Time for another "NEXT BIG THING?"

[Tusker]

LOL

[Andre Lower]

Ah, the keytar, sure. And drum kits should have wheels to afford some stage roaming possibilities to modern drummers...perhaps even some stage-diving stunt here and there...

 

I'm sorry, but we should be addressing the musical side of it, not the glitterish one. I can look ridiculous on my own, do not need a keytar, thank you.

[synthdogg]

Originally posted by marino:

I hope we're finally ready for a good implementation of harmonic resynthesis. I've been waiting for this for 20 years, and witnessed many of the attempts to build this kind of instrument, from the Axcel to the Synclavier resynthesis sub-program to the Kyma to the aborted F.A.R./Oberheim thing that was developed at IRCAM in Paris, then, to my understanding, killed by Gibson...

 

Researches were somewhat stopped in the 90's. At that time, it was already clear that what was needed was to develop an efficient way to separate the noise from the harmonic components during the analysis process, *then* an efficient way to rebuild it with a separate generator.

Well, the new CA 5000 from Camel Audio does exactly that, and I can't wait to try it. I was about to buy the 'serious' computer and soundcard I would need to run the CA 5000 - the program was on the top of the list. But I bought an Andromeda instead, so that has to wait a little bit more... I strongly hope it's going to be what many electronic musicians ar waiting for: The technology which closes the gap between sampling and synthesis. Timbral changes will use interpolation algorithms - no more velocity switching. And I will be useful for both imitative synthesis *and* for creating new sounds.

Plus, it's controllable and predictable, unlike phisical modeling. Sure, you have thousands of parameters to set, but a good macro implementation should help.

This is kind of what I've been hoping for also....although I would be happy with something similar in the physical modeling realm. When I read about the Neuron's ability to "sample" it's own models...I thought that really was the future.

[Synthguy]

What Marino said.

 

I've been pursuing the emulative direction for a while now, using a synth not to try and copy an existing instrument, but to emulate the character of them, like a synth violin, synth piano, or a sound that has a vaguely acoustic quality to it. You can do a lot with any synth of any type these days. FM is marvelous in this regard, to an extent, because you can add harmonics expressively. After a certain point though, it tends to cheeze out.

 

Jerry has been raving about the power of his first gen Nord Modular, and I've downloaded the demo of the new one. It's the other white meat, and maybe this next year I should go ahead and get one. I'm picky about the sound quality though. I'm easily disenchanted when a synth lets me down in some way, like the filter department. Even the Fantom X leaves me wanting in many ways.

 

I suggested in some threads that on the sampling side, since harmonic resynthesis is probly still a ways off, something you could do on the rompler side is offer "sample cycling" or the like, where an instrument like a sax or bass has samples of a few variations of the same note, and like a Wavestation, you put these variations in a table which play each one with each new key press. And you can modulate it with things like velocity to play the brighter/harder variations.

 

I've experimented with heavily filtered and treated layers of the same or variation sample, and adding it to the basic instrument sample for extra harmonics, sort of like the harmonic you add to a distorted guitar patch to get that feedback howl. But reults are mixed. It would be nice if a next gen instrument would handle this sort of trickery properly.

 

Maybe they will. Kurzweil might unveil something soon. They have the most magic outside of an Oasys in their VAST architecture. And there's the Oasys itself, which can have any kind of synthesizer Korg wants to code for it (I prefer Oasys to OASYS, sort of like Karma and KARMA. I think Korg should adopt that convention).

 

One thing I think would be a sure hit is a synth based on the EX-5 but taken much further. An EX-50, with several different synth engines and a good control panel of controllers like the K2600 has to manipulate aspects of the sound. And an EX-500 module, woot!

 

Another thing I keep repeating, and sorry if it's been said here but I was up way too late trying to recreate some of Rick Wakeman's sounds with only synth waves, but people have to know about this potential, and then they have to want it. Even if it's nothing more than calling up a patch that uses the cool new magic, with no thought of learning how to program it. Jordan Rudess has thrown the Oasys into the public eye, and Hancock, Corea and others will do the same. So hopefully now that we have the processor power for it, we'll start seeing more of a demand for true next gen instruments.

 

Oh, and I really REALLY want to see mLAN succeed, but Yamaha needs a kick in the pants or something.

