Dune 3 Genetics - why is nobody talking about it? (including Synapse Audio!)

[seafire]

At the risk of sounding stuck in the past, this shit is insulting to those of us who enjoy the craft and have put in the time.

You could just ignore it, especially if it upsets you that much.

Did you build all your own instruments from scratch?

[HOTF]

There is also the new hybridize feature in Serum2 that is similar to this.

[Teksonik]

Why would you get sh** for that comment?

Because this is KVR and anything can get you shit no matter how logical or intelligent it may be

Did you build all your own instruments from scratch?

That's a weak and tired old argument that is utterly irrelevant to the discussion of whether it's better to learn your instrument than it is to push a button and expect a "happy accident".

Learning your instrument promotes artistic growth and your own unique style, pushing a button just promotes dependence and a sameness that is too often found in today's music.

But you're right the Genetics can simply be ignored by those who wish to hone their craft and it's there for those who are too lazy to do so.

There, that should generate the predictable shit and I could not possibly care less......

[Stokely]

As a preset tweaker, I like the idea of Genetics. I've built patches from scratch, on hardware and soft, and the main reason I don't do it more is that I often don't have an idea of what I want until I hear it Ymmv. I've got other hills I die on, we all do--tracks being used live is mine. Worrying and complaining about it however is just a waste of time, other people are going to do what they do.

That said, I got Legend HZ and so far I haven't really been blown away by the Genetics creating anything all that useful. Not that I've used it all that much.

[midi sentinel]

I like the term "patch breeding" for this kind of feature

Yes I understand that learning how to program synth patches yourself is really worth it. But I also found it interesting to breed / generate patches and just curate them (with some minor adjustment) into a soundset. My problem is, when I create patches from scratch, I tend to fall into similar patterns. Starting with random starting points can bring you into directions you wouldn't have gone naturally.

Here's a soundset I created with patch breeding / randomization. Did not really spend much time, maybe 1 day total incl. creating the demo track:

I totally get the dilemma of falling into similar patterns any why some of these tools fill that niche.

My problem with it, though, is that its being offered to us in such a way that doesnt suggest it as a diversion from our own tendancies but rather as a quick way to write/finish/release a trendy piece of music. "You wanna be a youtube Trap producer and cook up some fire beats in the style of Drake? This plugin is just 1 button, no keys, no piano roll, no ADSR. All you need to do is generate, throw a pRoDuCeR TaG on it, then start learning about the music biz"

At the risk of sounding stuck in the past, this shit is insulting to those of us who enjoy the craft and have put in the time. The silver lining however is that people who sre just hopping on a band wagon will never be a competitive threat to those of us who put our soul into this.

Like those pre generated samples. I would never discourage someone doing music, would never trample on someones dreams, but those patches are to my oatches as christian rock is to pink floyd.

This is, by far the dumbest shit I have ever read on KVR. And I used to read BONES' posts, so that's quite an achievement.

A question - did you also use x86 assembly to build your own C compiler, with which you later built your own OS, in which you built a browser that you then used to post that nonsense here and let us know that something irrelevant offended you? I mean, if you didn't, you are just like a Christian rock backup singer.

What a snowflake.

[seafire]

That said, I got Legend HZ and so far I haven't really been blown away by the Genetics creating anything all that useful.

You need decent stock as a starting point. Unfortunately, the factory sounds fall short.

[Fannon]

I don't get why this discussion went so quickly to "you should built everything from scratch".

It's also not like random / genetics tool give you only good results. You have to curate it and hear / discover the potential in some results - and then you can see them more like starting points, from where you further refine the sound into what it could be.

At least my problem is: If I always start from scratch, I tend to fall toward same / similar patterns all to easily. Having something randomly generated will go into directions you might not naturally have explored at all. With the u-he preset randomizer I got some quite interesting results, I probably would not have gone to myself.

[seafire]

It's not really random, it mixes 2 or 3 presets. If the originals are your own, it's a good way to get variations quickly.

Synths that have a randomizer button work differently.

[IvyBirds]

I am close to 60 years old, for my entire lifetime people have been arguing that this musical creation tool or that tool was going to be the end of "real musicians"

In the 1960s and 1970s it was Synths, in the early 1980s it was the Fairlight CMI, then it was MIDI and sequencers, then it was affordable multitrack recorders like the Tascam PortaStudio, then it was affordable samplers, then it was DAWs, then it was plugins, today it's AI and machine learning tools

All of it has been proclaimed to be the death of real musicians yet the cream always rises to the top while the sludge sinks to the bottom

Patch randomization tools and things like "genetics" are a handy tool. As someone who considers himself to be a pretty decent synth programmer I like to use them as init patches as those tools start me off in a direction that I probably wouldn't have headed towards

[BONES]

The reason I say that even Synapse Audio doesn't seem to be talking about it, is because the word 'genetics' doesn't even appear on the Dune 3 product page

Probably because Genetics was originally in Orion about 20 years ago, so it's nothing particularly new or exciting for Synapse. Rich probably doesn't think it's that big a deal.

Not learning how to program your synths is like not learning how to tune your guitar or how to change strings on it without help.

Here we go again. I reckon you could teach a monkey to patch a synth, it's not really a whole lot harder than tying shoelaces. It's just time consuming because it's an iterative process. As such, it's mostly really f**king boring. I'd put it on par with doing your taxes - something most of us are more than happy to pay someone else to do so we can get on with interesting and important shit.
[quoote]How do you think those patches you use in Genetics came about? That's right, someone learned how to make them.[/quote]
Or, and I think this is far more likely if you bother to dig into factory patches for any synth, somebody used some kind of automatic process akin to Genetics to get something interesting and then just tweaked it a bit. Seriously, have a look at any complex synth, like DUNE or Spire, and see how many mod matrix lines are only semi-set-up or make absolutely no difference to the final sound and it becomes obvious that they aren't always crafted with any care or attention to detail.

