Bazille - most misunderstood synth?

[Saukar30]

Wags... sometimes musicians just want weird stuff. If you have a Sylenth or Spire... most of those sounds usually tend to sound the same. By getting Bazille, you know that you will have something bizzare. We search for that bizarre shit even if we don't understand how it comes to be. Sometimes understanding just takes the fun out of the journey.

So in other words, people buy it because they don't understand it but like the way it sounds, for whatever reason, and then look for libraries because they want more sounds and can't make them themselves.

Is that about the size of it?

Yes. That's one perspective. Think of it like this. If everyone understood how to program each synth to get the sounds that they wanted, why would anyone buy presets?

Taking that into consideration, the preset market is huge. So obviously not everyone wants to program a synth, but lots of people are looking for interesting (or specific) sounds.

EDIT:
You... for example, wouldn't have a business if everyone created their own sounds. In the case of Bazille... it's interesting because it's like a hardware modular, but it's software. So all the conveniences and hardly any hassle (as far as simple operation for songwriting/producing/live playing). U-He has a great reputation and lots of great sounds usually come already when you buy one of their synths. If you want more.. you can just buy more presets versus taking the time to get deep into programming.

[wagtunes]

I mean who is NOT buying this synth that makes it so misunderstood?

The question is, why are so many people selling it? I'm proposing it's simply because they don't know how to work it.

A lot of assumptions based on not a whole lot of evidence.

Lol, you're all hung up on the word "misunderstood." Let me retract that word and make it invisible, as you're not really contributing to this thread - but I like you because you were the first person to help me on this forum. Why do you think it seems (and maybe my perception is wrong) that Bazille is often in the market place - and really cheap, compared to the resell values of Hive or Zebra? That's what my query was in the very beginning. I thought it was because people don't understand how to build patches. But what do you think the reason might be?

Honestly, I have no clue. It's not something I think about. I don't go to the market places to see how many synths are or aren't being sold. But what Urs said makes a lot of sense. Percentage wise, out of all the Bazille owners out there, the number of sales may actually be fewer compared to other synths that don't sell as much.

Point is, all of this is just guess work. Without knowing actual sales figures for any of the synths out there, it's all speculation and, quite honestly, meaningless.

Give me some hard sales data and then we can analyze if Bazille is a synth that gets sold a lot because people don't understand it, again, whatever that means.

[wagtunes]

Wags... sometimes musicians just want weird stuff. If you have a Sylenth or Spire... most of those sounds usually tend to sound the same. By getting Bazille, you know that you will have something bizzare. We search for that bizarre shit even if we don't understand how it comes to be. Sometimes understanding just takes the fun out of the journey.

So in other words, people buy it because they don't understand it but like the way it sounds, for whatever reason, and then look for libraries because they want more sounds and can't make them themselves.

Is that about the size of it?

Yes. That's one perspective. Think of it like this. If everyone understood how to program each synth to get the sounds that they wanted, why would anyone buy presets?

Taking that into consideration, the preset market is huge. So obviously not everyone wants to program a synth, but lots of people are looking for interesting (or specific) sounds.

EDIT:
You... for example, wouldn't have a business if everyone created their own sounds. In the case of Bazille... it's interesting because it's like a hardware modular, but it's software. So all the conveniences and hardly any hassle (as far as simple operation for songwriting/producing/live playing). U-He has a great reputation and lots of great sounds usually come already when you buy one of their synths. If you want more.. you can just buy more presets versus taking the time to get deep into programming.

Seems logical. I could go with this. Again, as I said above, it's not something I really spend a lot of time thinking about.

[.jon]

Maybe there's a lot of people who buy everything with U-he stamp on it, and only later realize that Bazille doesn't have pretty pictures of circuit boards inside?

[OzoneJunkie]

I was one of the people who recently sold Bazille in the marketplace. I re-bought (direct from U-he) it today (along with the other U-he stuff I sold there). I am not the type of person to buy a modular hardware synth, and that's why I bought it the first time around.

I realized recently that part of my own workflow involves allowing the happy accidents to uncover something new and inspirational, whether it's creating a sound from scratch, tweaking an existing preset, or just straight up using a preset.

