Scrimmjob  - 2014-02-09
I don't think you can build something like this and not be a madman.
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Leviathant - 2014-02-09
A few years ago, my wife (mormolyke) and I followed instructions on how to make a Monome clone using a bunch of components from Mouser, an Arduino, and a few custom circuit boards & misc parts. By the time we got it all kind of working-ish, Akai had released the APC20, which effectively did everything we kind of planned to do with the monome, and more, for 0.
So when I see this guy using one ARP 2600 to make bird noises, and his second one to make 'ocean waves' - I kind of feel his crazy. While he was building this "first orchestra of synthesizers", technology blew right past him.
I'm so glad I never fell down the modular synth hole. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, nearly 50 years in the making, and his demonstration is a nonsense bassline arpeggio sequence, which is a fat sound "most people can't get". Unless you're Hans Zimmer or Trent Reznor, your expensive hobby will yield little in the way of listenable music, and when you do come up with usable timbres, you'll probably notice that the patch you set up is not all that different from the signal path on something like a Minimoog.
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Old_Zircon - 2014-02-09 Monome isn't a synth either, and the Akai controller is garbage. Trust me, I know this from experience and from a good friend who was pretty deep in Akai for the last 7 years. It's absolute garbage, as is everything they made since the MPC1000 (and even that is garbage unless you replace the operating system, they deliberately crippled it to stimulate MPC2500 sales).
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Old_Zircon - 2014-02-09 Modular synths are just a dream to use, though. They aren't convenient but they're phenomenally user friendly compared to anything with a menu. Everything is there right in front of you. If I had the space and the money I'd have one.
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Oscar Wildcat - 2014-02-09 ...but what are you going to do, lug around something that looks like the cockpit of a 747 to play some music with your friends?
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Old_Zircon - 2014-02-10 They're for synthesizer composers while stuff like the Minimoog mentioned above is for synthesizer players and even moreso for keyboardists who need synthesizer sounds.
All three things are great but they're also all different disciplines that need different sets of tools.
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Old_Zircon - 2014-02-10 This guy seems like mainly a collector though; I see this as a piece of interactive sculpture more than anything.
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Old_Zircon - 2014-02-10 Also sorry to be a dick yesterday, I was pretty beat after work and thought it came off more jokey and lighthearted than it did.
Although to be fair, holding up " Hans Zimmer or Trent Reznor" as the sole examples of people who prduece good music with modular synths (does Trent Reznor even use modulars?)... I don't know...
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Leviathant - 2014-02-10 Naw, I don't think you came across as a dick. To your points - the Akai controller's still going to last longer than what I was putting together, and is probably constructed better, ultimately. We didn't actually buy one anyway, and I think part of that was probably just sulking at having kind of wasted our time. (Building a PAIA theremax over a single Saturday afternoon was much more satisfying)
Regarding the Zimmer & Reznor bit, I was just hard pressed to come up with examples of highly successful music producers who have and use modular setups. I'm a big Meat Beat Manifesto fan, but I can count on one hand the number of people I know who would even recognize Jack Dangers by name, and even fewer would probably recognize his music. I love Cortini's SONOIO project, although that basically revolves around Buchlas. I am interested to hear who you would hold up as modular synth users who regularly release structured, melodic music with them. And yeah, Trent Reznor fell into the modular synth hole around 2004 sometime.
My monome example wasn't meant to illustrate synth quality so much as technology passing me by.
I'm aware of the benefits of physical interfaces. I don't have an amazing collection of tools, but even just between my DSI Tempest and MS2000, I've got plenty of tactile bits to play with.
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chairsforcheap - 2014-02-10 sputum nailed it exactly
what about aphex twin? he's a whore for stuff like modulars.... pantha du prince... boards of canada... there's tons of good modular bands
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Leviathant - 2014-02-10
Heh, maybe after RDJ earned enough to start assembling a modular, he stopped releasing interesting music :p I've tried listening through the Analord series a few times, and there are a few keepers amongst the pile, but nothing really like what he used to put out. Honestly, after years of bullshit interviews, I gave up trying to chase down what he used to make his albums - but in his prime, he liked to say most of the work was being done in 'custom' software and 'homemade' synthesizers - but it was all run into samplers and a computer.
As far as BoC goes, they're also pretty heavily organized around samplers, right? That's not to say that they don't use modules along the process, but when you're running everything into samplers, doesn't that kind of work against the "purity of essence" analog thing?
I've never heard of Pantha du Prince. I'm not saying ignorance is cool, and I'll check 'em out given the other names you listed.
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