Am truely sorry that music appears to be "Dead" for yourself Avenel
Personally i'd hate to ever feel that way.
Not gonna argue about anything either apart from express simple opinions.
One of the huge benefits the digital age did bring was that it made some things available at a fraction of say the expensive analogue counterparts.
People could create music and express themselves much more readily.
Is a fantastic thing imo. It means that much of the music released today is independent in nature.
People aren't slaves any longer to the labels and the labels themselves are no longer the force they once were.
Look at what the internet did for example with the price of the CD. They were SO overpriced at one point until the internet etc forced the labels to lower prices or find alternative methods.That's why I don't necessarily agree that 99% of the stuff being published has to be simple.
People can now choose what they want to release which is great.
The other thing is that the digital age has forced down the price of some analog gear which is a great thing again.
Now people have choices they simply didn't have. Not gonna do the whole anaolog vs digital debate but analog still has some amazing benefits. Digital homogenization for example make everything sound cold, sterile and characterless the very way you describe.
You've always got to use right tool for the job but i'd estimate given the choice i'd use analog the majority of the time should I be afforded that luxury
For me I like the character, the imperfections, the hands on approach but that's just me.
Some digital stuff is invaluable though which again is great.
Means you now have so many more tools you can use to get your ideas across
I'm a huge fan of intricate guitar type stuff but that's just me. Loads of people hate it and I can completely understand why
I also have a wide range of tastes and also enjoy some EDM. Not a lot but for sure some
Everything moves in circles i guess

 

i've used and/or owned dozens of analogs in the past and i can tell you that yes some of them have character and a unique recognizeable sound and they tend to be more punchy in general but it's nothing that you can't do with digital and a good FX chain.

i can agree with the millennials that anyone installing for instance TAL-U-NO-X will be a bit disappointed by the raw sound coming out and they will think they need a real JUNO 106 but this is not true, even the Arturia emulations are quite good overall, but you must know how to make those sounds punchy in case you want more punch, either that or Digital will never satisfy you.

why digital is better ? because you can add punch AND you can preserve the sharp clean sound as much as you want.
on top of this, and this is maybe the key factor for your workflow (and workflow = time and money $$$) they're plugins and so they give you total control on presets and sysex and midi, which is not possible in most of the vintage analogs.

the only reason to buy an analog today is for live gigs, not for studio.
and i recently tried the Moog Mother, not impressed .. good analog but it's still a 1970 technology for F's sake ...

there's nothing else to say, i'm not here to convert vegetarians.
i see the same shit going on about vintage guitars and bass and good luck telling them otherwise, my guitarists/bassist friends dont want FX they want the real deal and they pay 1000s to buy vintage stuff that has been refurbished god knows how many times but hey if they like it who am i to judge ?

Perfectionism : i don't think that's a problem for most of 80s synths, no issues with sync and the noise was acceptable, only synths from the 70s had awful hardware limitations regarding heating and sync and more.
But it's pointless to discuss it with the synth freaks, same scenario with people spending big bucks for vintage cars, there's nothing they will accept as a constructive criticism.

Sound : i will admit in some cases the analog sound is just more saturated and pleasant but this is true only if you play a synth alone, once it's mixed with drums and all nobody will possibly hear any big difference with the digital equivalent and dont think you can use an analog in a mix without the usual plethora of EQ and compressors so what's the point ? analogs sound like shit withtout FX and same goes for any guitar and bass, so ... ?

Repetition : yes but the "magic" of Dance is not limited to repeating stuff again and again, there must a brain chemistry in our heads that is operating in a carefully chosen range, once you go out of that range the music starts to be boring or just not interesting, im sure some people really like 20 minutes of loops and i've seen with my eyes many times but is this the norm ? often i get bored with own songs hahaha !

Modulars : it's just a fetish, like owning a vintage Ferrari ... please enlight us with a top-notch sample library made only with Modulars, i can't remember many but i've seen a lot of sound designers using Reaktor, Faust, Csound, Max/MSP ...

Max/MSP is THE ultimate synth ever, anything you can imagine can be done with Max/MSP.
want a 200 OSC synth ? you can do it, and with 200 FX chains on top of it, as long as your cpu can stand it.

claiming someone is doing "sound research" on a modular is just bullshit and it was bullshit already in the 80s.
they know it very well but since analogs are in big demand now there's suddenly a new analog industry booming and selling their crap like hot cakes.
and new non-vintage pseudo-analog synths with DCO have just no reason to exist, in some cases they dont even have memory patches like the Arturia MiniBrute, as if coming out barebone was a touch of class and pseud-vintageness ? it's ridicolous, dont they see the scam ?

if i kept all my analogs now i could sent the whole lot for manyb 20-30K $ .. it makes me crazy but .. such is life ... and i've no regrets, my workflow became 10 times faster.
going back to analogs is just a downgrade, plain and simple.

if your starting sound sucks learn how to mix properly instead of buying new gear.

