Do I “need” analog synths?

[Jace-BeOS]

Does gaming provide enough life satisfaction to spend money re-building a PC just for gaming? I mentioned this in my first post. I can’t bear the thought of spending that money for just gaming. That’s $600 I then cannot spend on studio gear.

It really depends on yourself. There are people who spend thousands, if not ten thousands into gaming gear. I frequent a German forum, where simracers (slang for people who like racing simulations ) spend ten thousands in their cockpits, which simulate almost every aspect of a race cars real cockpit (don't ask me why they don't start a real Karting career with that budget...). And they often have 3 40" screens, or a virtual reality headset, which isn't exactly cheap either.

Good point: why DON’T they get into real karting? Physical frailty?

I am constantly amazed (or stunned) at what people put their money into... lots & lots of money. It seems grotesque & excessive, but I guess it’s all about perspective. I’m sure someone living in a shelter reading my posts (on a dirty, slow, shared web terminal) would think that I’m unreasonable in my wants.

If you're not that interesting gaming, get a console. That way you won't have to spend a lot of money, and can still play games. And, with something like the Xbox One S or One X, you even get a 4k Bluray player as a bonus (which is part of the reason i bought my One S).

Still plenty of money. $400 console, plus games, plus TV. Yeah, I don’t have a modern TV (just a low-res CRT). That’s ANOTHER thing I’d need to buy. Decent TVs aren’t cheap. If not for this, I might’ve bought a Blueray player by now (one reason I considered PlayStation several times). I value physical media for movies and shows, but the costs (for mere entertainment) kept me from buying the requisite stuff. It’s comparable to buying a better powered PC & display (my iMac can’t be used as a PC display).

I also really don’t like consoles, for various reasons (underpowered, small storage, lower resolution than desktop monitors, no game mods, title exclusivity, subscription services). Then there’s the fact that all the legitimate “console benefits” are mostly gone: they’re killing physical media to kill the second-hand market, and console games are released just as broken as on PCs. “We’ll fix it in the patch” [game publisher goes on to ignore buggy game; starts on next product that will be also sold in presales, be released as a buggy, micro-transaction cesspool... repeat chorus].

I hate the goal to kill physical media, I hate the release quality of so many games in “AAA” publishing, and I refuse to subscribe to every goddamned subscription service just because every damned publisher wants a piece of the rotten pie that is the “games as live services” market fad (you can only cut a pie into so many pieces before the pieces are so small that they aren’t worth buying). When publishers complain about 200 MILLION DOLLARS in profit being “disappointing”, and when Wall Street shits on a stock because of said “disappointing sales”, well, f**k that whole system.

I don’t like the games INDUSTRY itself. But I like games. Sigh.

[Jace-BeOS]

I’ve been doing tributes that pay well and required big punchy hardware to cut through Big Rigs and real drums.
Sounds to me like you’re looking at using nothing but synths.
However, I would get a 3 Oscillator monophonic synth for Bass-and leads.
I use the SE-02 and it’s a real ConeCrusher.

But my Solaris and Code 8 stay home while I use an HX-3 for Hammond/Leslie work, the SE-02 and Zebra2 works fine.
I’m doing dance groove music, Bruno Mars, etc.
So I need the real analog monophonic but there’s no big SVT or JC900 rigs parting my hair.

u-He synths like Zebra2 HZ and Diva would fill in the gaps nicely as long as the low end is punchy discrete audio, preferably 3 Oscillators.

You might want to review this whole thread. I’m not inquiring about analog for the sake of their sound.

[pekbro]

I used to race motorcycles (amateur circuit), even then, it was a hideously expensive hobby.
...So was photography, when I was heavy into it, incidentally.

[GearNostalgia]

I see it the other way around. You don't have to LEARN music theory like in how to write notation and calculate chords from a scale in you head. There are a lot of tools in DAWs that can do all the calculations for you, but I guess that even with discalcula if would make it a lot easier just sitting back and watching a few episodes of an online composing course. Just by seeing how things are connected you will get the basics and know where to start.

It does not have to be harder that knowing.
1, Select a scale
2, Set a chord progression in you DAW
3, Point and click in notes that correspond to the scale.
The DAW does the rest. I would look at something like Tracktion Waveform.

But you are right with a good ear it is totally possible to do it all by ear without theory. Assuming you have a great ear, which is a bit rare.

Any method works, but I guess we all need some method

you can do a hell of a lot without even thinking about music theory.
im no theory expert, but i know the basics, scales/chords/ and so on, and when im writing "music" it's useful

however, when im jamming on the modular, everything! is done without thinking about anything other than "oh my gods that sounds amazing' or "hmmmwhat happens if i connect these two?"
there is no thought to notes or timing, just the sound.

