Is virtual analog an advertising ploy?

[jens]

And house was the most shit music of all time.

Together with Techno...

[noiseboyuk]

Sorry for the misquotes I'm on the phone, so I'll fix em later.

IMO workstation drums were rubbish. Of course if you exclude the main genres that used drum machines you can arrive at a slightly skewed view of what was or wasn't used...

[noiseboyuk]

Quotes fixed (I hope).

The Linn still sounds like drums, whereas 808/909 require a decent amount of processing to be of any use at all.

Quite apart from the huge amount of control that both those machines offered to shape the sounds, these statements are utterly bizarre to me. The Linn absolutely does sound more like drums than the 808/909, but everyone else stopped thinking that was a relevant question in the mid 80s. It has become much more irrelevant now that good sounding acoustic drums are so easy to do. Today we’re super lucky - we can have a great plugin for acoustic-sounding drums, and a totally different one for beats.

I doubt anyone since 1986 has ever used an 808 and said to themselves “gee, I wish this sounded more like real drums”.

There are entire documentaries made about the 808 alone and its influence on music. Maybe you hate House, Electro and Hip Hop - it doesn’t matter. The machines’ influence on pop music is a matter of fact, not opinion on what floats your boat.

I’m just astonished to be having this discussion on a forum in 2022. Of course you are perfectly entitled to hate the sounds of these machines and the genres they spawned… but you DO know they’re not being used to try and sound like real drums, right?

[zerocrossing]

Quotes fixed (I hope).

The Linn still sounds like drums, whereas 808/909 require a decent amount of processing to be of any use at all.

Quite apart from the huge amount of control that both those machines offered to shape the sounds, these statements are utterly bizarre to me. The Linn absolutely does sound more like drums than the 808/909, but everyone else stopped thinking that was a relevant question in the mid 80s.

I have such a clear memory of that time. I was one of the kids who thought, "that's supposed to sound like a drum? No thanks." But what else could I do with no drummer around? I was one of those early 80s kids who grabbed a drum machine and made due. No way could I have afforded an 808, though. Mattel Synsonics for me, baby. Oh yeah. At first it was a lot of cringing, but after I realized it was its own thing, I began to appreciate it. Now I love the sound of an 808. This story basically explains my attitude towards all synthesis. I was heavily invested in a sound that was based on acoustic and electro acoustic instruments. I still love all that too, and I especially love how they can be combined in various ways to make new things.

[noiseboyuk]

I have such a clear memory of that time. I was one of the kids who thought, "that's supposed to sound like a drum? No thanks." But what else could I do with no drummer around? I was one of those early 80s kids who grabbed a drum machine and made due. No way could I have afforded an 808, though. Mattel Synsonics for me, baby. Oh yeah. At first it was a lot of cringing, but after I realized it was its own thing, I began to appreciate it. Now I love the sound of an 808. This story basically explains my attitude towards all synthesis. I was heavily invested in a sound that was based on acoustic and electro acoustic instruments. I still love all that too, and I especially love how they can be combined in various ways to make new things.

Yeah, that’s it exactly. I think most of us went through something like that. My brother had a Drumatix, and we thought it was rubbish - because we wanted a real drummer. Sounds great to me now, we didn’t know what we had! (Though I think the kick WAS rubbish… my brother called it “a lump of bass” and that was about it IIRC).

One reason the Linn lasted as long as it did is that it had those controls that you could change a pitch to make it sound totally unlike drums. The Prince Sound is based on the extremely pitched down Linn rim shot. It didn’t really sound like any real drum, this weird knocking sound, but it sounded cool and it he totally made it his own.

[BONES]

The Linn absolutely does sound more like drums than the 808/909, but everyone else stopped thinking that was a relevant question in the mid 80s.

No, they didn't. Maybe people in the genre you work in but that ain't the whole world, pal. In fact, can you name any drum machine produced after the 909 that didn't use sampled drums? No, you can't, unless you cite products from this Century or little toy drum machines. From the mid 80s to the 2000's, every new drum machine of note used sampled drums, so how can you possibly suggest nobody was interested? Clearly that's what people wanted. The Linns and DMXs wer emostly replaced with lower cost, lighter weight machines like the Alesis HR-16, which was a very, very common sight on stages in the '90s.

we can have a great plugin for acoustic-sounding drums, and a totally different one for beats.

What do you make with acoustic drums, if not "beats"? I f**king hate that usage.

I doubt anyone since 1986 has ever used an 808 and said to themselves “gee, I wish this sounded more like real drums”.

