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What the hell is a synthesizer ?


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This is not to call the creepy janitor because something is seriously going wrong, it's from the "Moog" film where recollecting the early beginnings of the modern synthesizer makes for fun.

 

Of course most people nowadays will think "Jarre" or something when thinking about the meaning of a electronic synthesizer, which isn't the subject of this thread, where I mean what is the role of such devices when looking at the process of music making, studio equipment and composition.

 

Seems trivial, but it's not all transparent what the meaning is for the history of music production from long before the advent of John and Jane Doe in the attic with their new stuff. If you record a voice or a guitar , it's a certain ideal you normally strive for when making a studio production, for instance bright sound, or a certain chord must stand out, or as little as possible rattle and hum, etc. For a synthesizer, what's the ideal ? Straight from the output bus of a good analog synthesizer into a HiFI stereo input, as some may know from experience, isn't bad, but not much greatness necessarily either.

 

So what sound is there supposed to come from a synthesizer in a production? A accurate square wave for measurement purposes? As many notes combined to stroke the musicians ego? Or what?

 

Theo V.

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8 hours ago, Theo Verelst said:

So what sound is there supposed to come from a synthesizer in a production? 

 

Theo V.

Music is the creation and release of tension. The synthesizer is a tool and nothing more. If the sounds succeed but the music fails, you have nothing. No different than any other instrument in that regard. 

 

I suppose one could also use a synthesizer in a non-musical way as well. Creating sounds that cause rats to go away could be useful, just for one thing... 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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21 hours ago, Theo Verelst said:

So what sound is there supposed to come from a synthesizer in a production?

Music.
 

A synth is just another instrument. Its usefulness as a musical instrument is almost entirely determined by the musician who plays it. Or programs it, which IMO is the same thing.

 

Some synths have way more sonic capabilities than an electric guitar. When electric guitars came into common use, some folks railed against them, saying that they weren't real instruments, etc. But of course, we now know that electric guitar is a real, valid, expressive instrument. Heck, I'd say it's the most expressive instrument, but I am massively biased. 🙂
 

As to "what sound is there supposed to come from a synthesizer in a production?"... I strive to get sounds that further and/or realize the composition I'm working on. If it makes the song better, then it's working. If it expresses a particular melody well, it's working. If it provides a good rhythmic or textural basis for a melody played by another instrument, then it's working.

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So a personal idea that with non-A-grade production  by some sort of hit and miss leads to recognizable synth sounds that others have pioneered long ago ?

 

It could be it's a test for acoustics, or a supreme achievement in sound volume, wide applicability, wild innovation, etc.

 

Or a design around which a whole new kind of music (not trivial reruns with slight changes) can develop...

 

T

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13 minutes ago, Theo Verelst said:

So a personal idea that with non-A-grade production  by some sort of hit and miss leads to recognizable synth sounds that others have pioneered long ago ?

 

It could be it's a test for acoustics, or a supreme achievement in sound volume, wide applicability, wild innovation, etc.

 

Or a design around which a whole new kind of music (not trivial reruns with slight changes) can develop...

 

T

You can do many things with a synthesizer (see my first post above regarding scaring rats away). 

Music itself is difficult if not impossible to define and whether or not humans enjoy it is equally elusive. 

 

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” ~ Frank Zappa

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The whole point of the Synthesizer was to create musically sounds that could not be created with traditional instruments. 
 

So if you really need an answer to that question, it’s: 

 

Synthesizers are supposed to produce musically useful sounds that cannot be created by acoustic instruments. 

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Its the second-best musical instrument to give to the children of someone with whom you are arguing. The first is a drum, of course.

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 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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13 minutes ago, David Emm said:

Its the second-best musical instrument to give to the children of someone with whom you are arguing. The first is a drum, of course.

It's hard to beat a kazoo, bang for the buck and completely obnoxious. 

A synth would be an evil "gift" though...

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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On 10/29/2022 at 2:36 PM, David Emm said:

Its the second-best musical instrument to give to the children of someone with whom you are arguing. The first is a drum, of course.

Where do bagpipes and cowbells fit in on this list of yours?

