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tom moody


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After posting about the rash of hardware synth sequencer performances on YouTube and speculating that it might be a micro-genre in the making, I noticed Cory Arcangel had a series of del.icio.us links to Ed DMX's website, which is chock a block with pictures of mostly '80s gear and the sounds they produce. Some great stuff there. (Like this .mp3.)

What we're seeing, I think, is the reaction to what DMX calls "the computer revolution" in music production. There's almost no function of old gear that your laptop and a good soundcard can't do better and more imaginatively nowadays, so inevitably the outmoded becomes fetishized.

It's ironic that the sequencer, a piece of gear that generates MIDI patterns for synths to play, was yesterday's soul deadening "end of music as we know it," but now that it's been made superfluous by software--honestly, nothing is easier for your computer to do than generate MIDI notes--it is all about "warmth" and "hands-on playing."

Not saying that analog synthesis lacks romance. I'm guilty of spending hours surfing old synth sites and have recently plunked down for a couple of pieces of such gear, but have mostly not succumbed to the urge to fill up my apartment with power-hogging, space-occupying, hard-to-transport machinery.

And I'm not saying that watching someone play a hardware sequencer live isn't superior to watching a performer stroke a laptop thumbpad. (Although, done badly, which they usually are, "sequencer workouts" quickly devolve into boring new age music.) And I'm not suggesting that the crackly, juiced up voltages of analog synths aren't sexy as hell.

But perhaps we need to separate what's irreplaceable about the "old new ways" from our kneejerk reaction to the "new new ways." Former computerphobe Brian Eno is selling off his gear--that's a good, positive role model for everyone. Small is beautiful.

- tom moody 8-30-2006 10:37 pm [link] [12 comments]