Is this a golden age for electronic musicians? *Poll*

[V0RT3X]

It is hard to deny that we are surrounded by new innovative products, especially considering the high quality and low cost offerings on the market currently. You have the resurgence of the analog synthesizer with low cost affordable entry options, which was sort of in a sleep until recently. Furthermore Midi controllers are shrinking in size but not quality, and plenty of interesting offerings are out there for the masses.

As for the computers, well now computing power has started to push the limits in electronics modelling and emulation with low cost multi-core solutions.

Take a look at products that use mult-core processing such as U-he DIVA which models the components in real time using circuit simulation. This kind of dynamic realism in virtual analog synthesis is incredible, and according to Moores law things are only going to get better and better as time progresses.

Now everyone with access to a computer can produce music, even freely. It seems that the wonder of music is now much more accessible to the world than ever before.

So the big question is "Is this a golden age for electronic musicians?"

I think yes it is, because of all the low cost quality options available present and in the future.

[robogone]

I think no, because the golden age has passed. Not quite sure when I'd say the golden age was - maybe the 70s when electronic music really first came to the masses?

[Tricky-Loops]

It is the golden age of oversaturation with electronic music...

[debra1rlo]

redacted. touche, mr miltz.

[V0RT3X]

ohhhhhh, no fish option, nope, no, sorry but this is a bogus poll and bogus thread and must be closed, so... uh, sorry, but here goes...

why is everyone getting banned? why do people get banned? oh and will someone tell me what all the banning is about??

People are getting banned for fun and games

[D.H. Miltz]

Added a fish option and moved to Everything Else (Music related).

[jancivil]

I'm for all the banning. Don't be pussies! Ban me if I do that shit. Oh wait.

[robogone]

Added a fish option

But of course!

[tehlord]

Jayzuz no

We live in an age of copy cat derivate drivel, where innovation is seen as using a slightly different drum loop to the 50 other guys who have made basically the same track. There's good stuff out there, but nothing really new and exciting.

The age we live in is one of corporate EDM with sponsorship and 'miming' performers (you know, DJ's).

late 70s-late 90s is when electronic music moved and morphed and was exciting.

[Sequent]

Is this a golden age for electronic musicians? From a consumer/purchaser/technical persective, sure. For all the reasons that Vort3x mentioned in his original post. From a creative perspective perhaps not so much. It seems to me that people used to do a lot more with a lot less. The creative choices have increased exponentially over the past decade. I'm not so sure that we as musicians have always been able to (or even wanted to) keep pace with all of those choices or always been able to use those choices wisely... especially to create something new.

I'm not saying that I'm any more or any less 'guilty' than anyone else in that regard. I think that all of the choices and creative potential that are offered to us is a good thing. Some of the tools/instruments that are available (and in fact many of them that I've gotten over the course of my journey!) are things that I only dreamed about when I was starting out, so I'm not complaining. I think it's good that people have the ability to choose and to explore.

[pljones]

I've yet to meet an electronic musician. I've seen electronic watches and calculators but no musicians yet. Ghoti.

[HaganeSteel]

Nope, it's the bronze age.

A lot of why I think that has to do with what Sequent said:

Is this a golden age for electronic musicians? From a consumer/purchaser/technical persective, sure. For all the reasons that Vort3x mentioned in his original post. From a creative perspective perhaps not so much. It seems to me that people used to do a lot more with a lot less. The creative choices have increased exponentially over the past decade. I'm not so sure that we as musicians have always been able to (or even wanted to) keep pace with all of those choices or always been able to use those choices wisely... especially to create something new.

I'm not saying that I'm any more or any less 'guilty' than anyone else in that regard. I think that all of the choices and creative potential that are offered to us is a good thing. Some of the tools/instruments that are available (and in fact many of them that I've gotten over the course of my journey!) are things that I only dreamed about when I was starting out, so I'm not complaining. I think it's good that people have the ability to choose and to explore.

I'd like to add that I see this in the future:

Since we're maxing out the recording quality on everything, I think we'll start focusing on creating production-ready sounds out of the box, and having synth/sample engines that will focus on automatically removing aliasing and the like, and basically producing our work for us.

The problem right now is not that we have too many options, it's that we have too many mediocre options.

So if we had synths where everything sounded uniformly great, and it was all instantly usable, and we never needed to worry about compressors or equalizers again, we'd be free to write music instead of having to double as sound engineers.

The golden age of music software will come when production is automatic, and the highest quality gear is accessible to everybody.

[electro]

Is this a golden age for electronic musicians? From a consumer/purchaser/technical persective, sure.

Indeed. I've got a collection of some seriously awesome toys ITB that would have been several tens of thousands of dollars to have access to just a decade ago. Its literally unbelievable what we can achieve in 2013 with a few mouse clicks.

[Tricky-Loops]

It seems to me that people used to do a lot more with a lot less.

+1,000,000,000

The crazy thing is: The more stuff (synths, effects etc.) I have, the less music I make actually.

[vurt]

I've yet to meet an electronic musician. I've seen electronic watches and calculators but no musicians yet. Ghoti.