Sad state of Native Instruments

[BBFG#]

Guess someone needs to create another poll of generational demographics to end that speculation.

[IvyBirds]

The cut off for Gen X is 1965, it used to be earlier, but it changed and a lot of my friends became boomers overnight. I would bet most of KVR are boomers, with the second crowd being early Gen X like me.

My guess is that the bulk of people here are Gen X who were teenagers during the 1980s when Synths really took off

We grew up in the era of programming Basic then dealing with DOS, we were amazed at the early GUI of the Mac and Windows 3.1

We used Akai Samplers, DX7s, D50s, JV1080s and a host of other Synths with tiny screens and insane menu diving

As such we can tolerate a lot when it comes to bad GUI choices and work around

Younger adults like my children who are now in their late 20s despise such things. They just want to turn something on and have it work. It's not they don't know how to do those things or couldn't figure it out. They just don't want to

That's the rift in my experience

My Dad who is a boomer and a was a major hippie and played keys in all kinds of rock bands can't stand using computers for music, but he owns a Minimoog Reissue and will sit down and tweak the hell out of those knobs

[martinjuenke]

Someone should change the thread title to:
SAD STATE OF BOOMER GENERATION
Just sayin'...

[egbert101]

Someone should change the thread title to:
SAD STATE OF BOOMER GENERATION
Just sayin'...

[sjm]

In my millennial experience, Gen Z are barely better than Boomers at computers. GenZ (and particularly Gen Alpha) largely grow up on mobile devices and dumbed down operating systems. And boomers grew up on lead poisoning. I remember I was f**king around in QuickBasic at age 8, meanwhile my 8 year-old nephew doesn't know how to use a mouse or keyboard, but is glued to a tablet all day long.

Similar experience here, though the older ones are way more savvy than the younger ones. We were talking about this at work only recently. My colleague was complaining about her 18 year old daughter. She'd wanted mum to set up her email on her phone/tablet for her. Not asking mum for help doing so, or asking how to do it, simply expecting to be handed a device with everything already set up and working. My colleague was of the opinion that she should be able to figure out how to do that on her own, just like mum was forced to back in the day. AFAIK, she's still not got her email set up.

I see it online a lot, where much of the younger crowd (below 20 or so) are absolutely clueless about the inner workings of a computer. My parents, who are most definitely boomers, are a lot more computer savvy. OK, my dad was a computer programmer, so it's maybe not a 100% fair comparison, but my mum only got into computers in the 90s. Even if she doesn't know how to do something, she does know how to use the internet to search for the answer; another skillset that seems to be dying. The Discord server I'm in has the unofficial tagline "Where people come to ask others to Google for them". Those people are invariably teens.

I know that all the teens capable of figuring these things out themselves fly under the radar. It's not like they don't exist (my nephew is 12 and great with computers). I think you're right that kids don't feel the same need to understand how this tech works because its mundane and everyday to them. Most of the kinks had been ironed out, the user experience is much better than in the 80s/90s. They view these devices as ubiquitous run-of-the-mill tech like we viewed a telephone (landline), television or radio. It's not like most of us actually know how half the tech in our household actually works - how many Gen Xers really know how to fix a tube TV, fridge, rotary phone or radio?

Sorry for the off topic tangent. NI may be in a sad state, but so are the yoof of today. Someone has to say it. As an old(ish) man yelling at clouds, you can be certain that I know what I am on about.

[Vince]

Sorry for the off topic tangent. NI may be in a sad state, but so are the yoof of today. Someone has to say it. As an old(ish) man yelling at clouds, you can be certain that I know what I am on about.

Let's go on drifting off topic : I'm born in 71 here, got my first computer when I was 11 ... it was an Sharp MZ-80A
( in case you're curious )


Making music on that thing was a waterfall of beeeps and beeeps ...
And yes, it was real music programming ( I also have a master in IT, so my mind was familliar with computer logic ).

As a father, I am trying ( hard, VERY hard but in a caring way, still ) to teach my 10 years old son to dare configure things on his own, experience frustration, etc, etc

And of course, to program his own sounds on the synths, and right now, he's learning the TAL TAL-U-NO-LX and he knows that practice makes perfect. He's also learning classical piano ( level 5 at his age ) though he prefers rock, metal and pop ... and why does he do it ? simple : he wants to be highly technical in his play.

As a summary of my opinion, I think that a part of the kids/musicians that want to still be in control of everything, they will go on learning how to program synths, learn how to play REAL instruments, learn music theory, experiment with harmonies ( outside the realm of a computer where everything has to be coded to exist ), play instruments that dont require electricity, etc

The others will call themselves "musician geniuses" simply by pushing "play" on an AI driven device ... but at the end of the day, I believe that only real musicians will survive, remain and will be appreciated.

The first group will create, the second group will use ... and with NI releasing more and more samples library, guess which group will buy their product ?

Cheers !

[Introspective]

Guess someone needs to create another poll of generational demographics to end that speculation.

Pffft. Only BOOMERS actually respond to polls.

[audiojunkie]

I thought it was mostly GenX here, ie middle aged not old aged

We actually are GenX majority here, but that doesn't stop us from yelling at clouds!

[audiojunkie]

The cut off for Gen X is 1965, it used to be earlier, but it changed and a lot of my friends became boomers overnight. I would bet most of KVR are boomers, with the second crowd being early Gen X like me.

