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Are we horribly spoilt?

Alex Fraser

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Back in the 90's when I was a younger gent, music technology was expensive. I lusted after a number of unaffordable bits of gear, one of which was a Korg M1 costing four figures.

I've just downloaded the plugin version of the M1 on sale for the princely sum of $25. Including all the optional sound cards. This may not seem like much to someone who's younger, but for an older 40 something like me this is quite simply nuts.

Have we completely lost perspective on how much our tools are actually worth? For the same money that would buy a cheap workstation 20 years ago, composers can amass gigs of deeply sampled instruments and a clear surplus of storage and cpu power to actually use them. If you'd shown me todays typical starter rig back when I was wrestling with 1mb sample memory, I'd have chased you out of the room shouting "witchcraft!"

Rant over. Thoughts?
A
 
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Yes, we are totally spoilt. If you can't make music that sounds ok today, on almost any budget, you just need to keep trying.

The tools are there and, as you said, Alex, dirt cheap.

If you want to have Every Sound Known To Humanity at your fingertips, that's a bit more of a challenge, but still.
 
I deserve to be spoiled.
I had Rack of 4 x Roland S760s with 1GB Shoebox sized Hard Drives.
4 x RGB Sony Trinitron Monitors and a Roland D70.
Only 2 760s could be used at once while the others loaded, the D70 would keep the Piano and Brass Section sounds loaded at all times.
4 zones live was a lot of work.
Before that the Oberheim DPX and Emulator III loading FDDs all the time, which believe it or not Linux finally this week announced no more support for the 5 1/4” and 3 1/2” FDDs.

Now I sound better, have 8 zones anytime I want, and Omnisphere loads from an NVMe M.2.
The newest upgrade was impressive because I had a D50, bought the new D-05, and now I don’t need it because the D50 sample in Omni is spot on.
Except I had to add more sustain on the Soundtrax Patch, which became longer using excessive velocity.

No complaints from me.
 
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I remember I did make music for theatre-dance with only General MIDI Rom-Sounds...
Haha - I think I've got one of those boxes in the attic...

I've just finished a track where I used the M1 plugin. It wasn't a sound that couldn't have been found in any number of other libraries in my stack. I used it just because the "new shiny.."

That's what I'm talking about: That luxury of choice and power.
 
Yes. And no. I've always been a singer with music in my head but too uncoordinated to actually play an instrument well. I can make music now. It is amazing. There are so many inexpensive tools available (and not so inexpensive ones) that help make it easy. It takes longer than someone who can actually play, but I'm mostly happy with the results and I'm learning to improve. I'm sure there are others like me.

But I'm with you on the cost of things being so much cheaper than they were when I first started. you can get into computer music with minimal outlay now and they are much better for the price. Though to do big things like full symphonies will still cost a whole lot for a starter. The sales are better than they used to be if you can wait. And RAM and SSD prices keep dropping.

But I think you are talking about the range of sample libraries available at reasonable prices. So much choice of instruments that sound good. Unlike the early sample libraries that really sounded like old records. And you were stuck with the awful loops that didn't go with your melody. And were so noisy. so much better now. Definitely spoiled with choices. :)
 
I do feel spoilt when I realise I have so many software synths & sampled instruments I haven’t fully explored and made the most of. Back when all I had was an early model Roland DP, JV1080 and Korg Wavestation SR, I knew them inside-out and extracted every possibility out of them. In many ways, I was more focussed and less distracted with the latest new shiny toy given everything was so damn expensive.
 
In 91 I bought my Ibanez UV777. Cost a fortune and had to be imported. I felt like a god!
I hated it... but damn I played that thing to an inch of it's life and knew every wood grain on the pig. Only because I knew I wasn't getting anything else for years and years.

These day's I'd probably slapped it on eBay and took the loss. It made me a better player 100% and it's still in my possession today. Still hate it :laugh:
 
Yes, we are totally spoilt. If you can't make music that sounds ok today, on almost any budget, you just need to keep trying.

The tools are there and, as you said, Alex, dirt cheap.

If you want to have Every Sound Known To Humanity at your fingertips, that's a bit more of a challenge, but still.

I guess we're spoiled...except there still isn't a library that captures the sound of a live performance, especially in terms of (what I might erroneously term) sympathetic vibration. As the great David Newman put it, instruments just plain sound different with all of those instruments around them, and good luck trying to run an especially personal, expressive piece through today's technology to your complete satisfaction. Even the "full orchestra libraries" ultimately fail to convince.

We can fool mostly people whom know very little about music, which isn't exactly a big victory. But good luck getting past a non-novice.

Now, if your goal is to be inspired during sketch writing by really good sounding vis, well, you're covered.
 
To be truly spoiled (and I have to thank @Parsifal666 for this gem) is to have the capability of having a personally nuanced, idiosyncratic composition of yours played by an orchestra that likes your music.

That ain't going to happen in the vi world...perhaps ever. To use another one of P666's examples, try finding a convincing, vi'd rendition of the last movement of Mahler's 9th. Or geez, ANY of Mahler's symphonies (or, for chamber music, ANY of Beethoven's late works).

