So! What happened?

[whitefang]

Remember back in the late '60's, when the popularity of electronic keyboard synthesizers started becoming popular? Do any of you recall the sensation caused by Walter/Wendy Carlos and the breakthrough "Switched-on Bach" LP?

 

And is there anyone reading this who recalls the alarm bells going off, where people took sides on whether or not synthesizers were going to replace not only all the instruments in a small Rock'n'Roll band, but take the place of 70+ membered major symphony orchestras with just a few

Moogs and Mellotrons?

 

But, look around. Rock bands still have guitars, and kids still take violin and bassoon lessons in hopes of joining the New York Philharmonic!

 

So, what happened? No, I'm not mocking synths.

Far from it. I don't play keyboards, but I DO love to hear well plotted and programmed electronic music. I hail the day some visionary

saw fit to bring about their exsistence. And yes, I AM aware that electronic synths have been around far longer than the '60's. That just seemed to me to be the point in time their capabilities were just being made aware of by the GENERAL public. But, the takeover of every musical instrument by synths hasn't happened, as was feared. And I'd just like to know what some of you think the reason is.

 

Whitefang

[Synthguy]

Well, Maplethorpe aside... just kidding. May I respond?

 

I think that it did some of that very thing, seeped into the music world like an amoeba and began engulfing various fields and genres. People became comfortable with it, and the wow factor of the wild new chameleon of an instrument certainly helped that. However after a while, people began to realize that synthesized violins just weren't as good as the real thing, the electronic invasion slowed, and a stability was established. To be sure, there are sampled and synthesized orchestral passages that are bloody hard to identify as such, but that is the rare exception. Plus, there are the genres that require the authentic sound of overdriven Les Pauls into Vox amps, which no synthesizer can touch, at least at the present. So where we are is undoubtedly where we shall be from here on out.

[Tusker]

It's a good question.

 

Sure there's some of the normal assimilation process. But I also think we took a wrong turn in the road. We can rectify that.

 

Chameleon is a good word for the capabilities of the instrument. Sadly we chameleon players focused on emulation rather than expression. So we became "cheap strings" rather than an expressive new instrument. It was pure economics. If you could replace a string section on a cd and get paid well for it, it was better than coming up with a new sound that people may or may not want.

 

We can (in a sense) go back to the fork in the road, and find our own expressivity again. I think that would be a useful exercise.

 

This is not to overlook the "assimilation" effect. Guitar players in particular did much to take from synthesizer and integrate it with their own approach. Lots of them played through modular synths and stomp-boxes which use elements similar to a synthesizer chain (resonant filter and overdriven amplifer particularly).

 

There are some (particularly oscillator-based) expressions that will likely remain the province of the synthesist alone. Also I'd like to see the design of better interfaces to make new expressions more intuitive. This would include non-linear mappings (the Alesis tracking generator comes to mind) to place the controls in such a way that sonic "sweet spots" may be found again easily.

 

Cheers,

 

Jerry

[Steve LeBlanc]

Well the two previous posters pretty much said it all...another unfortunate side effect was that people gave up on the sound of previous keyboards like the Rhodes, Hammond, Clav, etc. All those instruments have made a recent comeback of sorts...at least partly this has resulted in Synth programmers (esp. Soft Synths) to raise the bar a bit.

 

This can be an exciting time for music and electronics...we'll see what people do.

 

I just like any instrument that has a unique and well developed voice of it's own. The art of blending great sounds is what making music is all about...people were settling on mediocre sounds...people still do...the music suffers.

[soapbox]

I think that you could take the early notion that synthesizers might replace all other instruments one of two ways:

 

1) An optimistic view that synthesizers had the potential to do anything and sound like everything.

 

2) A fearful view that technology would wipe out our way of life.

 

Certainly in the dawn of the age of the synthesizer, there was a lot of the second attitude. The invention of nuclear weapons had greatly disturbed the public at large; and before recycling and emissions control, pollution was much more visible than it is today. The perils of technology were front and center during that era.

 

Since then, we've adjusted somewhat to the downside of technology, while benefiting more from its upside. The effect of computers in our lives has been nothing short of revolutionary! This makes it easy to forget a time when we feared computers more than embraced them.

 

As described in the posts above, synthesizers have only partly lived up to their promise (and their threat). However, while this period has been a sizable chunk of our lifetimes, it is still only the beginning in the age of synthesis. Barring a great advance in life expectancy, I doubt that any of us will live to see the synthesizer reach its full potential.

[george costanza]

It's already been mentioned that electronic instruments (whether synths or even samplers) don't truly replicate the sounds of acoustic instruments (even samplers, because of artifacts due to pitch shift, etc.)...nor do they allow for facile imitation of various instruments techniques, usually.

I think another factor, for some (many?), is the realization that they need not be merely imitative.

Even in the case of what might usually be thought of as an imitation (for example pop music synth bass) there's often the intention to make an enhanced sound rather than just imitate.

