Have we now reached "peak plug in"

[vurt]

Drones are not songs; they are sound.

That's your opinion. And this is mine.

I remember having a revelation when I first started listening to ambient. A lightbulb went on and I realized that the melody wasn’t in the fundamental, it was in the harmonics. A drone can absolutely be a song, of course, like all music there are good and bad songs.

melody isn't always a necessity.
i like to think of it like painting a picture of the world around me, wind doesn't have a melody so much as a texture, same with traffic noise, if its a major road, you may get a rhythm forming, on more rural roads, the occasional passing hiss.
textures! that's the word id use.

nowt wrong with new order either

[Sascha Franck]

There's still no decent drum sampler. As in being a step forward from Battery 3.

[jens]

True, but this type of thing is really going to help my tech start up which is a device that automatically closes all windows on your computers and phones and deletes all your cookies and history when you flatline.

Where to get this?

[kraster]

There's still no decent drum sampler. As in being a step forward from Battery 3.

Mdrummer?

[nanostream]

still no comb filters with bit crushed granular delay lines, so no

I'm pleased to inform you, there's always Reaktor https://www.native-instruments.com/en/r ... how/14619/

[Dirtgrain]

Someone posted this at VI-Control.
Check it out at about 26:20.

[Uncle E]

Yes, very true. I would even extend his description of primitive instruments to include simple yet insanely important synths like the TB-303 and Juno-106.

[CrystalWizard]

I couldn't make such a sweeping statement, but in my tiny subset of the "public" it does seem that most people are now into playlists. Only a small subset of that subset (mostly older friends) actually Listen to music and care who made it.

People are curating the playlists...

No, algorithms are making the playlists (spotify, etc,).
And regardless, my point is that most people i meet up with do not know who they are listening to.

Then you are meeting the wrong people.

Uh, yeah, i can qualify my statement "many" people i meet. Is it different for you? The people you meet are all listeners, they always know who they are listening to? My close friends are mostly all music people who actually put on music to listen to, but the average, every day people that i interact with are people who use music as a backdrop, basically to fill in the quiet. They put on a playlist (usually curated by an algorithm ala spotify). I wish i met more "deep" listeners.

No, we haven't reached "peaked plug in." The more popular purveyors of plug in may have peaked with the utmost emulations of older technology but the outliers are still innovating, imo.

[ghettosynth]

Then you are meeting the wrong people.

Uh, yeah, i can qualify my statement "many" people i meet. Is it different for you? The people you meet are all listeners, they always know who they are listening to? My close friends are mostly all music people who actually put on music to listen to, but the average, every day people that i interact with are people who use music as a backdrop, basically to fill in the quiet. They put on a playlist (usually curated by an algorithm ala spotify). I wish i met more "deep" listeners.

Almost everyone I know that cares to express an opinion does some of both. I like Spotify's algorithm and playlists made by other people. They do a great job of introducing me to new artists, but, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I enjoy listening to lists sometimes without any real interest in whose playing.

I happen to like bossa nova as background music for work. I will listen to one of several playlists and I really don't go out of my way to figure out who's playing. It's not really important, most of it is good, some of it I skip.

I was just today listening to a microhouse playlist, again, made by someone else, and I heard a track that was great, I brought up the app, favorited the track, and followed the artist.

Doing this a lot has made the lists that the Spotify algorithm creates for me MUCH better than Bandcamp's "human curated" artist spotlights or whatever, which are all too hip by half. Once I build up the artists that I like, then I can make my own playlists for whatever reasons.

Yes, I regularly seek out the artists that I like and I have a lot of favorite albums and artists that I play regularly on purpose. But I don't have a stick up my ass about casual listening to music for some purpose, whether that be helping me sleep, or accompanying my work, or driving, or exercise, or whatever. And no, I don't really care who's playing as long as I like what I'm hearing. If I really like something, I sometimes learn about a new artist.

[DCrown]

I like all kinds of different genres.
About 40.000 uploads on Spotify every day, I don't even have the time to listen to 40.000 tracks within one year!
Not only the plugin market is oversaturated
and has reached peak!

