The most underestimated synths...

[tripleflows]

Steinberg Retrologue 2

Yes I agree. It has a very nice sound with very low cpu usage. Retrologue 2 expanded in many things from Retrologue 1 (also the price!).

But it has 3 cons for me, and maybe because of those cons, people are not so inclined to use it:
1- Problematic with e-licenser software (I don't know why I had continuous problems with it and with Padshop Pro). Those problems disappeared when I purchased a USB e-licenser and moved the licenses to it.

2- The GUI interface is small compared to other synths (no other sizes to switch to).

3- There is annoying noise sometimes, like clipping! But I can solve it by turning down little bit the Amplifier Level knob.

Anyway, I really love Retrologue 2. It can do great thick analogish pads that only could be gotten with synths like Diva and LuSH 101.

1. In the Steinberg world you have to have an eLicenser indeed. Once you have it, no more problem. However I'd also like to have an internet based challenge-response protection, similar to Reason. Hopefully they will improve it into this direction.

2. The GUI size: at 1920x1200 or 3440x1440 I do not have any problem. But it should be improved to be able to use it more on 4K, as I mentioned here: https://synthmorph.com/blogs/news/16021 ... e-2-review - see the 'future improvement' section, hopefully in Retrologue 3

3. Well, after working very extensively with R2 I never experienced this noise artifact. As this is a plug-in you sometimes have to take care of gain management manually, also make sure that any distortion mode is off.

[ghettosynth]

I'd slow it down and stretch it out to about three hours. In fact, that sounds like a project, brb.

shit's gonna be A E S T H E T I C

I'm digging it. Gonna wrap this one up and tie a bow on it. Turned out an hour was about right. Time to go fill up someone else's hard drives.

Link it when you drop it?

I need to hear this. Crazy Bus being listenable is a new summit for humanity.

Listenable? Well, that depends on one's POV. I fell asleep to it last night, does that count?

Interesting factoid, it took longer to render than it did to...wait for it..."compose."

[cron]

Unless that genre is "bad music". Boy, doesn't that complicate shit?

I happen to be an entirely unironic connoisseur! Car-crash entertainment isn't only for TV. Here's an excellent place to start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_in_the_Key_of_Z

Thanks for that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTdILHges6o

This video kind of highlights one of my problems with Chusid. Just about any exploration of the genre will always lead back to him and he's essentially a one-man archive of a lot of this stuff, but there's a very blurry line between eccentric performance and (the exploitation of) mental illness. The final segment of that video isn't something I'd have used as it's fairly clear what's going there to me. It's not on a public access station - someone has gone into their home and filmed it. It isn't so much his use of the video itself that highlights my problem with him, but his comment in which he blithely reveals a criminal conviction before saying something along the lines of "this is what drugs do to people" which only further reinforces my view that the line isn't so much blurry as non-existent for him.

There's a track I find deeply unpleasant on Songs In The Key Of Z: the excerpt of the Jack Mudurian recording. Mudurian was a guy who had both learning difficulties and (IIRC) no desire whatsoever to record music. A staff member of the nursing home he lived at overheard him singing one day. Mudurian told him he could sing "as many tunes as Frank Sinatra" so the employee decided to bring in a tape recorder and 'challenged' him to sing for 90 minutes straight, which he did. The employee's giggles can be heard throughout (the unabridged) recording, and the record was subsequently released on the unsubtly named Arf! Arf! Recordings. It's a hideous abuse of trust by a person who should have been looking out for him. No problem for Chusid, naturally.