[Teksonik]

I reckon you could teach a monkey to patch a synth

Well you've made patches so that does tend to confirm your assertion.

You admit Genetics are useless when even a "monkey could patch the synth"?

You're saying that anyone who needs Genetics has an intellect below that of a monkey? Jeez, all I did was call them lazy for not putting the time in to learn their instrument.

I guess if they were playing guitar they wouldn't feel the need to learn how to string it or tune it. They'd be looking for a button to do that for them too.

People are allowing the humanity to drain away from music by wanting everything done for them with the click of a button or by Artificial Intelligence. I can't imagine what artistic satisfaction one could get from having everything done for them. There is great joy in the creative process and in this day and age of 100,000 tracks being uploaded every day and A.I. filing copyright strikes even on all original music one could argue that the process of making music is more important than the music itself.

But the bottom line is I could not possibly care less what you think. I've spent countless joyful hours making patches going back many decades so your opinion of what is "boring" is utterly irrelevant outside of that tiny box you've lived in for all these years. To be trapped in an endless closed loop must be a horrible way to live life. For that I have nothing but pity for you.

[Fannon]

Probably because Genetics was originally in Orion about 20 years ago, so it's nothing particularly new or exciting for Synapse. Rich probably doesn't think it's that big a deal.

Another reason could be that "genetics" sounds like "genetic algorithm", which programmers know is something different than what Dune does. That's also why I called my own tool a "preset randomizer", even though it can merge / breed patches.

To be truly a "genetic algorithm", you would need to have a fitness function and some way to figure out if one patch is better (more fit) than the other and "apply evolution" over time. I think Synplant 2 is doing this, but its fitness function is to sound like the sample reference you gave.

[BONES]

It's "genetics" in that it randomly takes parameters from each mummy and daddy patch in the same way that actual genetics combines chromosomes from two parents. When Rich first floated the idea, 20+ years ago, calling it "Genetics" made it really easy to understand how it worked. The little graphic sort of shows what's going on, too. This shows it in DUNE's browser and also the old Orion dialog box that pops up if you access it from the Patch Name field in the Synth Toolbar. (The latter isn't available in Studio One or any other DAW, I imagine).

GENETICS.png

[BONES]

You admit Genetics are useless when even a "monkey could patch the synth"?

You're very good at cherry picking phrases and taking them out of context to help your case. It's pathetic, really. Genetics saves time, even a monkey could see that. When I was making patches for my SynthEdit synths, I'd make a dozen or so and then use Genetics, with a bit of tweaking here and there, to fill out the bank. The first dozen might take a couple of hours, the next 56 would be done in one. The best thing is that nobody would know which were which. The quality was uniformly acceptable, with the odd gem here and there, equally likely to have been made by me or using Genetics. If the quality of the result isn't the most important thing, if you won't use whichever tools help you to achieve that in the most cost and time efficient way, then you have your priorities screwed up. I want good sounds to work with whatever it is I am doing, I couldn't care less where they come from. I can't think of anything sadder than thinking that if you make it yourself, it will somehow be intrinsically better or more meaningful. If Kevin Schroeder's patches are good enough for Hans Zimmer, you'd have to be a complete mug not to think they are going to be more than good enough for your music, too, wouldn't you?

You're saying that anyone who needs Genetics has an intellect below that of a monkey?

No, I'm pretty sure that's you saying that. But you have to remember, most of us don't have monkeys to do the work for us, genetics is a decent substitute.

People are allowing the humanity to drain away from music by wanting everything done for them with the click of a button or by Artificial Intelligence.

Isn't that pretty much exactly what everyone said about Kraftwerk 50 years ago? It seems to have worked out OK for them so I see no reason why the rest of us wouldn't be fine with it today. Even Rick Beato admits, in this week's YT video, that fans of certain genres (he chose Country for his trials) aren't going to be able to distinguish music made by humans from the stuff AI is churning out today. And it's only going to get better so you can be on board with it or get left behind.

I can't imagine what artistic satisfaction one could get from having everything done for them.

You mean like being one member of a band, working with four or five other people who, collectively, do most of the work? Yeah, I don't imagine one could even comprehend what that level of interaction with another human might be like.

[IvyBirds]

You admit Genetics are useless when even a "monkey could patch the synth"?

You're very good at cherry picking phrases and taking them out of context to help your case. It's pathetic, really. Genetics saves time, even a monkey could see that. When I was making patches for my SynthEdit synths, I'd make a dozen or so and then use Genetics, with a bit of tweaking here and there, to fill out the bank. The first dozen might take a couple of hours, the next 56 would be done in one.

Sounds a bit more complex than something a monkey could do,, yet it took you several hours to make a dozen why?

You have said repeatedly that all Synths are simple and the same so why did it take you hours to make a dozen patches? You are directly conflicting yourself

I mean you say stuff like this

Explain to me where there is any real skill involved in patching a synth. I'd love to hear what's so difficult.

So if there is no skill and it's not difficult why did it take you hours to make a dozen patches? And why were you reduced to using computer assistance to make more?

I mean if your rant were correct you should have been banging at least 30 an hour with no difficulty

So explain to me why if there is not any real skill involved in patching a synth, what was so difficult for you?