[burningbusch]

Sorry to sound pessimistic but I doubt that we'll see much in the way of brave new stuff from the hardware folks. There is simply too much risk and not enough upside. Hatmann is out of business. The VL1 never panned out for Yamaha. The V-Synth has been OK for Roland, but it hasn't been a run away success.

 

Synth players bitch about nothing new, then don't buy the next big thing because it lacks good B3 and Rhodes emulations. Musicians can be some of the most uncreative people on the planet.

 

Bold stuff will come from the software side where the cost of entry/development is lower.

 

Barring any new miraculous offerings at NAMM, my prediction is that next year you're going to see people using Receptor more and more. Soon you're going to see it everywhere.

 

Busch.

[Felix_dup1]

Lots of opportunity for better controllers. Novation's new ReMOTE 25 SL is a step in the right direction, as there is hardware-software communication in both directions. Better integration of hardware controllers for software is cool.

 

Also, more hardware that is essentially integrated hardware/software solutions, a la the OASYS and Neko (and whatever else may be cooking in the R&D departments of synth manufacturers). Even VariOS played on this theme (though the message really didn't quite get across).

 

And I still think that as the limitations are raised to a point beyond which they really don't matter any more (i.e. polyphony), then musicians are freed to focus on their craft, rather than workarounds.

 

To this end, I'd love to see multitimbral limitations disappear, as well as MIDI limitations.

[Synthguy]

One thing all manufacturers should strive for is clarity, a good clean clear sound.

 

I can see where the people raving over the Oasys are coming from, which is to say, that the more you ask a digital device to do, the more mucked up the sound gets. This ties into Felix's post above.

 

Multitimbral instruments are a godsend to those of us who can't afford more than one or two synths, and maybe an outboard processor or two. But the more voices you use, the more timbral channels, the sound gets just a tad bit murky. You can help this by making sure that not every voice has Moog-like low end, as bass gobbles up space like nuts. But the more expensive products like the Emu and Akai samplers, the Kurzweils and Oasys, give you a much more high end sound and you can do more with them as you please. I have to add that Clusterchord pointed this out a few months ago.

 

It's like a digital reverb. The more stuff you throw at a verb, the more cluttered the sound, unless you have something high end like a Lexicon PCM-80 or better. And even then, recording studios have a few of those boxes to distribute the load.

 

I'd like to see the sound engines and especially the DACs developed to the point that you can have 256 voices going at it and have everything sorted out well. And with the processor horsepower and quality of DACs improving every month, we should be there at some point. The stuff does sound really good now, but there's still room for improvement.

[Michelle ggurl]

A 76-key weighted controller/performance keyboard.

[Ken Hughes]

Originally posted by burningbusch:

Synth players bitch about nothing new, then don't buy the next big thing because it lacks good B3 and Rhodes emulations. Musicians can be some of the most uncreative people on the planet.

Busch, you've really nailed it. I couldn't agree with you more. We've seen this, what, five or six times over the years? The innovators either go bankrupt or the innovation sinks to the bottom amid a crop of more-of-the-same. How many millions did Yamaha flush on the VL stuff? Korg spent buckets on the WaveDrum, but thankfully they were able to salvage SynthKit as a development tool. Hartmann went down, and even just making a real analog polysynth for a change all but killed Alesis once. There are probably two or three dozen other stories just like those. The lesson the industry learns is: Don't go there. Bob Moog wrote two great aerticles for KB back in the day. One was called "Why Don't They?" and dealt with all the things keyboardists were saying they wanted from their gear at the time. The second was called "Why They Don't" and gave the commercial realities behind why we don't get what we say we want. I wish I had time to type 'em out and put 'em on the website (they don't exist in any electronic form at all), kind of as an open letter to builders and buyers.

[yabbadabbadoo]

Originally posted by Krakit:

In last years MIDI 20 Years Old article in Keyboard, they discuss the road blocks that stymie the next version of MIDI.

 

Mostly due to failure to agree on commonality.

Isn't there something happening at NAMM 2006 w.r.t midi 2.0? [Although midi 2.0 has supposedly be threatened for years]

 

AIUI, the Yamaha disklavier acoustics have something like it now? [well, they have some bespoke yamaha thing XP midi I think they call it]

[niacin]

Hasn't anyone else noticed that nearly all the reviews of the Fusion just complain about the rompler bit? Never mind the VA/FM/PM/sampling-feed-it-all-through-the-mod-matrix bit. Sure a bigger better EX5 would be great but, as with the Neuron et al., the market obviously isn't there.