I've never revealed this on KVR in 15 years of posting. I don't hide it, it's just never seemed relevant to the discussion (if not strictly the thread topic ) but, bar a period of remission in my late 20s (I'm currently 34), I've spent my adult life in some kind of provision (or multiple provisions depending on severity) regarding mental illness. Currently mercifully stable on a 3-medication combo, although not living independently. As such, I wonder if I'm unusually sensitive to this kind of exploitation. While I've never been out-and-out psychotic there are times when my internal logic has been disrupted enough that, if a CPN thrust a tape recorder in my face and told me to sing, I'd have been either naively up for it or not wanted to but felt unable to refuse. While this perhaps leaves me hyperaware of that blurry line and the impossibility of landing on the right side of it 100% of the time, I'm also in no doubt that it's what drew me toward this wonderful rabbit hole of amateur sound in the first place. I think a sincere desire to ensure our mouths don't taste to nasty when enjoying this stuff is a moral imperative if anyone wants to get into it. Seriously though, I've tried "how can you not love this?" tracks on even the most musically adventurous friends (including my old DJing/radio partner) and just got blank stares so I imagine its a dilemma few wrestle with. Mind you, the early-mid seasons of The X-Factor (UK) were essentially becoming a sneering, nasty mental illness showcase until a contestant called Shirlena Johnson put paid to that.

Naturally the sharpness and placement of everyone's line will vary, but what's OK for me? If the quality clearly isn't there and mental health status is a factor, what I'm mostly looking for is consistency of practice and an independent desire to release music. If biographical info can't be found, I'll generally give the benefit of the doubt.

Daniel Johnston is a wonderful example of a man for whom profound schizophrenia and psychosis have derailed his at times promising recording career, but whose work is just incredible by any measure (other than sound quality). Walking The Cow is one of the finest independently recorded tracks of the 1980s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qgXYvjVNvk
While Story Of An Artist captures the confusion of budding mental illness exquisitely (and this vid comes with some of his early home movies as a bonus) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_RbSAwMa3U
On the other side of the coin is the dearly departed Wesley Willis, a similarly unwell man whose music would be considered unlistenable by most, but it is consistent, not merely the byproduct of a single manic episode. This guy was self-recording and handing out cassettes furiously for years before finding a small cult following, and his practice was the same throughout his career (even after being signed to a 'proper' label). One man, one Casio on auto-accompaniment mode, luminescently filthy lyrics, every track ending with an advertising slogan, charm for days.

Anyway, that got a bit heavy, so I'll let public access superstar and exquisitely deluded no-hoper Sondra Prill play us out on a lighter note. A lesson to never let your mother be your manager, if ever you needed one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZFrmFhXkr0

[.jon]

As such, I wonder if I'm unusually sensitive to this kind of exploitation.

Considering that you described a rather serious case of exploitation and misconduct, I'd say you're not. While completely off topic, thanks for bringing it up, it had never occured to me that this kind of thing goes on in music world.

There's a fine and complicated line in exploitation and art, few days ago an established documentary director mentioned in an interview that he was looking for subjects who have faced major misfortunes of various kinds for his next film. Is it important to tell their stories, will it help them or him?

Aalto Solo, the free mono version of Aalto, and Blocks Wired. Just to fool a skimmer that this post was on topic.

[EnGee]

1. In the Steinberg world you have to have an eLicenser indeed. Once you have it, no more problem. However I'd also like to have an internet based challenge-response protection, similar to Reason. Hopefully they will improve it into this direction.

2. The GUI size: at 1920x1200 or 3440x1440 I do not have any problem. But it should be improved to be able to use it more on 4K, as I mentioned here: https://synthmorph.com/blogs/news/16021 ... e-2-review - see the 'future improvement' section, hopefully in Retrologue 3

3. Well, after working very extensively with R2 I never experienced this noise artifact. As this is a plug-in you sometimes have to take care of gain management manually, also make sure that any distortion mode is off.

Do you use software e-licenser or a USB dongle? It might be only a problem with my software e-licenser.

The size is not tiny but not comfortable. Maybe I'm spoiled with synths like u-he's.

I'll test the noise again and see if I can give an example.

So, why do you think, in your opinion, it is underestimated? Maybe because the protection method?

[ghettosynth]

Unless that genre is "bad music". Boy, doesn't that complicate shit?

