at once may not be the most sensible approach.
However, traditional instruments didn't just pop out of the ground like daisies all of a sudden, at the time of their birth, they, too, often were nothing but novelties and must have seemed strange and complicated.

I have done some experiments with wiimotes and so far am somewhat in agreement that nothing too much useful comes of it. It's still an area I am likely to pursue for a little while.

for music like shamann's though, e.g., which I like very much, I am sure intuitive and USEFUL input methods besides the keyboard might be pretty cool. Maybe not for him personally, but you know what I mean.

One of the reasons why I brought up drawing is that it, too, could be reduced to a number of parameters which could be assigned knobs and sliders. However, as you pointed out it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever - only thing is, that the same IMO goes for music - they are part of a tradition, but aside from that they don't make a whole lot of sense, musically, I think.

[eduardo_b]

In most other musical genres, a greater degree of human feel and emotional connection than is readily achieved by entering notes with a mouse on a computer screen is widely considered desirable.

In fact, for many of those who go to concerts, the expectation is that they will hear variations of recorded versions. Otherwise, with the possible exception of concert sound levels, one could achieve the same experience by simply listening to recorded audio at home. The interactions of musicians among themselves and with the audience are what makes the live music experience unique.

Despite all of the technological innovation both now and in the future, there are things that cannot be replicated, and one of these is what happens when people play real musical instruments. This is the same reason that expectations regarding artificial intelligence were doomed to disappointment. Organic neural networks encompass attributes that cannot be replicated by artificial simulations of them. Trying to program emotions doesn't work.

The idea that anyone can control 10 parameters at once is quite out of the question. It's a form of multitasking, with half a dozen being considered the outer limit for humans, and even that is dependent on the tasks at hand. I think someone pointed out that there's no particular reason why more than six is even necessary.

All that matters is that the emotional energy of a musician can be heard in their playing. If music is more than just sound, if it really is about the connection between player and listener, then the technology is only as good as it allows musicians to experience their musical emotions without compromise.

[fabi]

The idea that anyone can control 10 parameters at once is quite out of the question. It's a form of multitasking, with half a dozen being considered the outer limit for humans, and even that is dependent on the tasks at hand. I think someone pointed out that there's no particular reason why more than six is even necessary.

That's not necessarily true. You may not be able to control 10 parameters consciously, but there are plenty of complex tasks we complete every day as well as in music and visual art that could be broken down into dozens of 'parameters'. It just isn't sensible to break them 'apart' and force someone to control them separately.

That's why I made the analogy to drawing - When I draw or paint I take into account a multitude of 'parameters' simultaneously. the different axes, the pressure of the brush, how wet it is, the structure of the canvas, the intensity of the color etc. If I were to do all that without one good tool supporting me in that act I am quite sure I or anyone else would be quite lost.

Exactly BECAUSE it is so hard to control 10 parameters at once I find it baffling that more 'organic' ways of controlling synths and fx haven't been further pursued, yet.

[aciddose]

the reason is that music is more like pixel art, you need to control each parameter individually and consciously think of them individually during the entire composition and/or performance. there is no logical way to combine parameters outside the form of a physical instrument like for example a violin. there the parameters blend together, but for a subtractive synth for example there is no such simple and "natural" way to combine parameters.

use your tablet to do pixel art and then you'll see that perhaps using the mouse and keyboard is much, much easier and faster.

[BONES]

man I hate this attitude...
And people wonder why you have to search through piles of crap, uninspired music to find anything decent these days...
Synthesizers, Music theory, DSP theory, Equalization, orchestration....(ad infinitum)
They're all just tools, If you REally want to write good music, why ignore any of them???

Because some of them are more relevant than others. Its not like I have never been able to play competently. As I said, I used to practice long and hard. There are other aspects to it, too. I don't need to understand chord theory to know that this chord sounds good and this one sound bloody awful. Over time you get to the point of knowing intuitively what works and what doesn't. It is almost exactly the same skill as an accomplished write/musician would have. The only aspect that might be missing is the ability to express it to others, which is not something I have ever needed to do. e.g. You might be able to call a particular chord by its name, I just know that it works. In the end, 25 years of experience is 25 years of experience.

I for one would absoloutely detest a world with no counterpoint, harmonic structure and correct voice leading... these are the things that make my music work, and that I appreciate the most in the music that I like. These are things that do not necessarily just come to people as they point and click. You have to work at some of this stuff.

I agree with the last statement. I don't really know what you mean by most of the terms you use but, as I said above, it's most likely that I do all of those things anyway, simply because I've been doing this for a very long time and they do work. You don't always need to understand the underlying principles in an accepted, expressible way, you just need to know what works and what doesn't. Much like driving - a race driver has all sorts of terminology for the kinds of things the rest of us do every day. e.g. Over the course of many years of driving, you work out that if you approach a corner in a certain way, you can negotiate it more smoothly and at higher speed. You don't need to know what turn-in and apex means to take a perfect line through a corner. Hell, you don't even have to now what a perfect line is. There are things you just get better at, the more you do it. its impossible to have been doing this for as long as I have and not know what you're doing. I just don't have the need to express it to others, except through the music itself, so its not something I ever bothered with formally.

