It's more the era I grew up in than the synths themselves, which is maybe why I might not be the most objective person when it comes to synths in general, hardware or software.do_androids_dream wrote:His view certainly isn't the common opinion. Maybe he just has a dud of a Minimoog.chk071 wrote:That's totally contrary to what wagtunes said. He said that his Minimoog sounded like crap when played dry.
When I got into synthesis, what I was really looking for at the time was a synth that could do strings. I always loved pop tunes with nice strings. I could never tell which ones were real and which ones were synths because of how processed they all were.
It was by accident that I stumbled onto mono and duophonic synths. There was no polyphonic that I was aware of back in the 70s. At least nothing that was affordable for a poor church mouse like me. I was still living at home making minimum wage ($3 an hour) at my Uncle's store.
So I bought what I could afford just to have something. As I started making more money, still living at home with no expenses, I bought more synths. Moogs, ARPs, Yamahas, you name it. Truth is, I never really loved any of them. To this day I don't get the fascination with old vintage synths. But again, I grew up with this stuff.
To compound matters, I was sick and tired of all the Moog "Lucky Man" solos. It's all you heard. Prog rock was getting stale and eventually died out. It was inevitable. Even ELP came out with a dog of an album that I still can't believe was done by them.
I was simply sick of the whole scene. The only two old synths that, for whatever reason, I still loved the sounds of were the ARP 2600 and the Oberheim. Any Oberheim. I owned the Matrix 6R and the Matrix 1000. I regret selling them both even today with all my soft synths. But the rest of it. Don't miss it.
It wasn't until the days of Korg and the M1 and Wavestation that I really "enjoyed" the sounds that came out of a synth. They sounded, to a degree, like real instruments. The DX7 was on the way out (thank God as I always hated that thing even though I bought one) and synths were growing up. You could actually play something that sounded relatively close to a real orchestra, which was the reason I got into synths in the first place.
Today, with libraries like Vienna, EWQL, 8Dio and others, the sound a real orchestra isn't a dream anymore. It's scary how good some of this stuff sounds.
Truth is, I hated the era I grew up in as far as keyboard instruments went. The sound, the weight of the damn things (Rhodes, Yamaha) and the repairs were just too much. And ironically, I never could stop buying this stuff because I was always looking for that elusive gem. And yes, I was taken in by great demos and guys who could play the crap out of their instrument. But as a mediocre pianist, I could never get anything good out of my instrument. So I'll take the blame for that.
Today, with DAWs and the ability to literally paint your songs, I can actually sound decent. Certainly a hell of a lot better than I ever sounded in the 70s and 80s.
So there is a lot of bitterness and resentment there in regard to these relics because they didn't make me sound like ELP, Genesis, Yes, Kansas, Renaissance, ELO, Triumvirat, Starcastle and all my other favorite prog rock bands. Because yes, in their hands, some of this stuff sounded cool. But even Keith Emerson said he was embarrassed by the "Lucky Man" solo. Personally, I think it was the poisonous snake that eventually killed prog rock. Everybody wanted to sound like that and eventually it was all over the radio.
Point is, I think I hate the era and my own ineptness as a performer that I hated more than the synths themselves.
There are a few hardware synths that, money allowed, I'd love to own. But trust me, a Moog is not one of them.
I've heard enough of that sound to last me a lifetime.
Always interesting to read stuff like this. Yes, I can well imagine you being disappointed if you were expecting those early synths to sound close to what they were supposed to be mimicking (strings). Like you say it wasn't until synths like the M1 came along that sounds became more complex and closer to actually sounding like their patch names.
