The haunting of the new

Korg Prologue

The title of a classic Ray Bradbury short story, borrowed here temporarily, describes something that happened at the start of this year, and it shows how increasingly limited number of designers can think in novel ways when it comes to, paradoxically perhaps, re-visiting legacy technology of yesteryear. One manufacturer has proven yet again that when putting the musician at the centre of the design thinking, the result can be again a step evolution with something that nobody ever created in a hardware instrument.

We have seen years of retro synth offerings that were inundating the insatiable current market without offering much that the state-of-the-art technology could add as extras to our (home or other) studios of today.

When there was some innovation, usually, with extremely few exceptions, big and small names alike have come forward with instruments that, at best, had small variations on a theme, or added something that then stopped well short of what it could have become.

As usual, the beginning of the year and the NAMM show was expected to parade, even if in the preliminary states of not quite market-ready teasers, the latest and greatest offerings from music instrument makers.

Perhaps NAMM 2018 was one of the most polarised so far, in terms of the samey, endless variations on previous and current themes vs. the truly innovative ideas in the field of electronic instruments. As the ancient saying goes, light shines brighter in darkness - and this year there was one and only one step evolution that made the absence of innovation in the other products all the more evident.

Once again, countless new analogue variations, new modules, new re-spins (this is no longer a contradiction in terms, in the retro wave...) of the past, recent past and even present.

Innovation does not mean adding some extra polyphony or extra oscillators, an age-old matrix sequencer or whatever long pre-existed component to an existing design. Whatever name may stand behind it, let it be Moog or Dave Smith Instruments or Novation, this is simply a re-iteration (as illustrious as it may be) of existing technology.

Among the manufacturers that in the past months did not just regurgitate old ideas or just put new spin on essentially the same previously marketed instruments, Waldorf did stand out with the flagship Quantum. However, even this is merely bringing hardware instruments in line with software plugins that existed for decades.

Still, finally, a granular synthesis engine integrated with something else inside a tangible instrument... but no step evolution here, nothing that many others have not thought of before in terms of sound generation.

Waldorf Quantum

Going back a little bit, in the slightly less immediate past, Roland has thought of hybrid analogue / digital instruments, and produced a while ago the JD-Xa. However, apart from its frustrating user interface, the most frustrating is the stopping in conceptual thinking half-way through. It is a horrendously limited instrument compared to what the marriage of digital and analogue engines could have been.

Roland JD-Xa

Yamaha has produced the Genos, that in their breathtaking audacity (and by definition shocking  incorrectness) they dared to call a workstation. For many decades, the Korg M1 has defined and back then basically create the category - and even on a superficial scan of the Genos specs, it fails fundamentally and spectacularly.... and it is, at best, a sample-based arranger keyboard on steroids.

Yamaha Genos

Long gone are the days when Roland and Yamaha have produced step evolutions and presented entirely new ideas in usable instruments. Apart from endless re-spins of their glorious past (distant past...), what we see is the same synthesis engines being re-spun endlessly, in the best of cases, with some tweaks and expansions...

Even the Yamaha Montage was merely a beefed-up re-spin of their FM and sample-based AWM2 dual engine synths, with a user interface innovation. The brutal fact is that since FM synthesis (in the era-defining Yamaha DX7) and variphase engines (in the innovative Roland V-Synth), these manufacturers have not produced anything other than gradual increments of pre-existing technologies. Nor have many others...

The only step evolution produced and presented in mature form, winning also the "best in show" award at NAMM 2018, was the Korg Prologue. The major step is not because of them releasing yet another analogue instrument, not even because it is a hybrid digital + analogue synth.

There was a lot of discussion on its modulation capabilities with one LFO... which, incidentally, was also the case of several era-defining analogue instruments of the past... Somehow we have not seen legendary Prophet 5 synths tossed in dustbins by annoyed owners because of their single LFO :)

What those discussions and the subjective debates missed entirely, was what we could witness for the first time ever in a hardware synth... Apart from a hybrid architecture that did not stop half-way through the quest of capitalising on its possibilities (as Roland did with the aforementioned JD-Xa), it introduces user-definable, user-programmable digital oscillators and digital effects (!) in the multi-engine.

The ability to define whatever digital oscillator (also digital effects) with a software development kit (SDK) to be released in April, to have 16 of these user-definable units that operate seamlessly as any pre-defined oscillator in the Prologue synth, well, it is something we see for the first time in a full-fledged non-modular hybrid synth keyboard... and as the cliche goes, possibilities are really endless.

Korg Prologue versions

What it shows again, is that in a landscape dominated by the retro movement, somebody can come up with a brand new idea that instead of repeating the same old concepts, elevates them to entirely new heights.

It showed off the increasingly painful difference between thinking with purely marketing minds (let's re-spin a many decades old engine and violate even consecrated instrument category definitions with a huge price tag, one may guess what keyboard this applies to...) and with musician-oriented engineering minds.