I happen to be an entirely unironic connoisseur! Car-crash entertainment isn't only for TV. Here's an excellent place to start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_in_the_Key_of_Z

Thanks for that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTdILHges6o

This video kind of highlights one of my problems with Chusid. Just about any exploration of the genre will always lead back to him and he's essentially a one-man archive of a lot of this stuff, but there's a very blurry line between eccentric performance and (the exploitation of) mental illness. The final segment of that video isn't something I'd have used as it's fairly clear what's going there to me. It's not on a public access station - someone has gone into their home and filmed it. It isn't so much his use of the video itself that highlights my problem with him, but his comment in which he blithely reveals a criminal conviction before saying something along the lines of "this is what drugs do to people" which only further reinforces my view that the line isn't so much blurry as non-existent for him.

I agree. My interest in this goes back a bit but I'd never run into him before. Really, this direction would be more at home in my own thread which is trying to get at this topic a bit with a slightly provocative title. That title, however, is a legitimate question, not meant to be taken as lightly as some posters feel that it can be taken. I do find the question regarding the value of intuition and even isolation with respect to creativity interesting.

viewtopic.php?p=6765665

I'm also in no doubt that it's what drew me toward this wonderful rabbit hole of amateur sound in the first place. I think a sincere desire to ensure our mouths don't taste to nasty when enjoying this stuff is a moral imperative if anyone wants to get into it. Seriously though, I've tried "how can you not love this?" tracks on even the most musically adventurous friends (including my old DJing/radio partner) and just got blank stares so I imagine its a dilemma few wrestle with.

Yeah, I feel you. I would really like it if you would add your voice to the thread that I started. I have hopes that it can evolve as an interesting discussion over time.

Daniel Johnston is a wonderful example of a man for whom profound schizophrenia and psychosis have derailed his at times promising recording career, but whose work is just incredible by any measure (other than sound quality). Walking The Cow is one of the finest independently recorded tracks of the 1980s

Indeed, I've seen a documentary, if not the one that you've listed on him before.

Anyway, that got a bit heavy, so I'll let public access superstar and exquisitely deluded no-hoper Sondra Prill play us out on a lighter note. A lesson to never let your mother be your manager, if ever you needed one.

I wonder about the interplay between confidence and delusion. That is, whether there is value in letting people believe that you are deluded even if you know that you lack talent? I like to ride that edge every once in awhile.

I could go on about this, but I really don't think that this thread is the place for it.

Awesome post, thanks for sharing.

[sjm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPuH1yeZ08

If you don't know this you should listen to it in full once.

I do, I don't like the proposition behind it, but meh.

A synth that doesn't make any sound is surely a bad synth, as the whole point of a synth is to make sound. Sure, it might be a great doorstop (HW) or CPU hog (software), but it's not a good synth. That might sound stupid, but sometimes you have to take things to extremes to illustrate a point. This is what jan and jon are saying - there are some qualities that an object needs to have to be that object. A hole in the ground cannot be a table. A guitar makes a poor vehicle of choice.

I guess you could bang the HW synth and sample that as the basis for your songs, but that's taking everything very much ad absurdum.

So, if a necessary property of a good synth is that it must make sound, and a necessary property of good transportation is that it must transport, then what is the necessary property of "good music?"

And again, is 4'33" good music?

My personal opinion is that 4'33" is not good music. That is because I would not define it as music. Others might. I would define it as good art; others might not.

To me, good art is something that provokes a(n emotional) response. Even if that response is "this isn't music", 4'33" has made you innately question what music is. It has therefore served its purpose. And I can definitely understand the philosophical debate that you could have about this question. That's why it's good art and why it is still relevant today.

But seriously, how many times have you been in a social setting, and someone has said, "let's put on some music" and the immediate response has been, "yeah, put on 4'33", it's time to party"'. I would claim that that is because to most people, it doesn't actually fit the general expectation of "music". It can be an interesting performance though.