[zerocrossing]

I hate the goal to kill physical media, I hate the release quality of so many games in “AAA” publishing, and I refuse to subscribe to every goddamned subscription service just because every damned publisher wants a piece of the rotten pie that is the “games as live services” market fad (you can only cut a pie into so many pieces before the pieces are so small that they aren’t worth buying). When publishers complain about 200 MILLION DOLLARS in profit being “disappointing”, and when Wall Street shits on a stock because of said “disappointing sales”, well, f**k that whole system.

I don’t like the games INDUSTRY itself. But I like games. Sigh.

I’m in the game industry, and I’d like you to imagine if you worked incredibly long hours on something, say an album, released it, and then people started buying used copies of your album where you don’t get a dime. Better yet, imagine if there was something about that album where it didn’t work on all new CD players or media players and you had to support all the people who bought your album used.

[a.colella30]

No, but you "want" them

[Distorted Horizon]

Though it's better to have lots of hardware than software. When you pass out, your kids don't do crap on some software synths. BUT if you have hardware, they can continue to use them or sell them etc.

[chk071]

I used to race motorcycles (amateur circuit), even then, it was a hideously expensive hobby.

It definitely is. I think 20.000 € should be enough for a few seasons of karting though.

[vurt]

Though it's better to have lots of hardware than software. When you pass out, your kids don't do crap on some software synths. BUT if you have hardware, they can continue to use them or sell them etc.

no!
theyre coming in the crypt with me.
just in case im not dead!

[GearNostalgia]

Never thought about that, but it is true - nobody inherits sounds with eulas. Good point.

Though it's better to have lots of hardware than software. When you pass out, your kids don't do crap on some software synths. BUT if you have hardware, they can continue to use them or sell them etc.

[V0RT3X]

I like the idea of owning the Arturia Matrixbrute, do I need it though? No because I can still make some pretty good sounds with all the U-he, Fxpansion, Ni Stuff I own.

The sound is pretty darn nice though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApN8AJ71VpU


I could see myself getting lost in sound design on this, and I think that idea is a nice one. I'd love to just turn my computer off and sit down in front of a synth like this and just go wild making different sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0XL1s424cA


As much as I like the idea of working "Old school" with patch sheets, I doubt it would be that great in practice. I am so used to recalling my sounds, so having this function in the MatrixBrute is pretty awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fACw7VJWfjE

[egbert101]

Actually, the MatrixBrute gained my interest, because of some of the youtube videos where people seemed to use them properly (especially the Tangerine Dream covers). But it does seem overly expensive and unnecessarily complicated for a monosynth.

[Jace-BeOS]

Though it's better to have lots of hardware than software. When you pass out, your kids don't do crap on some software synths. BUT if you have hardware, they can continue to use them or sell them etc.

Don’t have kids. Don’t want kids. Won’t have kids.

[Jace-BeOS]

I hate the goal to kill physical media, I hate the release quality of so many games in “AAA” publishing, and I refuse to subscribe to every goddamned subscription service just because every damned publisher wants a piece of the rotten pie that is the “games as live services” market fad (you can only cut a pie into so many pieces before the pieces are so small that they aren’t worth buying). When publishers complain about 200 MILLION DOLLARS in profit being “disappointing”, and when Wall Street shits on a stock because of said “disappointing sales”, well, f**k that whole system.

I don’t like the games INDUSTRY itself. But I like games. Sigh.

I’m in the game industry, and I’d like you to imagine if you worked incredibly long hours on something, say an album, released it, and then people started buying used copies of your album where you don’t get a dime.

How is that a problem? What entitles me to insert myself into an exchange of goods between private individuals with whom I have no relationship?

In what industry has an original manufacturer ever been able to justify inserting itself into the exchange of property between private individuals that have zero relationship with the manufacturer?

Only the software industry dares to go there. The industry that doesn’t actually sell OR WARRANT anything (except the media, where enforced by law, so let’s stop using physical media).

This industry has invented a model of commerce (licensing the usage of intangibles) that’s entirely unique to itself. It has used that model to engage in special pleading when taken to task over its incongruity with the rest of global human commerce. The industry uses this logical fallacy to justify and enforce entirely unreasonable anti-consumer behavior. The EULA is one of the most “spirit-of-the-law”-unlawful & consumer-abusive inventions ever devised by capitalists seeking to make the most profit while taking the least-possible amount of responsibility for their own goods.

