Is there anything ground breaking on the horizon?

[ianweb123]

well....we are in the process of making a PD synth ( The M51) with 8 stage envelope like the old casio's..so that something old that new!

actually the HT used Spectrum Dynamics rather than Phase distortion, but you plug sounds interesting (don't forget to include ring mod !)

[SJ_Digriz]

Don't confuse your exploration of subtractive synthisis with "creating something new".

Yet again, you are thinking in one dimension. "New" doesn't have to mean "new sound". Why shouldn't new mean anything that takes you somwhere you hadn't thought to go before? SE did that for me a few years ago - I had never in my wildest dreams thought of making my own synth plugins. SynthMaker will allow me to take the next step down that same path, into new, unexplored territory.

The time you spend putting together the different pieces into whatever routing order you want and building it could just as easily be spent writing a patch in another synth.

I would equate it more with the time spent learning a new synth. By the time its ready to go you know it inside-out and can get straight into it. Another result is the ability to create dozens of patches in a fraction of the time, so making something in SE is a much better way to go.
Buying a synth with all the features that I wanted would have meant buying something like z3ta+ and putting up with wading through the 90% of features I don't need whenever I want to work with it. Making a synth in SE with exactly all the features I want in a synth, and nothing that gets in the way like multi-page GUI's, is an infinitely better choice.

Hey Bones, I'm not attacking you for likeing SE. I even applaud your interest in learning it and subtractive synthisis and using that as a form of patch creation. Please don't be insulted by my comments in that regard.

All I'm saying is that you won't get anywhere someone else hasn't already been. If it allows you to get to places YOU wouldn't have been then that is awesome. I also think that would be true for almost anyone who took the time to learn it. But just because something is new to YOU doesn't make it new. If you give a 1974 Gremlin to some poor kid who have never driven a car, then it will be new and exciting to him/her. However, it will still be a 1974 Gremlin. (I love car analogies)

But when someone posts about "new and exciting" I would have bet the farm that someone would bring up synths in general and SE specifically. I just see a lot of irony there.

[zvon]

There must be something really cool on the horizon...

dano

I think Rephrase is pretty amazing and certainly groundbreaking. I never tried Melodyne but it would be the only other software similar to it.

[BONES]

But just because something is new to YOU doesn't make it new.

Which is exactly the spirit in which I was responding. The guy sounded like he was bored so I suggested he try something that he hadn't tried before - making his own VSTi.

But when someone posts about "new and exciting" I would have bet the farm that someone would bring up synths in general and SE specifically. I just see a lot of irony there.

Sorry, its lost on me. Maybe because I don't feel that the medium I am working in after 25 years is stale or that I've explored more than a fraction of it. If the guy's bored, its probably because he is using the same instruments in the same way, so any kind of change of pace is likely to fire him up.
Any sound in your head is possible already so I don't see any new form of synthesis opening up anything at all. OTOH, new tools like the aforementioned LFO's have fired my imagination like nothing I've seen in a while and I'm excited at the prospect of being able to build my own synth around them [in about 2 years time, when I've got my head around SM].

[xsubn]

Well, I read about all of the thread from the start and looks like there's three general things we've learned though the original post just wanted to hear about some cool news on the music tech wire (I'll address that too):

1) Technology can spur on new ways of either approaching music creation or new sounds in a production. Experiment bizzarly without frying yourself or your gear.

You know it was magic the first time Ray Charles heard a Rhodes piano. When the DX7 hit my college music labs and I heard the sounds in my headset, it felt like getting kissed for the first time, one of those watershed moments that say, man, the sound of my music will be changed forever by this. Eventually, we compare the new sounds to old one's to describe them. (i.e. It's kinda like a B3 Organ but more bass like a miniMoog).

2) Technology limits never limit our ability to go beyond the "norm", by exploring beyond the set boundaries.

My buddy and I were faced with this when stuck using a very low-level drum machine. After 2 months he had pretty much felt we tapped the thing out. Determined not to be limited to what the norm was, we kept trying new things like sampled mp3 rips in odd places of the music, set to 240bpms and fake a slower beat so that we could get 32nd notes on a splash filler. Sometimes working with wacked gear makes you work harder and smarter. Some of the best beats we ever crafted. Used a few in my upcoming original FM game music album. Let me know what you think, by clicking the web link - pppppplease. The free mp3's are at my xSUBn site at Music.download.

New gear:
The Oasis keyboard looks kinda cool, stuff under the hood's OK too, but I never like the sequencers of workstations, just the sounds. Logic's Sculpture rocks!

And I'm developing an innovative production mix trick for sound...but that is in the works for next year.

Finally, we also learned that...

3) Gillette ownz us all. If they invent it we will buy it so that shaving isn't such a chore:

Voice Over:
At last in 3010 - The Gillette: Headmaster ZX : Just select the style of shave you want from Mr. Clean to Grizzly Adams, then insert your head into the vestibule to have it lazer shaved instantly.

"BUZZZZZZZ!"

Actor: Hey, what's all this red stuff on my face?
Voice Over : Ooops..uh..that's just,uh...moisturizer.

[xoxos]

something new for you to buy and then i can fawn and subsist and all that bullshit

[ford442]

there's another tb303 clone that sounds good to me i've been waiting on - http://www.phoscyon.d16.pl/index.php?me ... e78c4bcf45

[shamann]

something new for you to buy and then i can fawn and subsist and all that bullshit

What's really awesome about that is that now when someone asks what plugin to make music, we can tell them to go buy some Talent.

You're a beautiful individual.

[Meffy]

and then i can fawn

You fawn like whyterabbyt cute-little-fluffy-bunnies. :-D

"Lobster," hm?

[NPerez]

I'm looking forward to any new physically modeled vsti's,.,computer-based music is capable of much more than 'synth' sounds. . people should make vstis that are kinda physically modeled, but with instruments that don't really exist. it'd be a new sound, & show the true capabilities of synthesis. .of course i'll always love blips n bleeps n pads,.,.,but using real-sounding instruments appeals to me a lot more for some reason.

[Sicklecell666]

I'm still waiting on an update for CrunkBall.

[kilroy]

There really isn't anything that changes the way we look at music/sound lately though... any rumours out there??? There must be something really cool on the horizon...

Better talent, I'm hoping.

[shamann]

Better talent, I'm hoping.

[electro]

I think it is Arturia Brass.

[kilroy]

Better talent, I'm hoping.

You're right of course mate.

You know...you have to really admire xoxos. I mean, there's a bloke that carries sooo many burdens on his shoulders...so many convictions, and he still manages to crank out innovative tools that scream in the face of convention.



Blimey...he's an example to us all...gentlemen, raise yer pints.



Err, anyway...I was kind of meaning the talent *after* they get the great tools. After all, the tools don't make bad music.