And the U-he synths have been part of that process. I'm happy to have back the synths that I sold. That includes Bazille, Diva, Hive, and now (new to me) Repro-1. I don't own Zebra 2, and while having played with the demo a few times and recognizing its beauty and vast range, it's something that I can live without. However, whenever Zebra 3 comes along, I will demo it with the idea that I will own that too.

[BasariStudios]

For me Bazille is my MOST Understood synth.

[Bodhisan]

Point is, all of this is just guess work.

Precisely, Steve. You're a synth guy from way back - this is really, really new to me, and part of my motivation for this thread was to encourage people like myself (or who I used to be), who are musicians but don't understand synths, to dig a little deeper (but really, that's the long route - the fast route is to educate yourself with reading and videos - not trying to guess where to put a cable - that's where I think people give up on Bazille) to see that Bazille is the last thing to sell. But who am I to exert such an influence? I do wish to "share the wealth," however, so to speak.

[Bodhisan]

For me Bazille is my MOST Understood synth.

And I'm getting there, too.

[wagtunes]

Point is, all of this is just guess work.

Precisely, Steve. You're a synth guy from way back - this is really, really new to me, and part of my motivation for this thread was to encourage people like myself (or who I used to be), who are musicians but don't understand synths, to dig a little deeper (but really, that's the long route - the fast route is to educate yourself with reading and videos - not trying to guess where to put a cable - that's where I think people give up on Bazille) to see that Bazille is the last thing to sell. But who am I to exert such an influence? I do wish to "share the wealth," however, so to speak.

And of course that has a lot to do with it too as far as variables go. Somebody new to synthesis will either totally ignore Bazille as being too "out there" or become so absolutely intrigued by it that they are almost compelled to buy it. At that point, how likely they are to keep it will depend on how frustrated they get trying to make it work.

For me, Bazille was just another synth purchase, which in a way is kind of sad. Gone are the days when I look at a synth and go "Wow, I just have to get me some of that" simply because I have seen it all. From the very best to the very worst. Now, it's just business, more or less. Doesn't mean I don't still enjoy making music, in fact, more than ever (just check my Soundcloud page) but the synth choice itself is more clinical than it ever was. Now it's simply a matter of "What synth will get the job done" and then using it. Nothing more, nothing less. Where I used to spend hours just "playing" with a synth, now I hardly ever do this. In that respect, a lot of the "fun" is gone. But the music will never go and that's all that matters to me.

[aMUSEd]

Wags... sometimes musicians just want weird stuff. If you have a Sylenth or Spire... most of those sounds usually tend to sound the same. By getting Bazille, you know that you will have something bizzare. We search for that bizarre shit even if we don't understand how it comes to be. Sometimes understanding just takes the fun out of the journey.

So in other words, people buy it because they don't understand it but like the way it sounds, for whatever reason, and then look for libraries because they want more sounds and can't make them themselves.

Is that about the size of it?

No

Then please enlighten me since I seem to be so clueless.

If you thought about it you would realise yourself this makes no sense. Sound design is an art form (an aspect of musicianship, not something separate from it), even brilliant artists will usually appreciate the art of others and may even buy some (I say usually because obviously in art occasionally you have complete narcissists who only value their own output). Being able to create your own stuff does not (usually) negate wanting to own the works of others and does not close you off from wanting to see things from other perspectives and see and hear what others can do with the same material (ie the plugin, the 'form' etc). Nor should it lead you to think you have nothing more to learn from the works of others (unless again you are some sort of narcissist).

Heck you created your own symphony recently. Does being able to do such a thing stop you from appreciating Mozart (for eg) or wanting to buy albums?

[wagtunes]

Wags... sometimes musicians just want weird stuff. If you have a Sylenth or Spire... most of those sounds usually tend to sound the same. By getting Bazille, you know that you will have something bizzare. We search for that bizarre shit even if we don't understand how it comes to be. Sometimes understanding just takes the fun out of the journey.

So in other words, people buy it because they don't understand it but like the way it sounds, for whatever reason, and then look for libraries because they want more sounds and can't make them themselves.

