Software vs Hardware

[El°HYM]

Me once was in a knitting forum and they told me my nodes werent as good.

[SamDi]

aggression everywhere

Yeah, it‘s as if people have no problems anymore and they need to seek for creating one to put negative energy on. Or maybe the other way around, that they are full of problems and defending a silly opinion is the only way for letting of steam.

[dionenoid]

i recently started getting in to bird watching, had a couple of interesting (to me) spots, so thought ill get a nice camera...

Did your bird agree with you watching birds ?

[pdxindy]

Do you ever use it just as an analog synth for bass or leads? Seems to me possibilities can go beyond just a analog drum machine?

Oh yeah, I do. You can play chromatically, either from the pads, or a midi controller. The Rytm makes lovely raw basses. Also some nice leads and gorgeous atmospheres of a more gritty/noisy type. It's an exceptional synth/machine for ambient compositions with a subtle rhythmic foundation.

[BONES]

Workflow seems intuitive but something to learn for sure.

You do understand that it can't be both, right? If you have to learn it, then it's not intuitive. My Analog Keys was the most unintuitive thing I've owned since the DX-9 I bought in 1983. I got it in 2017 and I have literally never found a use for it in anything. It sounds great, I suppose, but so do dozens of my softsynths and they are so much easier to work with. I haven't even used it on stage, which is what I bought it for. It turned out to be way more effort than it was worth. I even took a 4 day holiday to a quiet country hotel so I could spend some time with it but that didn't really help much. I'd have needed a month. It was a complete waste of time and money and nobody wants to buy it now (it's been for sale for more than a year).

Yeah, it‘s as if people have no problems anymore and they need to seek for creating one to put negative energy on.

Or maybe they can see the world for what it is and it frustrates them that the rest of you don't? That as long as your lives are OK, then it doesn't matter what else is going on in the world.

That said, I don't see aggression around here, just people with a bit of passion for what they do. I find that infinitely preferable.

[Funky40]

You do understand that it can't be both, right? If you have to learn it, then it's not intuitive.

i see where it´s coming from. Nevertheless: that´s bull.

i AM in that very boat: i want to be able to deal with gear just by intuition. Even with cmpletly new ones. But some stuff has a certain amount of complexity. And some stuff just has functions you NEED to learn. Period

Looking closer to it:
The point is not if you have to learn something. The point is: "is it logic how it´s donne ?"


and there is something other, and that´s a fact:
As an advanced user would you -often enough- create the access to functions differently than as a beginner............(Beginner ->) to that specific piece of gear".


edit: the latter is a point, and can complicate things, .......and these views and ratings anyway.

[BONES]

Same thing. If there's logic to it, you can work it out for yourself as you go, you don't need to learn it. I did exactly that very recently with Flow Motion. I didn't have to learn anything, per se, I just had to get used to the way they had implemented FM, which was entirely logical, and therefore intuitive, even though it was quite novel. As soon as you have to consult a manual or look up help, it has failed the intuitive test and becomes something you have to learn. Of course, as your knowledge and understanding of synth techniques grows, so does the range of things you will find intuitive, making it a relative, not absolute, measure. So what feels intuitive to you may be something I have to spend some time learning, and vice versa.

To answer your question - no, I don't think I approach synths differently now compared to when I was starting out, except that I have a lot more confidence about the whole thing now than I'd have had back then. Also, synths now have presets to help sell them to you, a luxury I didn't have back when I was starting out. But after I've tried a few presets, I still try out the raw oscillator sound, then play around with the filter to get a feel for how it works/sounds, just like I did before buying a brand spanking new Korg Mono/Poly in 1982 or deciding not to by a used MiniMoog in 1983.

[SoftSynthLover99]

Workflow seems intuitive but something to learn for sure.

You do understand that it can't be both, right? If you have to learn it, then it's not intuitive.

Umm no it can be both. For example playing guitar has always been super easy/intuitive for me since I was maybe 3-4 years old. It just made sense and I clicked with it right away. However I still had to learn and develop the skill and muscle memory and everything else that comes with being a guitar player.