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1 hour ago, KenElevenShadows said:

Where do bagpipes and cowbells fit in on this list of yours?

 

Bagpipes come in 4th, but any child who can play them is a gifted musical mutant. I personally like the sound. I got to meet the lead piper of the Black Watch and asked him why he chose the bagpipes rather than, say, a piano. He replied "They're the instrument of me heart and besides, I can't very well carry a piano under me arm now, can I?" :laugh:

 

Coming in at 3rd, the der-der, otherwise known as a toilet paper roll. The little bastards will "play" those demon tubes until their vile spittle disintegrates them. :barf:

 

A sample of screaming toddlers should be on the list, but they're not really an instrument.

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 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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To me, a synthesizer is the equivalent of a Meccano/Erector set for sound. You're given the raw materials to create sound, and the rest is up to you.

 

When I first started playing with synthesizers (a Moog Series III at a college I didn't attend), I was struck by how easily you could create sonic profiles that sounded like "world" instruments. Being able to group oscillators to create drones, and do the wild kind of pitch bends you can do on veenas and such, really appealed to me.

 

At the time, there was much interest in using synthesizers to emulate "real" instruments (e.g., string patches), but people like Bernie Krause, Paul Beaver, Morton Subotnick, etc. explored more non-traditional sounds. Then you had people like Jan Hammer doing a hybrid of the familiar (guitar thinking) with unfamiliar sounds.

 

So really, a synthesizer is nothing until a human decides what to do with it :)

 

 

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A synthesizer has funny noise generators that are fed through filters. You can twist these filters to change them and BZZZZZZWWWWWAAAARRRRRRWWWWWWWWWW!!!

 

synth-farts-burps-header-1024x683.png

 

 

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On 10/31/2022 at 3:09 PM, David Emm said:

 

 

A sample of screaming toddlers should be on the list, but they're not really an instrument.

 

Hmmmm.

 

If screaming toddler sounds are loaded into a sampler, does that make them sounds on an instrument?

 

If someone is skilled enough, can they make it so a series of screaming toddlers create pitches that form musical notes?

 

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13 hours ago, KenElevenShadows said:

 

Hmmmm.

 

If screaming toddler sounds are loaded into a sampler, does that make them sounds on an instrument?

 

If someone is skilled enough, can they make it so a series of screaming toddlers create pitches that form musical notes?

 

The answer is "MOMMEEEEEEE!!!!" 

Or, yes... 😇

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21 hours ago, KenElevenShadows said:

 

If someone is skilled enough, can they make it so a series of screaming toddlers create pitches that form musical notes?

 

 

I would assume so. Diamanda Galas does it with just her natural voice. 😱:clap:

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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7 hours ago, David Emm said:

 

I would assume so. Diamanda Galas does it with just her natural voice. 😱:clap:

 

And in turn, she's downright musical compared to Yok-, oh, never mind.

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I think it's worth discussing how synthesizers changed music - there's no question that they have. They gave more power to composers, as opposed to players, in the sense that an individual could create compositions with multiple textures and sounds that didn't require being able to play multiple instruments. 

 

For better or for worse, there wouldn't have been "new age" music without synths. Commercials depended on synthetic sounds. Prog rock...you name it, synthesizers changed the face of music in several ways.

 

Moody soundtracks...you get the idea. What do you think?

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What do I think? I think you're right.

 

They also create bizarre, strange, otherworldly sounds and textures. What's not to love?

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From a sound production angle, generators and filters and such lend themselves to interesting mix sub-bands without the human frailty of having to operate the instrument.

 

The nerd space of possibilties which can act as inside sounds requires a lot more coverage to think out maxims of sound creation which should not with any chance of success be handed to secondary grade musicians  or worse.

 

Probably that accounts for more influence being excerted by important artists than most other motivations in contemporary music since the 70s.

 

T

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10 hours ago, Anderton said:

They gave more power to composers, as opposed to players, in the sense that an individual could create compositions with multiple textures and sounds that didn't require being able to play multiple instruments. 


True, but only in conjunction with multitrack tape recorders. Without the ability to (reasonable easily) overdub, composers wouldn't have been able to take advantage of this aspect of synths. Although she wasn't a composer on the project, I'm pretty sure Wendy Carlos couldn't have done Switched On Bach without multitrack tape (and a Moog of course).