So if your expectation of an umbrella is that it keeps you dry when it rains, and instead of doing that, it collapses, I call it a shit umbrella. That to me is the general understanding of what an umbrella is. As humans we love to categorise things based on their properties. And while not everyone well have the same criteria for defining good/bad, there has to be a baseline we all agree on about what makes an object a particulary type. And surely we all agree that something that doesn't do what it is supposed to do is bad - at least for that task. It might be great for something else of course. That 3$ umbrella might be a great prop for a photo shoot - as long as it isn't raining. There is however a difference between a prop (something intended to represent an object visually) and the actual object. A good umbrella might even make a bad prop...

Of course when it comes to art, it can be very hard to quantify, and the perception of what makes an artform, or is considered acceptable, can change over time. I personally don't think "sound = music" or even "silence = music". If you asked the average man on the Clapham omnibus to explain music, I would be very surprised if they would call the sound of a car honking or the sound of a packed auditorium "music". I would expect some sort of vague consensus that music is "organised sound". In other words, there is some act of sound being produced, and some sort of "composing" going on with that noise - even if is on the fly improvisation - to organises that sound into a form that is more than just "the sound of the sound itself" (for want of a better explanation). Or put another way, music is created by musicians. Just recording the sound of a baby crying and playing it back doesn't make you a musician.

I think there is more to it than that - a politician's speech is organised sound, but isn't music. I'm sure most people would agree that the queen's speech makes for poor musical accompaniment. But quite why an a capella rap is music but a politician's speech isn't - I have no idea...

[ghettosynth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPuH1yeZ08

If you don't know this you should listen to it in full once.

I do, I don't like the proposition behind it, but meh.

A synth that doesn't make any sound is surely a bad synth, as the whole point of a synth is to make sound. Sure, it might be a great doorstop (HW) or CPU hog (software), but it's not a good synth. That might sound stupid, but sometimes you have to take things to extremes to illustrate a point. This is what jan and jon are saying - there are some qualities that an object needs to have to be that object. A hole in the ground cannot be a table. A guitar makes a poor vehicle of choice.

I guess you could bang the HW synth and sample that as the basis for your songs, but that's taking everything very much ad absurdum.

So, if a necessary property of a good synth is that it must make sound, and a necessary property of good transportation is that it must transport, then what is the necessary property of "good music?"

And again, is 4'33" good music?

My personal opinion is that 4'33" is not good music. That is because I would not define it as music. Others might. I would define it as good art; others might not.

To me, good art is something that provokes a(n emotional) response. Even if that response is "this isn't music", 4'33" has made you innately question what music is. It has therefore served its purpose. And I can definitely understand the philosophical debate that you could have about this question. That's why it's good art and why it is still relevant today.

While I don't disagree that it, per se, isn't music, you are giving it too much credit in this conversation. I only use it as an example because it is well known. It isn't at all something that helped me think about this question. It's not even the first silent piece intentionally composed. To the best of my knowledge that credit belongs to Alphonse Allais for his
"Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man."

Further, as I understand it, the point of 4'33" isn't really about the silence, rather, it's about allowing the "accompanying" (excuse the pun) environment to be considered as music. So, from Cage's point of view, sound, even that which is unorganized in any micro-sense can be music as long as that is the macro-intent of the performer.

As far as art, I think that it gets more credit than it deserves and I also think that Cage is a liar and knew about Alphonse Allais' work. That's just my cynical opinion, however, so take it with a grain of salt. The idea of environment as music is interesting enough though, so I do give Cage that credit.

Is the only thing necessary that we "intend" for sound to be music? Is that the least functioning proposition that makes sound music? It is certainly a differentiator in the example that you gave, i.e., a speech vs a rap? I think that some forms of speech cross this line, e.g., pentecostal preaching.

But seriously, how many times have you been in a social setting, and someone has said, "let's put on some music" and the immediate response has been, "yeah, put on 4'33", it's time to party"'. I would claim that that is because to most people, it doesn't actually fit the general expectation of "music". It can be an interesting performance though.

To be clear, I'm being provocative, not inquisitive.

I think there is more to it than that - a politician's speech is organised sound, but isn't music. I'm sure most people would agree that the queen's speech makes for poor musical accompaniment. But quite why an a capella rap is music but a politician's speech isn't - I have no idea...