[S_Gould]

If you really think about it, the instrument should serve the music, not vice-versa. The early synths were a total failure as imitative instruments, hence were not appropriate to just replace parts in music written for traditional instruments (Walter/Wendy Carlos notwithstanding, that was an intensive labor of love/proof of concept). On the "popular" side, only the so-called art rock (now called prog rock) movement embraced the synthesizer. The lack of nuanced control compared with other instruments, coupled with the incredible dollar cost and notorious instability, and you end up with only a handful of people who were willing to commit to the synthesizer as their primary, serious performance instrument. Therefor there was a lack of momentum in the keyboard community in really developing synth music (not just the occasional novelty sound or accent part). By the time digital programmable synths and MIDI came along and prices dropped, most of the true pioneers had been marginalized or dropped out of sight. Very few courses in electronic music composition ever graced our institutions of higher learning, and I never even heard of classes in synthesizer technique. By the time the MIDI revolution was in full swing (I can get HOW many sounds and only have to lug one board to my gigs) synthesizers had almost completely disappeared from the radar of serious composers and symphonic musicians. Synths became a "folk" instrument; mass marketed to the lowest common denominator, which spawned the best-forgotton 80s phenomenon known as synth-pop.

The modern step-children of this are techno and trance. While some of the artrock bands have come out of mothballs for brief periods, the techno/trance phenomenon is the closest that synth driven music comes to mainstream in the present day.

 

The preceeding was a very generalized, simplified and incomplete overview of what I think happened.

You probably disagree.

 

Scott

[soapbox]

Originally posted by S_Gould:

The preceeding was a very generalized, simplified and incomplete overview of what I think happened.

You probably disagree.

ROTFLMAO!!!

 

Scott, how refreshing! Of course the same could be said of much of what is posted here by any of us; but I like that you wrote it!

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Jonathan Hughes]

"The modern step-children of this are techno and trance. While some of the artrock bands have come out of mothballs for brief periods, the techno/trance phenomenon is the closest that synth driven music comes to mainstream in the present day."

 

Except, of course, for the synth-driven music of Britney Spears, N Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, Eminem, 90% of all rap, the triggered drum samples on lots of rap-metal, etc. etc. etc., but that's not mainstream is it?

 

Synths and electronic music are _everywhere_. It's just that people aren't trying to pass off buzzy sawtooth waves as violins, so "electronic music" doesn't sound so "electronic" anymore.

 

Jonathan

[Dan South]

Predictions of flying cars and robot housemaids were a little off the mark, too.

 

Two main reasons why your local symphony has not been outsourced to Roland:

 

First, electronic instruments are capable of many wonderful things, but replacements for the violin, the trumpet, the piano, and the clarinet, they're not. Second, a symphony orchestra is a living, breathing organizm with about a thousand years of cumulative musical experience. No synthesist, no matter how brilliant his toolkit, is ever going to be able to duplicate the feel and nuance of a live orchestra. Human beings may tote around lots of baggage, but the amazing things that they can do, alone or in concert, are not to be underestimated.

 

Quincy Jones once said that making an album with synthesizers is like painting a 747 with a toothbrush. Modern synths and computers have made the process easier than it once was, but when it comes to emulating an orchestra, ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby.

[whitefang]

As a guitarist who really doesn't understand all the nuances and inroads of the technology behind electronic synthesizers, all of your answers were worded plainly enough for me to absorb. And I thank you for that. Clearly, the addition of equipment that allows other instruments to utilize the potentials of synths, such as guitar phasers and MIDI's, as well as other devices that can be attached to horns, saxes and yes, even violins, has added new dimensions to both the music and synths in general. We may not have heard all the possibilities of synths, probably due to marketing restrictions of record labels, but that doesn't mean there are sounds out there just waiting to be accepted by the listening public and/or producers. I, for one, can't wait for them to be freed up.

 

I suppose another reason synths haven't completely taken over can be found in why the electric guitar hasn't brought about the complete

exstinction of the acoustic. People still just like to play them and hear them. And the fear that electric guitars would bring about the demise of acoustics was nearly just as serious as with synthesizers vs orchestras.

 

I actually started the post in retrospect. As with the reply about floating cars and robots, to think of what was once considered an actuality

compared to what has transpired, it can often be amusing. And while once, years ago, we thought the new millenium would see us living a "Jetsons"

existence that is far from true, inventions like

PC's, VHS, CD's and DVD's were never once considered. And no less amazing!

 

Whitefang

[realtrance]

I take the opposite tack from Scott: I think the music should serve the instrument.

 

This has been the "problem," if you can call it such, I've heard in electronic popular music since the '60s: synthesizers have always been used to provide flourishes to a sound or musical approach based fundamentally in practices and context having nothing to do with the synthesizer as the core of the music.

 

Even with the wide range of examples Jonathan gives of places where synths are used, they are still essentially "emulative" in approach in the _way_ they are used.

 

I agree that some of the electronic dance music of the '90s, like some of the disco in the '70s, contained elements that might point to a more synthesizer-based music in the future. But elements only.

 

I think the task remains of developing a repertoire that fulfills the potential of electronic music; that happened early on in the development of EM, primarily in an academic and post-classical context, but I think it can happen in a more "folk" context as well. We still await the Alfred Hitchcock of electronic music (you know, the person who can appeal to lowbrows and highbrows alike ).