 

actually the Yamaha DX7 and then the Roland D50 and Korg M1 were the nail in the coffin for the analogs.
people kept their analog 808/909 and TB303 for a while but in the mid 90s it was finally game over also for analog drum machines.

but i remember fondly, endless rants with analog freaks claiming their drums dont sound good enough as with their analog 909 and guess what always coming from people that had barely a basic knowledge of mixing drums, they even heard analog sounds in famous hits where the drums where obviously samples on Akai .. it's crazy, the analog mania can even cause audio hallucinations

what is "simple" is relative of course, when you're young everything looks super complex, but later you realize it's just a 2-3 note song and even a dog could do it.
so, it's all a matter of your musical background in the end, of course if you never enlarge your background and you're stuck with Dance music for too long you won't evolve much.

if the sound is cold and sterile i would blame the producer, not the sound.
i was recently complaining about the same topic with friends of mine, turns out that for whatever reason a LOT of dance music coming out now is incredibly cold and flat.
i dont know the answer, sure i could blame booze and drugs or just the fact they're millennials, but while they use cold sounds it doesnt imply the whole mix has to sound cold and flat .. i would blame the mix rather than the song as a whole or the choice of sounds or the melody.

you can make super hot song with sad melodies and shit sounds, it's up to you and certainly you can make horrible cold flat music with analogs, if using analogs was the answer then anyone would only use analogs me included.

and stop thinking analog is a luxury, until a few years ago you could find analogs in the rubbish or sold for 50$ on ebay.
i sold a Jupiter-4 and a Yamaha CS-4 for a pittance to a friend of mine that now keeps them in studio like if they were his jewels of the crown but they never fit in his mixes, he even tried selling them for 5-6K $ but got no offers because with all the new analogs being sold maybe people is waking up ?

so why all this rant about analogs ? because workflow is THE most important factor for composers.
if you just make a couple song per year than you can afford wasting time and money, but analogs have no place in the modern environment.

100% of the music being published today is digitally processed, and at least 60-70% of it is made with digital sounds ... people here orchestral tracks on TV or movies but they would be shocked to see it was made with a Kontakt orchestral library .. no real violins, no real guitars and drums ... and yes even in many hollywood blockbusters.

but they don't know, or they're in denial.
fact is, digital is everywhere and there's no going back.
for what i do i can pretty much be happy doing acoustic bass with Trillian and using a few other libraries for acoustic guitar, i even get good results with omnisphere's guitars, go figure ... but i WANT to make those sounds great, i never expect them to sound good out of the box.
if i expected good sounds out of the box then nothing would suffice, but good luck telling that to the haters and vintage freaks.

people still dont realize how good digital is and that's a shame.

 

it depends.
i would go for something like "this analog sound has been abused to death since the 70s ... i heard it millions of time already ... it was smelling like shit already when played by Donna Summer in 1977 .... AND even a dog could play a better melody with it".

so, melody is still king as far as i'm concerned, but there's a catch ... sounds like a good piano are "evergreend" and same goes for many classic synth sounds, but there are many other synth sounds that are just atrocious and should be banned forever, no matter what.

problem is, some of these awful sounds are being "rediscovered" today by millennials and particularly in EDM stuff for the simple reason that since nobody would dare to use them again they are so bad they are "original" ... but again there's a catch, sound alone won't make a great song, at best it will make a weird or pseudo-original composition.

i never agreed taht Classical is the answer but in many ways i fully understand where Julian Johnson is coming from and his frustration at modern EDM and Pop.
the problem with bad music is you can't avoid it ... cant go in a pub drinking a beer without being hammered by bad modern music and neither in any disco or club, and good luick listening to the radio or taking a taxi, we're surrounded by mediocre music and we dont even notice, this is the tragedy.