Which is why that definition is far too strong. The sounds that are being made by my keyboard right now are organized by this very sentence. I'm sure that you would not classify that as music? However, if I chose to record them because I thought that the rhythm of typing the English language in a forum was "musical" and chose to give it a title that addressed this very idea, is that now not music, and if not, why not? Is native drumming, independent of chanting music? I think that it is. For that matter, is drumming without the performance of any intentional pitch music? Is it sometimes not music? What about when it is believed to be intended to be music but there is no skill involved, e.g., a toddler beating on a drum for the first time? Must there be an awareness of music beyond that it is sound created by beating on shit for it to be music? The parent looking on thinks "oh my little worm is making music", but can the toddler really be aware of any distinction between music and sound? If intent is enough independent of skill or awareness, then we must call the toddler's banging music, no?

Of course, we are still left with the question of what is the necessary property that makes it "good" or not.

[wagtunes]

@ghetto

This shit's too deep for me. LOL.

[sjm]

Which is why that definition is far too strong. The sounds that are being made by my keyboard right now are organized by this very sentence. I'm sure that you would not classify that as music?

Just because all men are mortal doesn't mean all mortal beings are men.

[cron]

Of interest is 0'00" from 10 years later which hammers home a similar idea by almost inverse means. The score reads (IIRC) "perform a disciplined action with maximum possible amplification". I believe Cage preferred to write a letter during personal performances, the tap and scrape of pen on paper electronically amplified into huge walls of sound.

I think this companion piece is largely where I take my interpretation of 4'33" from. That sometimes it's nice to stop and just listen to the world. Hear things that you wouldn't ordinarily be paying attention to. Not necessarily "as music" all of the time. Just the sensuous pleasure of listening.

The idea that "any sound can be music" is so uncontroversially accepted these days (everything from the entire field recording genre to New Age relaxation tapes) that this revolutionary aspect of the work is overlooked and it's just "that stupid silent thing" now. Like ghettosynth, I don't believe the work is entirely original in this regard though. Even if we look outside of jokey silent works, musique concrete had already been seriously challenging the idea that music should always fit on a stave for around 5 years (if we take Schaeffer as Year 0), while Henry Cowell (at least) had been radically subverting standard musical notation decades earlier by forcing it to contain works like The Banshee.

Perhaps the only really unfortunate thing about 4'33" is that the rest of Cage's enormous body of work is overlooked as a result of it. If you ask someone to list all the Cage pieces they know, how many people scoring more than zero will go on to score more than one? Much of it is equally barmy (Indeterminacy is a cracking listen once you know what the concept is), while works like In A Landscape are things even your grandma would find staggeringly beautiful.

[BlackWinny]

Two quotes that I love about the silence in music, and both are related to Mozart:

• The music is not only in the notes, but also in the silence between the notes! (Mozart himself)

• When you've just finished to listen to Mozart, even the silence that follows is still from Mozart (the great French writer and theatre author Sacha Guitry who perfectly understood what is the transmission of a mood)

Yes, it looks like intellectual quotes... but they are so true...!

And they rely in fact on all the styles of music. Metal rock, House, Ambient... as well as classical. The silences are full part of the music of the composer. Whatever the instrument: piano, flute, violins, drums, synth, electric guitar... And whether it is underestimated of overestimated.

[sjm]

Sometimes it's nice to stop and just listen to the world. Hear things that you wouldn't ordinarily be paying attention to. Not necessarily "as music" all of the time. Just the sensuous pleasure of listening.

Yes, and that also asks us to question the notion of what music is. What something isn't, is sometimes as defining as what something is. The trains around here, for examples, make a harmonic series when they accelerate from a standstill. I'm assuming that whatever is making the whining noise is simply getting faster in multiples as it shifts gears. At some points it stops being a harmonic series and just because a whine mixed in with the general rhythmic clunk of the train.