My guess is that the bulk of people here are Gen X who were teenagers during the 1980s when Synths really took off

We grew up in the era of programming Basic then dealing with DOS, we were amazed at the early GUI of the Mac and Windows 3.1

We used Akai Samplers, DX7s, D50s, JV1080s and a host of other Synths with tiny screens and insane menu diving

As such we can tolerate a lot when it comes to bad GUI choices and work around

Younger adults like my children who are now in their late 20s despise such things. They just want to turn something on and have it work. It's not they don't know how to do those things or couldn't figure it out. They just don't want to

That's the rift in my experience

My Dad who is a boomer and a was a major hippie and played keys in all kinds of rock bands can't stand using computers for music, but he owns a Minimoog Reissue and will sit down and tweak the hell out of those knobs

Yep, I'd say this is pretty accurate. I started on Commodore Pets and TRS-80s that others owned, and then I got my own computer: a Commodore Vic-20 with a whopping 3.5k memory, 8 colors and basic sound. I typed in every program I had for it. Eventually I got a data cassette and was able to save programs and recall them. I dabbled with linux in the 90s, started using Linux regularly in the 2000s, and moved my audio work over from Windows to Linux in the 2010s. My kids just use tablets. Their school just has them using tablets. I don't even know if there is a computer lab in their school. I'd say that the assessment is spot on and Generation Z may be struggling with computers in the future.

[BBFG#]

Guess someone needs to create another poll of generational demographics to end that speculation.

Pffft. Only BOOMERS actually respond to polls.

It's actually been proven that Millennials and GenZ's respond in multiples, which means you have divide that number by three, whereas only one half of Boomers respond so you have to double that number. GenX is the "can't be bothered" group. They used to also be called the disaffected generation perfecting the flat affect persona.

[Gribs]

I am early Gen-X, born in 1965. Not a boomer

I learned to program in BASIC in high school on a teletype and stored my programs on 8-bit paper punch tape. My teacher had us do one project in punch cards because they were going away and she wanted us to experience doing it as a historical lesson.

[ROTMetro]

Gen X were latch key kids, with no internet, per minute charge for phone calls (so you couldn't just call friends to bs and waste time), MAYBE if you were lucky cable tv. What else were we going to do? We fiddled with whatever junk we had no matter how bad/frustrating the experience (I'm talking about you DX7). But we also got to learn everything from the beginning, with small bites at a time with incremental improvements. To younger people these days, trying to learn 50 years of incremental improvements in tech, in music tools, in phones, etc, it's just a metric ton of stuff to 'just pick up'. Think about the car you learned to drive in, how many distractions it had, how much crap was trying for your attention? Now think about the distractions thrown at you just operating a new car for the first time.

Boomers were raised with 'tech' items mainly being things like farm equipment, or really really expensive items without real user interfaces (furnaces, etc) stuff where if you 'just fiddled with it' you could die or cause a ton of $$$ in expense to get it back to working. Hence their hesitance to just 'fiddle with it' if they didn't understand it. But give them a carburetor and they can tune the heck out of it, while if you give it to me and all I'm gonna do is make it run too rich and too lean at the same time somehow.

For younger people it's just way too much stuff to learn all at once so you we up with things like them just using their phone's web browser to get to their email or a simplified VST GUI where they can actually start creating something that sounds good and is fun right away, or less interest in learning to drive. Way too much crap is being thrown at them in every situation where as we had decades of it slowly being thrown at us.

Face it, the world was designed for Gen-X. Not because we're better, just because we got to eat all the elephants one bite at a time, not whole, in every interaction, with everything, all at once.

[Gribs]

I get to see gen-Z through my own kids, their friends, and younger interns and people right out of college at work (I work in hardware engineering at a FAANG). There are many tinkerers out there who spend their time making things and coding. In my former state of Minnesota, there were more high school first robotics (real robots not Lego or whatever) teams than hockey teams in the state, which I thought was remarkable when I first learned the statistic. Engineering schools have all sorts of cool clubs where students learn as much or more than they do in classes. I have been trying to convince my youngest to join Girls who Code, but she is more interested in biology and medical stuff. She is a straight A student, but as a dad you can’t force kids to do things outside their interests. She would rather dig around for blue centipedes and catalog bones left in thickets in our field by local predators (coyotes) .

[machinesworking]

Someone says "zoomers" and people lose their shit. Funny.

Mostly because framing younger generations as technologically challenged is about as out of touch boomer yelling at clouds as it gets, and let's face it, KVR is mostly boomer at this point.

In my millennial experience, Gen Z are barely better than Boomers at computers. GenZ (and particularly Gen Alpha) largely grow up on mobile devices and dumbed down operating systems. And boomers grew up on lead poisoning. I remember I was f**king around in QuickBasic at age 8, meanwhile my 8 year-old nephew doesn't know how to use a mouse or keyboard, but is glued to a tablet all day long.

Obviously there are exceptions, but I think being computer-savvy is a skill that was needed a lot more when computers were a lot harder to use, and when there weren't really any alternatives like tablets. And some people really leaned into the "power user" aspect as a hobby as well, which seems to be a dying breed.

Here's the part you're missing, when we were kids hardly any of us were that interested in computers, it was just the people who would bother to learn how to get around the entire OS and maybe to code. These days everyone has a cell phone etc. The percentage of nerds, jocks, preps and other categories of essentially human interest and/or the caste system of society hasn't changed much. What most of you are pointing out is that kids who normally wouldn't have bothered with computers in 1979 are now glued to cell phones, and somehow equating that with the normal percentage of kids who are math nerds, music geeks, graphics or film buffs who would at this point all gravitate towards computers and be at least competent on them.

Plus, even with cell phones your average 17 year old is far more capable than your average 65 year old let alone 75 year old. That there's push back on that is weird.

[egbert101]

There are definite differences between generations, and I definitely see a decline, socially, psychologically, politically, rationally, but I'm not going to dwell on the point.