Only because they had a Linn, DMX or a sampler to do that for them.

There are entire documentaries made about the 808 alone and its influence on music. Maybe you hate House, Electro and Hip Hop - it doesn’t matter. The machines’ influence on pop music is a matter of fact, not opinion on what floats your boat.

The thing is, those genres represeent about 10% of music, they aren't any indication of what actually gets used the most. How many Les Pauls, or Les Paul knock-offs, do you think there are in the world for every 808 or 808 clone? Your "world" is a tiny little bubble that means nothing to most of us.

I’m just astonished to be having this discussion on a forum in 2022. Of course you are perfectly entitled to hate the sounds of these machines and the genres they spawned… but you Do know they’re not being used to try and sound like real drums, right?

That's not the discussion we're having. You're trying to suggest that the entire world thinks the way you do but your experience is far, far narrower than the view I'm presenting. Think about the question I asked, re drum machines of the late 80s and 90s, and you might start to see the bigger picture.

If there had been a market for 808/909 style drum machines at that time, everyone would have been making them but no-one did. Look at Roland, they made the 909 as a replacement for the 808 for a couple of years and that was it, no attempt to repalce it at all. OTOH, the sample-based TR 707 that came out a year after the 909 got a second gen 727 model to replace it, because that's the kind of drum machines that people wanted. The 808/909 only got used later on when people were pretty much giving them away because no-one was willng to pay money for them. I had the same experience trying to unload my two TB 303s - I got $100 for one and ended up giving the other one away, despte having spent $500, which at the time was a full week's worth of my pre-tax salary as a captain, getting them modified with four times their original sequencer memory. 808, 909, 303 - they were all doorstops in 1987.

Yeah, that’s it exactly. I think most of us went through something like that.

I sure as hell didn't. My first drum machine was a TR-606, which I replaced with a Korg KPR-77 (more memory, easier to work with). Before I ever played a gig, I'd bought a TR-707, which I augmented with a Korg DDM220. Later on I got a Korg DDD-1, then a DDD-5 and, eventaully, a Korg S3, before giving up on drum machines and using the drums in my Korg workstations. To this day I still hate those cheesy f**king organ accompaniment synth drum sounds. They make my skin crawl.

[jamcat]

we can have a great plugin for acoustic-sounding drums, and a totally different one for beats.

What do you make with acoustic drums, if not "beats"? I f**king hate that usage.

See, we’re starting to agree more already!

To this day I still hate those cheesy f**king organ accompaniment synth drum sounds. They make my skin crawl.

That’s right! Drum machines started life in the 1960s, built into those cheesy electric organs that people’s grandmothers played. The sounds in the KORG Mini Pops, Roland CR-78, and TR-808 all were identical to your grandma’s organ. Take that however you want.

[zerocrossing]

we can have a great plugin for acoustic-sounding drums, and a totally different one for beats.

What do you make with acoustic drums, if not "beats"? I f**king hate that usage.

See, we’re starting to agree more already!

To this day I still hate those cheesy f**king organ accompaniment synth drum sounds. They make my skin crawl.

That’s right! Drum machines started life in the 1960s, built into those cheesy electric organs that people’s grandmothers played. The sounds in the KORG Mini Pops, Roland CR-78, and TR-808 all were identical to your grandma’s organ. Take that however you want.

Do you think he’s mad because he sucks at the organ?

[noiseboyuk]

BONES - oh good Lord.

There’s nothing duller than having a thread turn into two men (I’m taking a wild guess here, forgive) endlessly quoting one other in an argument. I suppose I added a little sparkle when I misquoted…

Thing is, I DO find this time-warp obsession fascinating because of what it says about the history of music-making, and your last contained some particularly shameless cherry-picking, so I’ll drop the quotes - anyone can check back - and take a look at this fascinating (to me) history.

You’re right that digital dominated drum machines from the early 80s onwards. Right about from the time when it got cheaper to do so. Sampling technology became ubiquitous as it quickly leapt from 8 to 12 to 16 bits. Then you could sample any sound - Roland quickly caught on that the sound of their analogue machines was ragingly popular, so they simply sampled them and threw them on a chip. No-one cared if your 909 snare was pure from a 909 or sampled. Everyone happy. (Caveat - if yours was sampled, you’d need to do some tricks to mimic the tone generation sweeps, mind)

As you well know, all those “worthless” analogue machines turned into gold by the end of the 80s. This is something I’m very much not proud of, but I bought a 909 from a colleague somewhere around 1989. He hadn’t been following trends in music, and felt his 909 had been superseded and wasn’t worth anything. I bought it, sold it, and made a fortune. I couldn’t look him in the eye after that. What can I say… I was young, I needed the money.