You don't seem to be able to get your head around the idea that just because your tools and process are well suited to making *your* music by *your* method that they might not be ideal for everybody else. Style matters. EDM is easy.

Everything is easy. As I said, the fact that I can do what we do utilising such a tiny fraction of what is available, should be proof enough that the tools are there for anyone to do anything. As I said before, I feel that I could tackle anything, any style at all, with currently available tools. In fact, for the vast majority of it I doubt I would need to do anything more than buy a decent sample library or two to pull it off convincingly. I'm not talking about specifics at all.

think in terms of simply sitting in a chair, having absolutely nothing but the chair in a room and commanding every aspect of an orchestra of instruments, synth or not, with absolutely no requirement other than to dream of the music.

How f**king boring would that be? How could you place any value on something so easily achieved? Sounds like something Apple would do. Process is important.

A good piece of music played on a chello by a good cellist is in a different universe than anything we can do with synths.

Why is it? What can a cellist do with a few raw materials that they could not as easily do electronically? I have synths that are far more expressive than any physical instrument if you care to take the time to learn how to get the most out of them. If you spend as much time trying to get that out of a synth as your cellist has spent with her cello [chick's instrument], it is trivial to be as expressive and more. e.g. I'd love to hear a trumpet player play a simple chord, or use a little portamento between notes. The limitations of that stuff is far too great.

When it comes to synthesis, in terms of sound, control, expression and feel, we're in a different universe. Not necessarily a bad thing. But when you try to imitate that other universe, even with extreme efforts, the results you'll get are basically like what a toy is compared to a real thing.

I would say that in comparison to trying to go the other way - to make a cello sound like a Virus, for example - a synth is a brilliant mimic. Your whole argument is absurd to me, because I use synths to make synth sounds. What you're talking about is something I wholeheartedly agree with - horses for courses.
[/quote]But as far as expression goes, you can't expect to control an instrument in a non physical way (or in a very limited physical way) and for it to be as intuitive and expressive as some acoustic instruments and to sound as "real" and "alive".[/quote]
Rubbish! Look what we can do with synths. A simple thing like a filter sweep is beyond any acoustic musician. With the familiar and simple controls of velocity, after-touch, pitch-bend, mod wheels and expression pedals, we have an arsenal of expressive tools that any acoustic musician would envy. It is a simple matter of approach and the simple, inescapable fact is that we don't need to put so much effort in, because there are other ways to achieve the same result.

You produce sounds by interacting with and directing an instrument, and its sound is a result of its characteristics as well as how you do that. With some synths you can achieve fairly complex sounds by manually editing or recording many parameters and you can get useful and nice results, but you can't expect a few parameters (and even dozens is a few) to result in a sound that's really from the same universe as that of real instruments.

I would fervently hope that I could do a whole lot better. I really think your whole argument is just absurd. There are so many things that are beyond the control of a real instrument, like stopping all sound immediately, for example. Strings will continue to resonate, etc, where a synth with zero release on its VCA envelope will cease making sound instantly. Or how about having vibrato on oscillator 1 and not on oscillator 2? Doable on a cello but not on a trumpet. So there are all sorts of things that you can do on one instrument or another, but if you look at the whole thing, a synth can do any and all of them. its the absolute, indisputable king.

The innovation I'd like to see is first of all in quality and variety of what's already common, and then I'd like to see some good truly new generators and effectors.

To what end? What would it allow you to do that you can't today?

As for control, you have 5 fingers on each hand. You could use a fader controller to control 10 parameters in real time.

It was a long time ago now but I am pretty sure that the first synth I bought, in 1981, had more than 10 controls on it. Of course, they pretty much all have more than 10 piano keys, so that's 10 lots of velocity and after-touch.

Nirvana has not happened for many of us yet.

Of course it has, you're mostly just too stupid, pig-headed and set in your ways to have worked it out. if there is anything you can't do today, its not because the tools aren't there to allow you.

But music production tools? There is so much room for improvement left. This is especially true for people who deal with high-end sample libraries. We are just now seeing some interesting things happen on the front of sampling/resampling/physical modeling with products like Synful Orchestra or Sample Modeling's The Trumpet. It'll be a while before we can truly do away with having to fiddle around piecing together articulations to form a realistic and expressive performance. Of course one can learn to play the real thing, but the ideal is to not have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on quality physical instruments and then invest years of your life to learn to play them at a high level--you can just use your MIDI controllers to play virtually any instrument for a fraction of the cost and time.

