iPad Moog

[James Coplin]

I've been thinking about this more as well.  I've been kind of returning
to my synths after a long hiatus forced by grad school.  I've been
surprised by a couple of things the distance has brought.  First off, a
lot of my old junker synths that I pretty much have because they aren't
worth enough to sell and others I never use because the sound was so
painfully clichéd sound great once again.  Acquiring, repairing, and
upgrading Tony's MKS-70 really drove this home.  I had never bought a
MKS-70 even though I always wanted one because by the time I could afford
it, it had been used to death.  Now, it sounds jaw droopingly awesome.
Part of this is time and the second part is how I program synth now.  The
tones are being used in ways I never would have in the 80's or early 90's.
Hold that thought...

Secondly, the vintage analog stuff I have, which is a fairly substantial
pile, does in fact sound amazingly better than the digital stuff.  I know
this shouldn't be a surprise but it is when I thought about it.  Like I
had posted in the original thread, I couldn't put my finger on it.  It has
been bugging me and so I started trying to find what it was about the
sound that moved something in me.  I noticed as I played with the analogs,
I played them differently.  I could dial up two basically the same patches
on a digital synth and the analog but I would find myself playing them
completely differently.  I found myself interacting with the analogue more
- a tweak here, a slight mod there, etc.  As Tony pointed out, there was a
feedback loop going on in slight yet amplifying ways.  My thought is that
the inherent irregularities in the analogue signal path are presenting my
brain with a constantly, even if slight, variation in timbre that I am
forced to interact with.  I tweak, I touch.  On the digital, no such
timbre changes occurs.  My brain sort of stops paying attention at some
point and I "settle" for what I'm hearing.  I decided to weaken the
digital by introducing my randomness, slight changes and tweaks that had
little to no significant change on the sound.  Now I found I would start
to tweak again - nudge a parameter, listen, tweak some more.

I original came to music via violin and piano and even though classical is
something *way* beyond my abilities or interests, the physicality of those
two instruments is something that has always stuck with me.  You can't
ignore the sound parameters of these.  You have to touch it to make sound
and how you touch it affects the sound.  There is an intimate feedback
loop there.  I definitely think that digital can inspire me tonally as
much as analogue but I also think it takes more work on the programmer to
make it happen.  I know my Wavestations (yes I have two, I'm a loser and I
love them) which are as far away from analogue as you can get constantly
make sounds that I can lose ages in listening tweaking, and interacting
with.

James R. Coplin

-----Original Message-----
From: music-bar-bounces at lists.music-bar.org
[mailto:music-bar-bounces at lists.music-bar.org] On Behalf Of Andrew
Tarpinian
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 1:47 PM
To: Music-bar
Subject: Re: iPad Moog


On Sep 16, 2011, at 1:35 PM, James Coplin wrote:

>> Much of the charm sits between the ears of whoever is playing.
>
> Ding! Ding! Ding!  And we have a winner...
>

> .... I hooked him up
> with mine and he was floored by just a single osc voice.  There is
> something there but I have no idea what it is.  It's probably all in
> my head.

It IS in your head actually :)

What you said has been sticking in my brain lately - I think something
exists in the connection of the instrument and the player, the instrument
is inspiring the player in real time, the player is actually surprised by
what is coming out of the instrument (even if it is subtle,) this leads to
further creativity and expression in what is being played. You can design
a patch on an analog emulating soft synth but your brain know exactly what
that patch is going to do.

It's fucking inception man!

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