 

Again I can agree with much of what you say. Kontakt maybe sampled rather than synthesized therefore in effect it is made with real violins as wouldn't exist in the first place without the orchestra
That's why many are ridiculous prices. I get what you mean though
I think there is a distinction to be made between a composer or whatever who churns out custom required material on a daily basis and an artist.
Maybe workflow can be the primary focal point for churning, "composer" type.
However i imagine some say it's not.
As for an artist i'd guess that inspiration or ideas are more important than workflow and sometimes different approaches work for different people.
I also agree that digital is great but for some maybe so is analog
Choice and whatever works for yourself I guess

 

yes but it's all good and funny till you reach the point you've explored a good chuck of the musical perimeter.
i like many genres and sub genres but i also hate many others, i cant listen them all, i will never "explore" the depths of death metal or hiphop or cheesy chinese pop or some godforsaken obscure african tribe folk music, there's a limt in my time and dedication.

im trying to do my best but i'm limited, i even traveled a lot and always made a point of listening as much as i can of the local folk and traditional music, come to my house you will see plenty of stuff you wont probably ever heard of .. but if you ask me if i really like it .. well probably not too much .. interesting YES, but i havent heard any super duper masterpiece in african, indian, middle east, chinese, and asian music in general ... south american might be another story but havent been there yet.

 

yes, as you say we're in the era of reinvention and recycling.
almost every song being piblished today is a recycle or a remix or a reinvention or just a total rip off of old stuff.

this is true also in fashion, photography, architecture, food, and much much more.

reason : we've probably seen it all in all these fields and so the only way out is reinventing etc.
and that's OK for me, but we must be conscious about it, we can't expect to live in new territories or brave new worlds or terra incognita because we're not.

just look at all these videos of overpaid DJs at music festivals, huge crowds of millennials dancing at EDM tracks.
do you think they know at least 50% of those tracks are the carbon copy of stuff taht was played in 1992-1997 ?
i dont think so, and they surely think this EDM is the best thing since sliced bread, actually they may even think the DJ made it himself or that he's somehow playing an instruments instead of pressing play on Ableton ?

no more brave new worlds, at least not in EDM.
EDM havent radically evolved in 20 years, with dubstep being the bastard child.

 

I'm so concerned people don't post any song to this forum after this thread. What's your suggestion for the future producers as a superior listener? What do they listen? Which approach should they consider to be another Avenel? What do you produce exactly? and whatever you deem it advisable. We will be so pleasure to hear them from the mouth of a old and experienced electronic explorer. I don't want to experiment all the feelings you've spent your time for them and to choose the right path.

 

many composers claim they use libraries just for "quick sketching" but i know it's bullshit, lots of famous orchestral songs were indeed mixdowned on a DAW with zero orchestral musicians involved at all.

even Hans Zimmer is only re-orchestrating part of his scores, anything else is done on cubase and later of protools.

workflow is everything when your goal is to make a product, this is obvious.
for anything else workflow can be of secondary importance of course, but still there's no reason to waste too much time in doing things that can be partially automated, it's 2017 not 1977 .. and again everything has been already invented so if you think you're doing something NEW you better think again ...

i would forget about synths and stick with some less popular plugins, AAS in particular is doing great stuff with Physical Modeling syntesis and i also see some FX now operating with Physical Modeling like Adaptiverb by Zynaptiq.

i plan on doing some weird stuff with Adaptiverb soon, that's definitely uncharted territory, let's see where and how far i can push it, i'm not aware of any other similar reverb.

as for Obscurium it has been a delusion so far, it looked great, but ...

2CAudio Kaleidoscope is very very promising, but slow and cumbersome to use, i havent pushed it too far and i dont know if something nice can come out of it, we will see.

 

hahaha there's no problem with my rants, i can rant and rave but if i want to be published i have to produce what the labels want.
my opinions on EDM and all mean nothing to them and i keep them for myself.

future producers should do exactly the same : explore and study and learn, but then make what the market wants.
market is one thing, and your own personal projects are another thing, totally apart from each other, there can't be any compromise.

nobody is seeking elitists or snobs, they want products that sell, period.

the right path is : keep your mouth shout about your world view and deliver the goods you're paid for.
rants and polemics wont give any benefit to your career, smile and be happy, for anything else you can rant on forums or with trusted friends.

 

think your missing my point Avenel not that it's hugely important lol.

By virtue of the fact that sampled libraries use "samples" rather than synthesis the user in effect is using the product of REAL instruments.
I'm not denying that many use Kontakt for film scores etc but more the point that real musicians and real instruments were the provider of the primary source content.
What serious composer is going to use synthesis for an orchestral score unless it's possibly experimental?
For any degree of realism sampled content or real instruments themselves will most likely be involved somewhere along the line.