Whilst I am happy to read that last statement, I just don't see the relevance here. Since when did this become the desire to perfectly emulate something else? Ok, I'll admit that when I first started performing, my goal was to emulate a rock-band all by myself, but never to the point that if you closed your eyes you would think there was a whole band there. To me it is a really small thing that I reckon should be considered separately. We are talking about synthesisers here, what you're on about is more like the paralympics, as opposed to the real thing.

In most other musical genres, a greater degree of human feel and emotional connection than is readily achieved by entering notes with a mouse on a computer screen is widely considered desirable. Hell, there are fans over on the Rush message board decrying the fact that the band triggers samples during live shows, saying that everything at a Rush show should be played live even if it means leaving out some of the parts from the studio versions of songs. I bring that up as a reminder that opinions run just as strong at the other end of the spectrum amongst those who prefer musical performance and detest that which is "programmed."

Uninformed opinions. I find it more than a little disappointing to think that people here could be so narrow-minded and blinkered. If you don't understand how much more "human feel and emotional connection" you can create with a mouse in a piano roll, then you clearly have very little understanding of the process.

The thing about step time entry is that, while the part is being "entered," playback is stopped...so you're not listening to or responding emotionally to anything. You don't get the kind of natural ebb and flow and emotional arc that would just happen intuitively if you were performing a part while the song was playing back...expressive nuances that occur naturally as the song is playing, in response to what's happening in the music on a moment-to-moment basis.

I rarely stop playback to write a new pattern, I just keep it all looping away so that I can hear it in context immediately. So instead of having to play it over and over again until I'm sick to death of it and any hope of getting that "emotional connection" has gone out the window, I can continue to refine and refine it until that connection is perfect. Every run through gets better and better, no matter that I've been playing the same bit over and over all day. How often can you say that of a jam session?

That kind of immediate connection to the music is obsolete? Perhaps for a small subculture who make and listen to industrial and a few other types of electronic music, but for the majority of musicians and music listeners? I think not.

But its a completely different thing. On stage, as much of that same dynamic can be put into any performance. Its in the studio that you have so much greater potential. And I tell you, the way we work in the studio is a lot more interesting to outsiders than the way most bands do, and we get the results a lot more easily.

go ahead and try painting this with a mouse and tell me how much as good it has been as using a nice human to pc interface...

Well, as a full-time, professional graphic artist, I can tell you that in 2008 I can paint/draw as well with a mouse as I can with a paint-brush or pencil. And with the software at my disposal, I could make a similar scene in 3D and bring it to life, something no painter can do. But its a stupid analogy, because we have all kinds of MIDI controllers to expand our horizons far more than a Wacom tablet does for a painter.

Despite all of the technological innovation both now and in the future, there are things that cannot be replicated, and one of these is what happens when people play real musical instruments.

You mean like an organ or a triangle? Nonsense!

The idea that anyone can control 10 parameters at once is quite out of the question.

Maybe with a "real' instrument [funny turn of phrase, that] but I can easily assign 10 parameters to my Mod Wheel, each with their own modulation levels. Its trivial.

[BONES]

OK, if you don't want to read that, the bottom line is that I cannot believe how narrow-minded, blinkered and outright bigoted some people around here are. You're carrying on as though a synth was like an organ, yet you'll probably tell me how much more expressive a big church organ is than any synth. You're all idiots.
To suggest that we are more hamstrung than a trumpet player is patently absurd. A trumpet is monophonic FFS! A cello can only sound like a f**king cello. Yet somehow, because it sounds more like a cello than a synth, it is inherently superior. f**k off! I can do a much better emulation of a cello with the simplest synth than the best cellist in the world can do trying to get their cello to sound like a Virus.
As for control, what does a trumpet player have? three finger [valves] and his mouth. Well guess what, ladies? I can buy a breath-controller and do that easily. how about the cellist? A few fingers and a bow? That's like playing a synth with one hand tied behind your back. Its trivial and all the subtlety and nuance is available to us, just as it is to the cellist. The difference is that we're not restricted to sounding like a cello.
Seriously, a lot of you guys really need to start thinking outside the box.

[Chris Walton]

I've got nothing of value to add, except that I agree with BONES.

[Kriminal]

OK, if you don't want to read that, the bottom line is that I cannot believe how narrow-minded, blinkered and outright bigoted some people around here are.

seriously, do you read your own posts?

[Kriminal]

I can do a much better emulation of a cello with the simplest synth than the best cellist in the world can do trying to get their cello to sound like a Virus.

clearly you would use samples of a cello (because you can), and a cellist wouldnt be in the least bit interested in sounding like a virus...

[fabi]

there is no logical way to combine parameters outside the form of a physical instrument like for example a violin. there the parameters blend together, but for a subtractive synth for example there is no such simple and "natural" way to combine parameters.

right, no simple way. but nevertheless this is exactly what the thread is about - finding a logical way of combining parameters in a softsynth and/or physical controller for said synths.