Law in the USA has not done anything to protect consumers from this abusive model of commerce, due to the makeup of our governing bodies (being mostly privileged old men who know nothing about computer technology, and can hire others to deal with it when confronted by it in their daily lives) and lobbying. Computer industry lobbyists are why we have corporate-protectionism laws like the DMCA, pretending to be defending intellectual property (just try using the DMCA to protect your intellectual property when you’re an individual artist who’s work is being sold for profit by others who’ve stolen it from you; you need an army of lawyers who are legal representatives of you to use this law to compel another business to restrict the illegal commerce of stolen IP; software industry and recording industry lobbyists had zero concern over this because they were representing armies of lawyers representing massive corporations).

Lobbying lawmakers to support its “unnatural” model of commerce has resulted in some companies in other industries pulling a “if they can do it, so can we” move, in regard to supporting their products (“we aren’t responsible for how it works, because it runs on software that we do not warrant”, regardless of the fact that hardware without software is useless).

Hell, the computer industry entirely ruined the patent system by successfully lobbying to force the patent office to accept software as legitimate inventions (something the patent office rightly refused to do until forced).

Wall Street loves this responsibility-devoid model of commerce so much that “investors” have pressured every corporation everywhere to apply this model as much as possible. Services instead of goods. Minimal infrastructure. Look at how the telecoms have latched on to the notion of “wireless everything”, which is a pathological technological goal because there isn’t enough spectra for wireless everything (well, not usable, and not for everyone). But they don’t care about the long view; only the quarterly profits. “Investors” can just abandon a corporation that “disappoints”, causing “investor panic”, slashing stock values, sending that corporation into rounds of layoffs (and vast executive benefits packages).

I am no fan of public ownership. It’s the catalyst that turned computer industry pathology into an economic system-destroying, metastasized cancer.

Better yet, imagine if there was something about that album where it didn’t work on all new CD players or media players and you had to support all the people who bought your album used.

In every other industry/market, support is limited to warranty periods. This varies from country to country (with the USA, seat of the computer industry, having some of the fewest consumer protections among first-world nations). In many cases, a warranty is only available to the first owner of a product. After a warranty period is over, paid first-party or third-party support is at the consumer’s discretion.

Third-party support is relegated to workarounds (“don’t use that feature”) or no solutions at all (still costing consumers money to discover this fact). In the software industry, because the software industry hates the notion of source code availability, there’s no actual remedy for consumers who find that the developer is unwilling to correct known design flaws.

Ultimately, it always boils down to using special pleading as an argument for why the software industry should be excused from reasonable expectations. Software is too complicated for reliability, they say... and it sure as hell behaves that way!

It’s a fact that you, as a developer, are subject to the bad design choices of thousands of developers before you. You have to make your stuff with other people’s tools, and your product must work on other people’s equipment. The computer industry is a disaster of incompatible trash that is “supposed to work” based on inconsistently adhered-to standards. Various computer types, made up from various components, various versions of operating systems, peripherals, embedded software, third-party drivers, dev tools, etc.

It sucks. I don’t envy that position.

The correct solution to that problem is NOT “charge ahead full speed anyway, use social engineering to convince people that this is the natural order of things, and profit”. The solution is bigger than you and I. The conversation is not.

NOTE: I am not blaming YOU as an individual game developer for any of this. Whether or not you are actively engaged in perpetuating these issues is immaterial to my rant at this point. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just another musician on KVR who works in this industry and I’m not targeting you as a cause of any of this. I did want to respond to your analogies because of not carrying them to their logical conclusion (via computer industry special pleading).

We are probably not going to have a good time discussing this with each other if you, as a game developer, are absolute in your position of your industry doing no wrong and/or view yourself as a victim of your users.

[GearNostalgia]

Wow. As some sure knows by now I am definitley not pro zero consumer rights EULAs, but I think it is decently fair with time limited consumer goods warranty. After all things deteriorate with use and the surrounding circumstances change reagarding how the products may be used so with a reasonable timespan of a few years that seems like a fair deal to both customers and manufacturers. But I totally agree that enforcing zero commitment EULAs to avoid any kind of justifiable customer claims for a working product is bull. Any maker should accept to correct flaws or accept the user to return a software product in the same way it works for physical products. It seems this shit started when Bill Gates spoonfed the world the crappy PC idea with incompatible parts and a flawed OS. Back on Commodores/Ataris/Macs there was not much problem returning a faulty product cause the hardware was known and any issues could be traced back to shoddy coding and fixed.

But I think the software as a service model can actually improove this situation. After buying I my first and definitely last piece of overpriced garbage from 8Dio I turned my eyes to soundsonline.com and realized that I did not need to own the sounds. Now I subscripe to their service when I have time to work on my music. And when I don't I end that subscription. And if I would find their products flawed or not working I would end the subscription asap as well. This gives them an incentive to fix stuff and keep it working and as a consumer I don't get f**ck** up buying shoddy shit that I can not return. So I don't think the rental model is a bad one at all here.