I do like AAS plugins. Think they make some great stuff.
Sugar Bytes stuff is also great and often a different approach.

As for Zynaptiq your work with Adaptiverb sounds interesting. Zynaptiq make fantastic products.
Adapriverb a bit taxing on the CPU but then again so is reverb & convolution in general.

Personally I think Zynaptiq products are hugely overpriced but they are real interesting & fresh

 

sooner or later Libraries will sound almost as good as the real deal.
this is a tragedy for acoustic musicians but nothing can stop Digital at this point in history, actually we're maybe just witnessing the very tip of the iceberg.
for instance in the text-to-speech department there's so much room for improvement and same for realistic synthetized vocals.
apps like Vocaloid are absolutely terrible but im faithful one day things will improve big time.

in any case the gap is closing, every year we see some progress.
sure, big budget hollywood movies use real orchestras while the original score is "sketched" on a DAW, but for how long ?
already now all the non-budget films and documentaries use libraries and they see nothing wrong on it, and really whats the problem with that as long as it sounds OK ?
i dont give a shit if a song is using real violins or Kontakt, what matters is the final result.

AAS : yes it's great and i makes some sounds that cannot be done with synths, this is the key factor.
Sugar Bytes : excellent too

Zynaptiq : i dont know about the price, i only use cracked VSTs.
yes it's quite cpu heavy but at the moment i'm only test-driving it.

i tend to treat FX as an instrument, modern FX as so powerful and game changing that you can use pretty much even a bunch of awful sounds and come out with amazing results.
that's why i cant stand the analog freaks, their BS just have no place in the reality of modern DAWs and FX, they're stuck in the 70s.

 

Unveil, Unfilter, Unchirp and Pitchmap
400 euro each.
Is a 4 me personally.

 

Oh yeah, thanks for sharing, @foster911 I enjoyed all ur experimentation, as per. And u finally finished a song! It was enjoyable & evocative! Anyway, this topic got a bit teal deer, so apologies if I quoted out of context. Or accidentally responded to trollololol:

Arpeggiators just take some of the donkey work & drudgery out of composition. Record a repetitive part. Avoid RSI. Profit. Similarly, presets just let you hear what a (good/bad/indifferent) sound designer can make w/ a new synth. It's just education and inspiration. As far as loops (grooves) goes, maybe that's a lil bit different. But y'know. Not much. If u have to beat urself over the hands and brain w/ ur "authenticity", ur prolly doing it wrong.

 

It's not my work. From an anonymous producer. Maybe 10 years later at that grade.

Mr. @Avenel opened my eyes by applying the DEAD title to these kinds of works and also others. Why should I create a music that at the end he as a front-runner doesn't like it? I still don't know which kinds of electronic musics he likes best. If he gives me a clue about his favorites, I'll put my steps at that route. I want to receive my award from his own hands.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 27, 2017

Even when you turn off the internal voice and use MIDI Out to sequence notes and CCs..?
It gets even better if you load Obscurium as a plugin inside Bidule and host that in your DAW.

 

Last edited: Jan 27, 2017

"Zynaptiq : i dont know about the price, i only use cracked VSTs." <-- R2R

 

that's an approach that could lead to inteesting results but it would mean going into Arpeggiator territory so what's the point of using Obscurium ?
if i need something that is half arpeggiator and half synth there are many other alternatives.

 

why all this fuss about arpeggiators ? first of all if you can't even play an arpeggio on your keyboard slowing down the tempo and using auto-quantize you better give up and become a DJ.

secondly, there's cubase midi-loops, there's cut & paste, there are midi filters and randomizer, so many alternatives to automated arpeggio.

be honest, you know very well why people love arpeggios : because they CANT PLAY.

they cant play and probably they cant invent or come up with anything remotely interesting.
take a look at Diego Stocco's videos (he's a lead sound designer for Spectrasonics among other things) and see some real creativity so you can get a rough idea.

 

why all this fuss about arpeggiators ? first of all if you can't even play an arpeggio on your keyboard slowing down the tempo and using auto-quantize you better give up and become a DJ.

secondly, there's cubase midi-loops, there's cut & paste, there are midi filters and randomizer, so many alternatives to automated arpeggio.

be honest, you know very well why people love arpeggios : because they CANT PLAY.

they cant play and probably they cant invent or come up with anything remotely interesting.
take a look at Diego Stocco's videos (he's a lead sound designer for Spectrasonics among other things) and see some real creativity so you can get a rough idea.

you think i'm impressed by Tim Exile ? no, because of people like Diego Stocco and many others like him.