Roland a while ago has introduced the plug-out concept, where essentially a software plugin could be loaded into their System-1 and System-8 keyboards. However, once again it fundamentally limited itself: the plug-outs are only done by the manufacturer, there is no open software development, and the plug-out slots are extremely limited anyway.

It was another example and another frustrating case when one gets close to an idea, completely misses the potential and with a very profit-oriented approach produces an almost-solution that does not have the musician and sound creator at its centre,  instead it firmly keeps the manufacturer's marketing thinking at its centre with an iron grip.

Even in this backward-looking market-driven world, Prologue, with the extremely few exceptions of some smaller manufacturers and some modular offerings, it shows there is hope. It happens to come from one of the big names, but it seems possible to come up with something new. As in the case of Kronos, the superlative workstation, this is again something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

However, it is also symptomatic how devoid of innovation the entire landscape has become, where a few, increasingly few, new ideas stand out.

As in Ray Bradbury's wonderful tale, the newly (re-)created embodiments of old technology can have, in this case, exciting and entirely novel spirits haunting it in the best possible sense.

It also shows that innovation can be propelled by a user- and musician-centric approach, even if it now demands quite a technological skillset in order to capitalise on the offered potentials.

Hopefully, this spellbinding haunting of the new will continue in some, let it be small or super-large, names in the industry.

In the aftermath of NAMM 2017

NAMM 2017 has finished recently, and although it is always far from just an electronic instrument show, it has further emphasized a very solid trend among big and small synth manufacturers alike.

If one questions the countless retro and retro-emulating gear being paraded again by the the big and small names, and the scarcity of truly innovative thoughts, well, this is merely a response to a demand.

Synthesizers are, fundamentally and by definition, unique instruments in their ability to create and shape old and new sounds. Also, they can bridge the sonic and temporal gap between many centuries' and many distant realms' musical tradition - they can produce an often-thought-to-be impossible sonic world that can be, at the same time, ancient and contemporary, even futuristic, in the right hands.

However, while they had been the vehicles and, no pun intended, instruments of sonic and musical innovation for decades, the present shows a different direction.

Unprecedented technological advances created an everyday and increasingly affordable reality in which, to quote a recent line from Klaus Schulze, one can only be limited by one's imagination and not the instrument's capabilities.

Is then electronic music of today marked by unprecedented sonic innovation? Are the newer and newer synth and studio gadgets forward looking innovations to facilitate this sonic progress?

Occasionally, and increasingly rarely, yes.

Occasionally, there are leaps in sound-making and sound-shaping ability - think of samplers, FM synthesis, granular synthesis, variphase processing, morphing filters...

Occasionally, even if underlying mathematics and technology are relying on pre-existing concepts, the instruments themselves represent leaps in how a musician can unleash his/her creative powers. Think of compact affordable modular synths, or the astounding music workstations like the M1 and its successors, or the vast sample libraries shaped further by complex processing plugins and/or sampler keyboards.

However, as the latest NAMM also demonstrated, a heavy trend is filling rooms with... recycled history.

Some are caught in a loop of releasing endless remakes and variations of their glorious classics from the past decades, others add more polyphony to previous classic models and/or architectures.

Certainly, there is a demographic element that creates insatiable demand for such retro gems being recycled endlessly. The blogger is part of that demographic, but hopefully not yet caught in this mental loop.

As it happened with motorcycles, there is an age group that once dreamed about those beasts, but now can afford them in much beefed-up versions. There are entire new genres established that are nostalgically re-creating past trends in electronic music, or in general, of music that was predominantly relying on electronic instruments.

Beyond this demographic phenomenon, there are new generation musicians who reach for the retro sounds and retro instruments' recreated or souped-up versions with an aim to add a certain special flavor to established mainstream electronic music sub-genres.

But... in many ways, we are witnessing a polarisation of electronic music.

Apart from the still purely academic ventures in the vein of IRCAM experiments, in the accessible electronic music there are extremely few names who truly make use of these instruments' unique capabilities.

The rest are using eminently unconventional instruments in extremely conventional manner - and when innovation is celebrated because it sounds exactly like a sequencer-laden track from 40+ years ago, then something is very warped in our perception.

To return to NAMM, one of the highlights was the Arturia Matrixbrute - and an otherwise superb demo showed the sequencer capabilities... heralded as a major sensation and as an innovative beast of an instrument, whilst the produced music sounded exactly like Tangerine Dream's Ricochet from 1975. Yes, it was 42 years ago.

The time warp could not be more complete nor more obvious.

Nobody can produce quantum leaps in musical instruments every year, but perceptions of what is innovation are being distorted by mere addition of more polyphony, more sampling disc space, more pre-existing synth engines crammed under a single bonnet, more step sequencer buttons now affordably bolted on top of some otherwise unremarkable analog engine.

While this perception distortion is occurring in the market, it is then also occurring in the music that is produced with these "innovative" instruments.