Sheesh. Sorry John.

The history of the synth is the same as with drums as people have hinted in this thread. Manufacturers thought they wanted electronic versions of flutes, violins and guitars. People thought orchestras would go out of business on sounds we think laughable now. Then the pioneers realised we’d all missed the point - synthesis was about sounding different and new.

Electronic drums are exactly the same.

This is the difference between drums and beats (a valuable distinction). With drums, it’s either real drums played by a real drummer or virtual drums designed to sound real. With beats, all bets are off, anything goes. The drum machine - as we’ve seen - is one part of that evolution, breakbeats are the other. Initially it was phenomenally skilled DJs repeating the same short phrase on 2 records and switching between them, soon it was usurped by the sampler. Then it further evolved to be mangled - sped up or slowed down so it no longer sounded real, but that sonic imprint was a huge influence on records or entire genres (Jungle, Drum n Bass).

And we’re now back to that central disagreement between us, because I understand that no music fan cares about beats not sounding like real drums. They like the sound for what it is, in fact embrace it for that - be that Oxygene Part IV, Vogue, Firestarter or Bad Guy.

Needless to say there’s been every variation on the drums / beats continuum. It’s a playground, no rules - most specifically no rules about having to sound real. (Edit - unless you want to sound real, obvs).

As I said before, you can dislike all of this. You can keep using a Linn or Linn samples to try and sound like a real drummer - whatever floats your boat. But to fail to understand what has happened to popular music over the past 50 years and get us into the landscape we are today in a place like KVR seems… well. Odd.

[vurt]

the problem with acoustic drum samples, is most people don't program them, in a way a drummer would play, and the result is often "a bit shit".

drummers aren't robots! they have flow, groove, life in the playing.

you can afford to be as rigid as you need to be, for certain genres, without sounding like arse, if you use synthetic drums. as there's no uncanniness to it.

now, of course, sometimes, being a little uncanny is the goal. but as a general rule, if you want acoustic drums, think like a drummer, please!!!!!

[noiseboyuk]

vurt - yes indeed. I'll confess I love Toontrack's grooves because they are played by real drummers. I use Tap2Find where I can play a rubbish version of what I'm after, and it can then find real grooves that are a close match. Bandmate is another way to go, but Tap2Find is all I need. Then I figure out all the variations, fills etc.

Of course you need multisamples too, not much good just having a single snare and a hi-hat sample. You also need to have a multi-mic'd kit ideally, controllable bleed, snare rattles etc. I know Toontrack isn't the only good game in town for all that, but it's the one I know.

This is one reason why it's useful to distinguish drums from beats. They are totally different workflows and tools really.

[Ah_Dziz]

Modelling the behavior of analog components with a digital system is very possible. You should play with some SPICE circuit modeling software. Then there's livespice which is designed for audio processing. Anyway these things aren't very CPU friendly for semi real-time use so most developers will "simplify" components to different extents.

I personally enjoy digital gear more than analog gear for almost every situation. They are different but I don't buy that one is better than the other in any empirical way. I only bother with analog anything when it comes to microphones and preamps.

[jamcat]

the problem with acoustic drum samples, is most people don't program them, in a way a drummer would play, and the result is often "a bit shit".

drummers aren't robots! they have flow, groove, life in the playing.

This.

Too many 10-armed robots playing drums out there. Plus, no dynamics, no variation. It's like they bang out a 2-bar beat at 127 velocity on 100% quantise and they think their job is done. The worst part of it is this has become the new normal. Nuance and detail is so uncool, man.

This is among the top 5 reasons why 99% of contemporary music sucks.

[vurt]

and im not saying i can do it, i can't, even with those jamstix type "drummers" i don't have the mindset.
so i tend to avoid using acoustic drums, aside from cymbals, because you can have a lot of fun morphing them, but then i don't really do "music" in the usual sense
when i did more conventional (death metal) in bands i was a guitarist.

synths, as noiseboy says, can do so much more than "be the old musical instrument sound replacement" even if they are good at that, there's a whole multiverse beyond what went before the invention of the synth, and yes, even moreso now with first, digital hardware, and now plug ins.
and that is where i find the most satisfaction, just exploring what one set of components can do, then repatching the rack and going through the endless process of wandering alone in a world of sound

[jamcat]

This is something I’m very much not proud of, but I bought a 909 from a colleague somewhere around 1989.

Well then, you're way too old to be making "beats." You ought to be writing proper symphonies by now.