So with the Analog Rhytm yes it is intuitive for me. However I understand that it is capable of A LOT and you can go deep with it beyond just a drum machine/sequencer. So to use it to full capacity yes learning is apart of the process of using it or any instrument.

Intuitive: easy to use and understand.
Learn: gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught.

[SoftSynthLover99]

Do you ever use it just as an analog synth for bass or leads? Seems to me possibilities can go beyond just a analog drum machine?

Oh yeah, I do. You can play chromatically, either from the pads, or a midi controller. The Rytm makes lovely raw basses. Also some nice leads and gorgeous atmospheres of a more gritty/noisy type. It's an exceptional synth/machine for ambient compositions with a subtle rhythmic foundation.

Yep been exploring that side of it and really impressed! It truly is an instrument and beyond just a drum machine/sequencer. Exactly that kind of machine I hoped it would be

[BONES]

Umm no it can be both. For example playing guitar has always been super easy/intuitive for me since I was maybe 3-4 years old. It just made sense and I clicked with it right away. However I still had to learn and develop the skill and muscle memory and everything else that comes with being a guitar player.

As you say yourself, that's not learning the instrument, that's learning the skills that go with it. One of the big attractions of electronic music is that little or no skill is required, it's mostly about knowledge. Elektron's sequencer is like a Reverse Polish Notation calculator from the 1970s - intuitive once you learn it and understand how it works, not intuitive from the first time you pick it up.

[Funky40]

Same thing. If there's logic to it, you can work it out for yourself as you go, you don't need to learn it. I did exactly that very recently with Flow Motion.

ok, i was refering in my statement to gear in general.
Take the octatrack........i had much that one in mind doing my post.
While you talked "here" about synths only it seems.

Synths ?
take zebralette 3.
and my statement still stands

"the requirement to *have* to learn something is not -in general- opposite to the aspect of something beeing intuitiv.

More posts have happen in this thread. You are refering yourself to elektrons there.
With Synths ?....i know what you mean and i agree !...mostly

BUT: now again: take Zebralette 3
What´s the catch there ?
It IS something new.
Our old experiences won´t just apply automatically.

[BONES]

Yeah, things like the Octatrack I simply wouldn't bother with, much as I never bothered with the sequencer in my Analog Keys. I've never so much as looked at Zebralette before (or Zebra) but having a quick look at the GUI just now, it seems straightforward enough. It doesn't look too terribly different to DS_Thorn or the Spectral synths I made in SynthEdit 15+ years ago. I never bothered to learn anything specifically to use be able to use those synths, I don't see that I'd have any more trouble with Zebralette. It's definitely something you could do, read the manual front to back and learn every little nook and cranny, I just don't believe it is necessary in order to get what you want from it.

At the end of the day, it's not a technical exercise, it's a creative one, so precision is usually not desirable. Stumbling blindly tends to lead to way more creative outcomes than crafting with precision. The latter is needed towards the end of the production process - to perfect your mix and do your mastering - but the former will get you 95% of the way there far more effectively.

I just want to load up an instrument and get to work with it, to see what it's capable of. If I can muddle through on my own, that makes it intuitive but if I have to make time to read the manual, it's not and most of the time I won't bother with it. There are exceptions - e.g. I read the manual for Korg's ARP 2600 plugin because it's sounds so unbelievably good but the GUI was quite intimidating - but that turned out to be a matter of confidence rather than knowledge, because it was actually a piece of cake.

[Teksonik]

Me once was in a knitting forum and they told me my nodes werent as good.

I was in a knitting group once but I had to leave. They kept needling me.

[dlandis]

Me once was in a knitting forum and they told me my nodes werent as good.

I was in a knitting group once but I had to leave. They kept needling me.

Ouch.

[Daru925]

Me once was in a knitting forum and they told me my nodes werent as good.

I was in a knitting group once but I had to leave. They kept needling me.

The thread was about softwool VS hardwool.
You can layer that with a softshell or hardshell if you go hiking, but some people prefer synthetic as it retains less analog sweat. But it's not as warm and tend to smell digital.