Is that about the size of it?

No

Then please enlighten me since I seem to be so clueless.

If you thought about it you would realise yourself this makes no sense. Sound design is an art form (an aspect of musicianship, not something separate from it), even brilliant artists will usually appreciate the art of others and may even buy some (I say usually because obviously in art occasionally you have complete narcissists who only value their own output). Being able to create your own stuff does not (usually) negate wanting to own the works of others and does not close you off from wanting to see things from other perspectives and see and hear what others can do with the same material (ie the plugin, the 'form' etc). Nor should it lead you to think you have nothing more to learn from the works of others (unless again you are some sort of narcissist).

Heck you created your own symphony recently. Does being able to do such a thing stop you from appreciating Mozart (for eg) or wanting to buy albums?

I understand what you're saying and to a point I can even agree in part. But creating a synth patch is not the same thing as creating music. When I write a symphony, yes, I listen to Mozart and all the other greats, but I don't try to redesign the violin. Now yeah, I guess you could make a non traditional symphony using non traditional instruments and sounds. Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring" came pretty close, but that's not the norm. Most symphonic composers use the traditional instruments at their disposal to create their works.

In the case of "synthesizer" music (whatever that even means) the music is separate from the sounds unless of course a particular sound is so crucial to the music (no other sound could possibly be substituted) that using anything else would destroy what the piece was trying to do. In hindsight, we could probably say that about a lot of musical works and the choice of sounds (the opening Mellotron in Genesis' "Watcher Of The Skioes, or the harpsichord in Elton John's original "Skyline Pigeon" or the Moog Modular that Keith Emerson used for the "Lucky Man" solo) but who knows how we would have reacted to the song had another sound been chosen? We really have no way of knowing.

This is not to say that we don't try to intelligently pick out the sounds we use for our songs. I mean I would hope that we don't just close our eyes and pick one out at random. But who knows? That might produce some interesting results.

Point is, yes, I've written some songs based around certain sounds, but most of the time, I write the song and then try to find sounds that fit the song all with the understanding that many, if not all of these sounds, could very well be interchangeable with something else.

The whole process is actually quite complex, which is why a lot of people never get past just turning knobs.

[aMUSEd]

It's an analogy, not meant for you to nitpick about the details. The point was being able to design patches and buying patches are not mutually exclusive things. I have made banks for dozens of plugins, and I still buy sounds from people whose work I respect.

[wagtunes]

It's an analogy, not meant for you to nitpick about the details. The point was being able to design patches and buying patches are not mutually exclusive things. I have made banks for dozens of plugins, and I still buy sounds from people whose work I respect.

Well yeah, of course. I have every library made for Synthmaster. I think they're great. But okay, I'm still having trouble (with my pea brain) understanding what that has to do with people either understanding or not understanding Bazille. Are you saying it doesn't matter whether they understand the synth or not? In either case, people will still buy presets?

[aMUSEd]

I understand what you're saying and to a point I can even agree in part. But creating a synth patch is not the same thing as creating music. When I write a symphony, yes, I listen to Mozart and all the other greats, but I don't try to redesign the violin.

However this is a misunderstanding - a sound designer doesn't design the instrument, a sound designer explores the limits of its musical capabilities, which is exactly what a great musician/composer does (think of Berio's Sequenzas for example)

[aMUSEd]

It's an analogy, not meant for you to nitpick about the details. The point was being able to design patches and buying patches are not mutually exclusive things. I have made banks for dozens of plugins, and I still buy sounds from people whose work I respect.

Well yeah, of course. I have every library made for Synthmaster. I think they're great. But okay, I'm still having trouble (with my pea brain) understanding what that has to do with people either understanding or not understanding Bazille. Are you saying it doesn't matter whether they understand the synth or not? In either case, people will still buy presets?

No I'm saying it doesn't matter if they understand it to the nth degree, doesn't (necessarily) stop them wanting to hear what others can do with the same plugin or thinking they can't learn something from others. Obviously a person who can't design sounds at all will only be reliant on other's work but my point was aimed at the assumption that to be able to design sounds means you don't need to buy them.