An unfortunate way that synths have changed music is in live performances: it's now common for one or two folks with synths to replace entire string and horn sections. The last time I saw a live performance of Jesus Christ Superstar, the pit orchestra was a five piece band, and two of them were synth players. Like, one synth player doing a string section, one doing a piano and horns. (It didn't sound anything like the show with a full orchestra.)
 

But ultimately, in the long run, the main way synths are changing music is that new sounds and textures are being added to composers' and producers' palettes. Beyond the ability to mimic a trumpet or a P-Bass, entirely new instruments are created all the time - instruments with sounds nobody has ever heard before. That's fantastic, in my book. Until synths came along, how many times did we see that happen, say in the 20th century? Leo Fender did it a couple of times, plus the electric piano (maybe -  Rhodes is closer to an acoustic piano than a P-Bass is to an upright...). Now, it happens every day. How cool is that?

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48 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:

But ultimately, in the long run, the main way synths are changing music is that new sounds and textures are being added to composers' and producers' palettes. Beyond the ability to mimic a trumpet or a P-Bass, entirely new instruments are created all the time - instruments with sounds nobody has ever heard before. That's fantastic, in my book.

 

Totally! In a way, every time you create a preset, you've created a new instrument :) 

 

I also love that if I imagine a sound that a composition needs, there's going to be some way to produce it. And of course, once MIDI and computers paired up with synths, we were free from tape's editing limitations - so, even if you didn't program quite the right sound to fit with subsequent tracks, you could edit it so that it did fit. This fluid nature of composition allows you to do calculus-like successive approximations and "prototype" sounds, until you arrive at the sound you want.

 

Lately I've been getting more and more into driving synths with guitars, which adds a whole other twist to what synthesizers can do in any given composition. Synths are one of the world's most fun rabbit holes, right?

 

 

 

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On 11/4/2022 at 1:40 AM, Anderton said:

 

Lately I've been getting more and more into driving synths with guitars, which adds a whole other twist to what synthesizers can do in any given composition. Synths are one of the world's most fun rabbit holes, right?

 

 

While MPE is slowly becoming more accessible as the number of refined tools grows, I still see a guitar synthesizer as the proper ultimate extension of the instrument. I once saw a guy wring out a GR-700 in the early days. It was just a modest JX-3P in a box, but played with strings, the engine took on a whole new voice. Configuring it all is a double bitch at times, whereas keys are just single-bitch, but OH MY. He set an excellent high mark to which I still aspire.   

 

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 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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2 hours ago, David Emm said:

 

While MPE is slowly becoming more accessible as the number of refined tools grows, I still see a guitar synthesizer as the proper ultimate extension of the instrument. I once saw a guy wring out a GR-700 in the early days. It was just a modest JX-3P in a box, but played with strings, the engine took on a whole new voice. Configuring it all is a double bitch at times, whereas keys are just single-bitch, but OH MY. He set an excellent high mark to which I still aspire.   

 

I play guitar synth. Craig A and I have had a discussion or two about using the Fishman Triple Play system, we both have one. 

Craig may be talking about another system above, I don't know and I won't assume anything. 

But, I can tell you that one of my obstacles using the Triple Play is that it is fast enough to catch that split second where the pick becomes a "movable fret" and triggers a false note for an instant before the string rings true with the intended note. I've learned to play it with the pads on my fingers since they don't make the same "glitch" being softer and covering a larger area of the string when plucking. 

 

Finger picking has cleaned up most of the glitches I was creating, it also slows me down a bit but offers a different sort of approach to the sequence of the notes sometimes. 

I both agree and disagree that guitar is "the proper ultimate extension of the instrument" due to this particular quirk. I've also found it to be true that some soft synths want to play the tempered scale and respond in an unexpected (and usually awkward) way if one stretches a string or uses a vibrato technique. Apparently those are not translated to MIDI language in the same way that the way the controls on a keyboard work. Or something, some soft synth track string stretches and vibrato techniques very well. I'll just say that I've learned to test the patch first and adapt to the reality of the situation. 