 

I disagree with the claims that synthesizers are somehow less expressive than other kinds of instruments. I also disagree with the assumption that expressivity, as we conceive it based on other non-electronic instruments, is the only good in music. Put those two together, and you can quickly shuck off the feeling of secondary citizenship in the musical community you often get when you tell people your main axe is a synth.

 

I think we can also get rid of our assumptions that there are extremes of either sonic richness or sonic sparsity that should be our ideals when judging a sonority. With current recording technique, it's certainly possible to produce as much harmonic complexity or melodic clarity as anyone could imagine -- that's only up to the musician, there's no limit there in the instruments.

 

I agree with one comment above that we're really only in the infancy of electronic music; hell, all the pieces that need to be in place to make electronic instruments and recording possible really only came together fully in the early '90s.

 

rt

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

Originally posted by Dan South:

Predictions of flying cars and robot housemaids were a little off the mark, too.

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~jeffannak/flying-car-m400.jpg

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

Originally posted by Dan South:

Predictions of flying cars and robot housemaids were a little off the mark, too.

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~jeffannak/20010830_robot.jpg

[burningbusch]

Dan is right about the flying cars. I think it was a combination of the manufacturers' marketing hype and a general naivety as to the real possibilites and limitations of the synthesizers of the day. There is always a tendancy to extrapolate far beyond reality when new technologies are introduced. The Musician's Union also fanned the fire when they tried to get synthesizers banned, as they would take away jobs from working players.

 

I bought into the hype early on. As a budding Hammond player in the late 60s/early 70s I saw synths as the future. I traded my M3/147 plus cash for a Minimoog, sight unseen. I had heard a few recordings of synths and only heard them live once or twice. I rationalized that many musicians were limited to monophonic playing, and that having an instrument of "infinite" sound variations would more than make up for the lack of polyphony. I honestly believed that finding the exact combination of osciallator, filter, and envelope settings would yield a perfect flute, sax, piano.

 

You can't underestimate the influence of the "Switched on Bach" recording. It was, at the time I believe, the largest selling classical record of all time. It spawned many imitators. But it tended to cast the synthesizer in terms of a instrument to replace traditional instruments in classical recordings.

 

Busch.

[DJDM]

Interesting topic, thanks Whitefang.

I was a trumpet player as a child but I was far more interested in composition and electronic music so I saved up and bought a Juno 106 in 1983 or 4, (can't remember now). It is safe to say that my entire career as a musician has been framed with electronic music. I was so enthusiastic that I built my own studio at the age of 19 and never looked back. I have been composing in various electronic music genres since I was about 12 and have found that electronic music's popularity has been limited to tends on and off that come and go. Until recently... In the last ten years electronic music has really hit a stride. It now is a very popular format on many radio station and has almost 1:1 play on a lot of college station thanks to WM Orbit, The Chemical Brothers, Moby, The Prodigy and many, many others.

Of course I am talking about pop music here but this is an accomplishment in and of itself. If you listened to pop radio in the 80's synth bands were often nothing more than guitar bands with a couple of keyboards.

In the 90's it was more of the same but with more and more bands coming to the fore that were synth based.

Now it is the other way around. You often hear projects where if there is any guitar it is a secondary player to the keys.

I think that it is no surprise that in direct relation to this trend is the plummeting expense of really quality synth gear and a much broader understanding of the instrument and what it is capable of.

Simply put: The cost of the gear has gone down so much that the average youngster can now afford a good piece of gear, (and by "good" I mean "really amazing" by traditional standards), to learn and play on. No more does a synth player have to second mortgage the house to get a monophonic synth with no patch memory and an interface that was designed by an MIT genius.

Things are now slick, cheap and available so the young musicians can start developing the language of synthesizing quite a bit earlier on. Additionally much, (but by no means all), of the complexity and mysticism has been removed from the process.

I was luck to have a very young experience. I was the only kid beside my good friend and studio partner that had a synthesizer, (actually we had three between us), in a high school of about 2000 kids. It was a rare thing back then.

Now I talk to young people all the time that have them. Mostly picking up used stuff or virtual gear for a really cheap experience but they are passionate about getting into it and stuff is cheap.

Children growing up with them in the house.

I think this is the single most significant factor in the issue of acceptance. And where you have acceptance you find greater development and usage. This will lead to all sorts of interesting new trends, concepts and a more highly developed dialog in the mainstream.

My $.02,

- DJDM

[progfusion74]

Very interesting thread. In the past my preferred instruments as a keyboard player have been the B3 and Rhodes, but over the last year, as I started setting up a project studio, my interest in synthesis has increased a great deal. Much of this came from chance listening to some great synthetists like Wendy Carlos, Larry Fast, Early Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze etc. Larry Fast in his Synergy garb uses synthesizers just perfectly in my book. I think thinking of electronic music purely in the trance/techno mould is limiting, because synthesizers open up so many new sonic possibilities. Too bad they have never been used to their full ability, at least in popular music.

 

prog