If you could design a music product ..

[Jay Vaughan]

> 
> Something that takes the principles of evolution to sound design.
> 


Time-series, n-ordered graph.  Got it.

> As for evolutionary sound design, I'm envisioning this as something where you start from a know sound - it could be from a sample, or a preset, or some analogue or physical modelling, or something you heard at 2:14 in a certain YouTube video - and start modifying that  This modification would be done by changing a vaguely defined parameter. Say, you want the sound to be more aggressive, or creakier, or rounder. You would somehow set how much more aggressive or creakier or rounder it should be.

I’m sensing innovation in the dictionary department of the interface.  That is to say you have a near-infinite word-cloud of ways of describing what you want to do to the sound - select one, and whatever the ‘physical’ requirements of the sound, the ‘word’-iness of the sound changes.

> 
> The tricky part will be to come up with a sensible list of parameters that you want to be able to change, and what the effect should be. What is a round sound anyway? The list of parameters is potentially endless.
> 

One thing I always thought about the UI of the Virus, for example, is that it is more of a dictionary than anything else. There is no musicality to it - just find the WORD you need, and ADJUST.

> If your phone can do it, so can your synth.
> 

I think for sure there is something to be said of the fact that the phone is the new application sphere.  Music-making on the iPhone is phenomenal in ways that the desktop plugin experience hasn’t yet approached - especially if you compose with multiple devices.  No question from me that 2 iPhones and an iPad are enough to bring a serious digital jam ethos into the picture.  The app-selection process is indeed like scrolling parameters.  Today I want synth-mod on the iPad.  Tomorrow its an MPC.  This is beyond what we’d ever hoped, and yet somehow its recognised in ways seemingly designed to invalidate the reality: we have too much power.



> 
> Please note that I deliberately didn't mention how the interface should look like. What's described above could be done in many different ways, be it in hardware, or on a touch screen, or with a mouse, or with a Minority Report kind of interface. That also gives you the possibility to carry your sounds from one environment to another.


I actually think that a return to musicality in the interface, with an bias towards simplicity, might be a good thing.  What does a musician need a screen for?  It doesn’t emit much of a beep.