 

Still, considering my shortcomings on keyboards I find using a guitar as a driver for a synth is the better option for my own playing. I don't expect I will improve on keys much, if at all. A friend plays EWI and that's an interesting synth technique all it's own. I'd be more likely to head in that direction if I suddenly find a basket full of $$$.

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2 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

Craig may be talking about another system above, I don't know and I won't assume anything. 

 

I mostly use Jam Origin's MIDI Guitar 2 plug-in, or Melodyne. Even with Melodyne Essential, you can parse polyphonic guitar parts. Most DAWs can do this. For example in Studio One, after analyzing the guitar track with Melodyne, you can drag it into an instrument track and convert it into MIDI notes. I wrote about how to do this - check out the audio example at the end.

 

The advantage to me of both systems is no controller or hex pickup is required, even for chords. Although they generate a fairamount of glitches, deleting all notes below a certain velocity, or shorter than a shorter duration, cleans up a huge amount of crap. I still need to do editing, but it's not bad.

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18 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

I mostly use Jam Origin's MIDI Guitar 2 plug-in, or Melodyne. Even with Melodyne Essential, you can parse polyphonic guitar parts. Most DAWs can do this. For example in Studio One, after analyzing the guitar track with Melodyne, you can drag it into an instrument track and convert it into MIDI notes. I wrote about how to do this - check out the audio example at the end.

 

The advantage to me of both systems is no controller or hex pickup is required, even for chords. Although they generate a fairamount of glitches, deleting all notes below a certain velocity, or shorter than a shorter duration, cleans up a huge amount of crap. I still need to do editing, but it's not bad.

Thanks Craig, I'll read your article and check out these plugins. 

I do remember you mentioning Jam Origin. I failed to follow up on it. 

The recent updates for Triple Play have improved it but I suspect the nature of strings themselves means there will never be the same level of precision that keyboards can provide. 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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While for me, perfect performances have been wrung out of keyboard interfaces, guitar interfaces and EWI interfaces (Michael Brecker ♥️) all of these interfaces remain imperfect and that’s good not bad. Why would I say that?

 

That the interfaces are insufficient is evidence that the underlying instrument is advancing dramatically, outstripping the means of control. Even the conception of what a synthesizer is has morphed from hardware to software to the software which houses the software (Bitwig). It may leap out of software and if Ray Kurzweil is correct, become something we have not yet developed, like mindware.

 

The downside of this remarkable change is that conservatory levels of mastery don’t exist. They cannot. There isn’t enough stability and standardization to codify what synthesizer mastery means.

 

It’s a cambrian explosion of ideas and we should enjoy this variety while it blossoms. Sooner or later innovation will reach it’s next phase: consolidation. Winners and losers will emerge then. Ideal interfaces will emerge then. Today’s explorers will become tomorrow’s settlers, building more permanent structures, systems and methods. Where you pitched your tent will matter more then. For now, let’s enjoy the journey of exploration. Let’s use whatever tools we have technique in, to enjoy synthetic sound creation. Isn’t it a great time to be a musician?

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think the best clue we have to original intent is in the name.  It's an instrument that produces synthetic sound.  I'm sure there are numerous possible interpretations of what that means, but the clearest to me is that it suggest that it's an instrument whose sound production is entirely in the electronic realm.  So it's an intentional contrast to acoustic instruments, which must be miced for recording, and electric instruments, which use pickups of one variety or another to translate their acoustic behaviors into electric signals.

 

The earliest synths that I'm aware of were promoted as attempting to simulate familiar acoustic instruments, but things got far more interesting when not adhering strictly to that goal.  Indeed, the earliest synths must have been fairly poor at approximating other instruments, succeeding more in evoking their character than a strict simulation.  So by embracing the infinite number of other sounds that a synth could make, we found inspiration in these new sonic possibilities.

 

It is, frankly, what I find most disturbing about the majority of the synth market.  Too many instruments are looking to recreate the past when the spirit of synthesis is, to me, very much about charting unexplored spaces.  It's why oddball instruments of one description or another appeal to me, and reissues / clones feel more like an economic necessity than something that speaks to me.

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