And please provide a link, I would honestly LOVE to be schooled on this (wallet ready lol!)
 
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I only think so when i see critical threads about how terrible some software is because it doesnt fit our own individual needs down to the letter. “This legato is terrible! How dare they have a delay!?” “THE PHASING!! OH MY EARS!!!” “how dare they not include the articulations I personally want!?”

I’m not saying we just shut up and be satisfied by anything....but it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more grateful...we have an arsenal of incredible and ever improving technology that lets us bring our imagination into the world. The budget one would need to make the music we make with the various plugins that emulate millions of dollars worth of gear is an after thought when thinking that most of us get it for a fraction of the cost. Just imagine how much more music we get to listen to now, because this tech evened the playing field a bit so people without the studio budgets could still produce their ideas, and services like soundcloud let them distribute that music. It’s pretty cool.
 
In 91 I bought my Ibanez UV777. Cost a fortune and had to be imported. I felt like a god!
I hated it... but damn I played that thing to an inch of it's life and knew every wood grain on the pig. Only because I knew I wasn't getting anything else for years and years.

These day's I'd probably slapped it on eBay and took the loss. It made me a better player 100% and it's still in my possession today. Still hate it :laugh:

Trading my duplicates from the Spitifre Everything Bundle for the Universe. :grin:
 
In 91 I bought my Ibanez UV777. Cost a fortune and had to be imported. I felt like a god!
I hated it... but damn I played that thing to an inch of it's life and knew every wood grain on the pig. Only because I knew I wasn't getting anything else for years and years.

These day's I'd probably slapped it on eBay and took the loss. It made me a better player 100% and it's still in my possession today. Still hate it :laugh:

Sounds to me like it was more than worth every penny (I can't stand anything Vai).
 
extremely spoiled. I remember finale's playback in like 2003 blew my brain. Then I heard Sibelius from a fellow composer who lived nearby in 2005 and thought it was absolutely crazy.

Flash forward to today, and we piss and mount about the tiniest details.
 
Back in the 90's when I was a younger gent, music technology was expensive. I lusted after a number of unaffordable bits of gear, one of which was a Korg M1 costing four figures.

I've just downloaded the plugin version of the M1 on sale for the princely sum of $25. Including all the optional sound cards. This may not seem like much to someone who's younger, but for an older 40 something like me this is quite simply nuts.

Have we completely lost perspective on how much our tools are actually worth? For the same money that would buy a cheap workstation 20 years ago, composers can amass gigs of deeply sampled instruments and a clear surplus of storage and cpu power to actually use them. If you'd shown me todays typical starter rig back when I was wrestling with 1mb sample memory, I'd have chased you out of the room shouting "witchcraft!"

Rant over. Thoughts?
A
Yes.
 
It's good for the soul to take a moment and be grateful for all the amazing tools that have been made available to us. It's an incredible bounty.

I'm deeply indebted to the developers and everyone who's involved in bringing these tools to the world.
 
I still remember very well my first synthesizer. It was a Moog Prodigy and i loved the thing idolatrously. I had to work in the holidays to save my money together. Today I buy more or less without thinking about the money, but I am aware of what I get there for relatively little money. An Orchestra, out of the box, which is hardly distinguishable from a real one for non-musicians. I feel like I'm in paradise because I can produce today with the sound I used to only dream of. I also think it's important to give the manufacturers feedback, they are very thankful and happy about it. Producing a library is a lot of work and I often have to think of Thomas Bergersen who, because there was nothing that was right for him, created his own library according to his wishes (with Nick and Co.). That's passion, and I'm infinitely grateful to those people.
 
For all the sounds I have, I now want the originals. I have so many Mellotron sounds ... but I still want the original (I actually had one I could have bought last year and passed because the guy wanted $4k for it). I would love an OB-Xa too.

But I can recall struggling to make music 10-20 years ago. I was thinking recently how much easier it is now for me ... that I had finally figured out the "secrets" to arranging a song and adding parts.

But I guess if I'm honest ... mostly it is because I have so many great sounds at my fingertips and amazing technology that puts me there faster.
 
No, we aren’t spoiled, we are deluded. I WAS spoiled when I first got into the business and on an almost daily basis got to create music with other talented musicians. THAT was spoiled. Now I am mostly reduced to trying to coax decent sounding music without the input of other instrumentalists from a bunch of snapshots of real instruments. Yes, they are better and more affordable than ever but it’s a poor substitute.
 
No, we aren’t spoiled, we are deluded. I WAS spoiled when I first got into the business and on an almost daily basis got to create music with other talented musicians. THAT was spoiled. Now I am mostly reduced to trying to coax decent sounding music without the input of other instrumentalists from a bunch of snapshots of real instruments. Yes, they are better and more affordable than ever but it’s a poor substitute.
Depends on ...
I just had to think of a very bad guitarist in the studio who not only ruined the mood, but also the recording.
I agree with you, the exchange with other musicians and the shared playing experience can't give us the whole vi.
 
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