[zerocrossing]

Drones are not songs; they are sound.

That's your opinion. And this is mine.

I remember having a revelation when I first started listening to ambient. A lightbulb went on and I realized that the melody wasn’t in the fundamental, it was in the harmonics. A drone can absolutely be a song, of course, like all music there are good and bad songs.

melody isn't always a necessity.
i like to think of it like painting a picture of the world around me, wind doesn't have a melody so much as a texture, same with traffic noise, if its a major road, you may get a rhythm forming, on more rural roads, the occasional passing hiss.
textures! that's the word id use.

nowt wrong with new order either

Ah, but there is melody in all of that. Just not what we’re accustomed to calling melody.

[egbert101]

Drums = Bunch of Old Chairs. So true.

[jens]

I couldn't make such a sweeping statement, but in my tiny subset of the "public" it does seem that most people are now into playlists. Only a small subset of that subset (mostly older friends) actually Listen to music and care who made it.

People are curating the playlists...

No, algorithms are making the playlists (spotify, etc,).
And regardless, my point is that most people i meet up with do not know who they are listening to.

Then you are meeting the wrong people.

Uh, yeah, i can qualify my statement "many" people i meet. Is it different for you?
[...]
The people you meet are all listeners, they always know who they are listening to?

Well, probably not all of them (not that I ever asked)... but there's a lot of people who have a lot of real interest in music - and that's at least as much a professional (day job) as it is a private observation.

[dionenoid]

There's still no decent drum sampler. As in being a step forward from Battery 3.

Try your old chairs.

[CrystalWizard]

Then you are meeting the wrong people.

Uh, yeah, i can qualify my statement "many" people i meet. Is it different for you? The people you meet are all listeners, they always know who they are listening to? My close friends are mostly all music people who actually put on music to listen to, but the average, every day people that i interact with are people who use music as a backdrop, basically to fill in the quiet. They put on a playlist (usually curated by an algorithm ala spotify). I wish i met more "deep" listeners.

Almost everyone I know that cares to express an opinion does some of both. I like Spotify's algorithm and playlists made by other people. They do a great job of introducing me to new artists, but, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I enjoy listening to lists sometimes without any real interest in whose playing.

I happen to like bossa nova as background music for work. I will listen to one of several playlists and I really don't go out of my way to figure out who's playing. It's not really important, most of it is good, some of it I skip.

I was just today listening to a microhouse playlist, again, made by someone else, and I heard a track that was great, I brought up the app, favorited the track, and followed the artist.

Doing this a lot has made the lists that the Spotify algorithm creates for me MUCH better than Bandcamp's "human curated" artist spotlights or whatever, which are all too hip by half. Once I build up the artists that I like, then I can make my own playlists for whatever reasons.

Yes, I regularly seek out the artists that I like and I have a lot of favorite albums and artists that I play regularly on purpose. But I don't have a stick up my ass about casual listening to music for some purpose, whether that be helping me sleep, or accompanying my work, or driving, or exercise, or whatever. And no, I don't really care who's playing as long as I like what I'm hearing. If I really like something, I sometimes learn about a new artist.

Yes, of course, i didn't intend my comment to be meant in the extreme. Your comment puts you i the "active listener" group. I certainly have "passively" listened to a playlist, especially as you mentioned say a bossa nova (or some other style i'm not yet that familiar with) playlist (although i am still likely to look up the artist if a track really catches my attention).

jens

Well, probably not all of them (not that I ever asked)... but there's a lot of people who have a lot of real interest in music - and that's at least as much a professional (day job) as it is a private observation.

Mostly people i meet that are musicians or are involved in music production are active listeners. I have many friends and acquaintances who actively listen and btw -I am commenting on people i meet irl, not through the interwebs.
I don't ask people if they know who they are listening to, I ask who they are listening to. (and i do this because i genuinely want to know who the artist is, not because i'm curious if they know. I only even mention this because it happens so frequently.