Whenever I hear it, it is uncannily similar to music. I know it isn't actually music, but certain musical qualities are present. There is a melodic structure not unlike some of the simplest instruments (e.g. bugle) and a rhythmic element dictated by the speed of the train. At some point, when the train has reached it's travelling velocity, the rhythmic element is more or less a constant repetitive beat.

So where is the crossover from "everyday noise" to music? I wondered about "intent" earlier as well, but stopped short of mentioning it because of things like birdsong. Is it music? I don't know. It's musical, at least at times. There there are those birds that imitate things like smart phone calls - which are actual songs, written and composed as music. Is that bird making music? Is it intentional music? Would you call it a cover song?

It is definitely an intentional vocalisation, but doesn't ghetto mean the intention to create music? Is a 3 year old banging on a toy xylophone making music? Only when they "randomly" hit notes we find musical? How much intention is there to make "music" there?

I quite often "play" with a kid this age. He definitely thinks he is making music when he plays along. But he is not actually - in my mind - making music. He is not listening to the other musicians, he is not trying to contribute to the sum of the parts. He is just making a right racket - and having a whale of a time doing so. And sometimes, he sounds musical. Maybe because he is playing a toy xylophone tuned in C major, and we are playing 2 guitars in C major. Or he is randomly blowing into an A harp while we jam an A blues underneath. The thing is, whether it sounds good or not, he is not intentionally trying to play along harmonically. But nonetheless, the sum of that parts of what we are creating is probably music. Just bad music, because of the wailing atonality and randomness of a toddler switching instruments every 12 seconds.

[ghettosynth]

Which is why that definition is far too strong. The sounds that are being made by my keyboard right now are organized by this very sentence. I'm sure that you would not classify that as music?

Just because all men are mortal doesn't mean all mortal beings are men.

Right, so does it become music when we give it intent to be, or does it not? What is the property of "music" that separates it from sound? If we are going to be precise then, in reality, we are not really looking for the necessary condition, rather we need the necessary and sufficient conditions to define music.

That's really what we were talking about earlier, no? That something transports is really sufficient to define it as transportation, assuming of course that we mean "transports" in a practical sense with respect to whatever we are transporting. For a "sound synthesizer" to be such, it must create sound, but that's only necessary, it must also be a "synthesizer" of sound and we could use that aspect to reject any sound making device that isn't a synthesizer as not being a "good synthesizer.'

So before we can say whether something is "good music" we should probably be clear about what music is and what it isn't?

However, even the sense of organization here is too strong and that's what I was trying to get at, admittedly, in a less than clear manner. My typing "IS" organized and if I intend for it to be music, then, I contend that it "IS" music, but if I don't, then it isn't? Similarly, Cage intended for the sounds of the hall and people shuffling their feet to be music in the performance of 4'33". If you disagree with this then you are going to have to narrowyour idea of organization. Cage certainly felt that he "organized" those shuffles and guffaws and I don't think that you can say otherwise.

So really we are talking about the "sufficient" condition for a thing to be music just as we are talking about the "sufficient" thing for transportation to be such. Organization is not that thing. At the very least perhaps we need intent? However, once we add intent, what do we really mean by organization?

This is organized sound that is intended to be music, is it? If not, why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AILkpb96Uqg

What about this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkI09S4o9WE

[sjm]

My typing "IS" organized and if I intend for it to be music, then, I contend that it "IS" music, but if I don't, then it isn't?

Yeah, that's my difficulty with intent. At some point it encourages people to be pretentious artwankers and do things like put a chair in a room and call it an installation.

Edit: I also see this in other spheres of life, especially from politicians and marketing/sales. Calling something an elite university doesn't make it an elite university, intent or not (this happened here recently). You need an international reputation and that takes a while to build up; slapping a label on it doesn't do the trick. Just like calling software user-friendly and intuitive doesn't miraculously make the UI and UX design flaws disappear.

But maybe there is another side to this. What is it about your typing on the keyboard - structured or not - that would make most people laugh if you tried to pass it off as music?

Heck, I think even if you tapped a 4/4 beat, most people wouldn't think it was really music. But why?