[ClaviaMech]

I think the "next big thing" will be breakthoughs in acoustic modeling. There have been some interesting developments in hardware and software lately, and once the technology becomes a bit more accessable, we could begin seeing ... or rather hearing some really convincing brass and wind instruments generated & modeled, rather than multi-sampled.

[The Real MC]

The trend I'm seeing is compactness.

 

Hammond clonewheels have been popular because a B3 weighs 375lbs. Now you're seeing more software B3 emulators.

 

Same with other bulky instruments - pianos, analog synths, etc. You're seeing many of the bulky instruments compacted into smaller and smaller packages. I mean look at the offerings in the last fifteen years, look at what you can buy in software today.

 

There hasn't been a "next big thing" in new innovation in the last fifteen years. It's the tried-and-true instruments that are still selling, and they're being compacted into smaller and smaller packages.

[sleepwalk]

i really think the Muse Receptor concept is going to be a big thing eventually. there could even be a keyboard version. something that could hold an insane amount of memory, and take any sound you wanted to put into it. this makes the most sense to me. let the individual player decide what sounds will be in their keyboard.

[Sven Golly]

Originally posted by sleepwalk:

i really think the Muse Receptor concept is going to be a big thing eventually. there could even be a keyboard version. something that could hold an insane amount of memory, and take any sound you wanted to put into it. this makes the most sense to me. let the individual player decide what sounds will be in their keyboard.

It's called the NeKo, by Open Labs, and was introduced at NAMM in 2004 (2003?).

 

Click here for more info.

 

Cheers,

SG

[K K]

The opening of the first DIY-MusicShack.

 

A specialized store where you buy parts to build your own musical instrument.

 

Keyboard section : with the numerous incredible DIY-MusicShack keyboard adapters you can finally fit that Bechstein acoustic piano sound box with your favorite Fatar action and nine B3 drawbars to get an incredible Hammond emulation of true acoustic piano strings.

 

Guitar section : build your own 3-third hybrid with a Gibson L6S, 18-string Chapman stick and MIDI SynthAxe or any other combination.

[Dave Bryce]

[rant]

 

Man, we (keyboardists) are such whiners.

 

With a few minor exceptions, guitars, basses and drums haven't really changed much in years/ever. Neither have any of the instruments of the orchestra...and those poor singers - having to rely on only their voices and mics, with maybe the occasional effects processor/harmony device...

 

Why are we keyboardists constantly in search of something new? We have more sonic options available to us than any other musician by far, and yet we're constantly in search of "The Next Big Thing".

As my friend Mr. Anderton is fond of saying - maybe we just need to learn to write a better chorus.

 

[/rant]

 

dB

[MidLifeCrisis]

Originally posted by Dave Bryce:

With a few minor exceptions, guitars, basses and drums haven't really changed much in years/ever.

Very strong point Dave. Basically all new guitars are variations of capturing the classic Les Paul or Strat sound. Throw a guitar player a new pedal for an effect and he is happy for 6 months.

What do bass players ever get for new gear? The only change I have seen in the past 10 years is the trend towards multiple 10'' cabs versus 1 or 2 15s.

We should be grateful for the outstanding innovations we have at our disposal.

[K K]

Originally posted by Ken Hughes:

Bob Moog wrote two great aerticles for KB back in the day. One was called "Why Don't They?" and dealt with all the things keyboardists were saying they wanted from their gear at the time. The second was called "Why They Don't" and gave the commercial realities behind why we don't get what we say we want.

Yet it's amazing to read on many forums over the Net how so many keyboardists complain about the price or sample set of the latest synth or workstation.

 

In my case, I enjoy exploiting possibilities on each instrument I buy for years. The more you experiment, the more "happy accidents" can happen. This is how sometimes you can build the greatest crybabe electric guitar sound out of the least expected mix of parameters/samples.

 

All manufacturers give everyone years of experimental fun with many of their products. In my case, I still discover new possibilities out of my "obsolete" Wavestation and 15-years old Kurzweil. The problem today is that people want everything immediately. They either don't have the time or they don't want to take the time and efforts needed to build their own superpatch or "greatest piano emulation ever".