With notable exceptions, some popular trends in electronic music are re-tracing their steps or someone else's steps, and media heralds them as "new voices" while they are faithfully reproducing decades-old sounds (in widest sense).

There have been and there are some extremely popular electronic musicians in mainstream genres, who could blend the dance music of their era with gregorian choir passages... or high-octane EDM with sounds of the '50s, or with sounds of distant musical cultures.

However, while even media perception is warped by the retro "innovations", there is a danger that the most imaginative and boundless instruments are predominantly becoming mere tools to clear or smooth some beaten paths or widen them a little bit.

If our expectations of what sonic exploration is does not get out of the grip of retrospective loops, then we must not blame manufacturers for coming up with endlessly regurgitated history,

They are running a business and they are responding to demand that does not seem to decay any time soon.

Retro progress

Korg ARP Odyssey FS (2017)

The new year began with some retro legends like the ARP Odyssey full-size version hitting the market, as a result of Korg's continued dedication to analogue revival.

However, the somewhat philosophical aspects of this growing retro revival are something notable... and undoubtedly controversial.

The surge in the use of analogue modeling instruments, and then true analogue (new, old or remakes of old) instruments and sonorities has been with us for some time. Even dominant mainstream electronic music trends, also some of the biggest names in some of the very "here and now" electronic music sub-genres (think of Daft Punk), have returned very self-consciously to the analogue sound world.

However, two aspects are of concern - one is related to the instruments themselves with their marketing strategies, and the other related to the new-old and old-new sound aesthetics in the creative thinking.

To begin with the creative aspects, a highly controversial question could be posed very easily while looking at recent decades of synthesizer use. What percentage of musicians create individual, hence new, sounds with the instruments that are, above all, for the synthesis of unlimited palettes of new sounds? How many spend time to sound original, instead of using vast number of presets from vast number of libraries that the vast number of incredibly powerful new instruments offer?

The number is infinitesimal.

One cannot help thinking (not just feeling) that, based on contradictions between what technological progress brought and how much originality is heard whilst using that technology, there is a regressive trend of some proportions.

There are some notable and successful attempts in sounding (or, in case of some of the synth music legends, still sounding) original and exploring ever more stunning new sonic worlds. As in the case of even legendary old-timers like Gary Numan, it means many months of painstaking attention given to the creation of a personal artistic and sonic world that serves the concepts behind their works.

The opposite and considerably more superficial trend is what happens in fashion, too. It may seem like a trivialized parallel, but it could not be more accurate analogy: classic denim trousers of certain tailoring are revived with some twists by a certain brand - and posters say: 'be individual'. With a, one may add, mass-produced piece of clothing that millions wear after the first days or weeks of novelty are over.

Cue the legendary synths of yesteryear, always at some price tag and always with some marketing to make the old legends seem and sound even more individual and personalized.

The superficial and increasingly omnipresent approach to individuality is a musician resorting to the limited edition old-new, new-old, sounds and instrumentation. Oh look, a rare lead line from a Model D revamped version! Ah those filters from the Odyssey! That chorus from the Polysix!

What is happening, and this is factual reality in current electronic music, is the non-functional 'vintage for the sake of vintage' artistic (?) approach. Kudos to those, who integrate the vintage legends into their already individual sonic universe. Again, easiest example is Daft Punk, but going back through the years, even veterans like Jean-Michel Jarre can still use the old in novel ways to this day.

The problem is when the instrument, electronic as it may be, is not an instrument any more. When it is not 'just', with all its specifics and personality, a source of sounds to realize a sound world as imagined by the musician.

When it becomes a goal, instead of being an instrument, then we have the large parts of the analogue revival on our hands... where analog legendary sounds are used without any overall artistic concept, just for their 'refreshing vintage individuality'.

The most bitter irony is when some talk of the analogue warmth these legendary instruments bring and then they use them in the coldest, impersonal and superficial manner.

One does not spend weeks or months shaping his/her sound world, in order to be individual - one resorts to the most recent revived legend and saturates his/her compositions with the vintage sounds (or their emulations). Tada. A new revolution in sound... purely by returning to the past - exactly as one pulls the vintage tailored denim off a shelf.

The marketing of these instruments unfortunately plays very much into this phenomenon, exactly as it did with the mentioned classic pieces of clothing.

The instruments themselves, especially when it comes to the revived legends like the Odyssey and MiniMoog Model D, show a predictable and questionable duality that support the more impersonal and less creative impulses in amateur and established musicians alike - kudos to the increasingly few exceptions.

While they are undoubtedly unique in terms of their characteristic sound, they are highly specialized (and therefore often limited) in their capabilities - as legendary and revolutionary they may have been in their heyday. Their production costs are infinitesimal compared to the originals.

However, their price tag can be hugely out of sync with their physical realities. One, naturally, pays for the name, pays for the legend - and to make the contradictions in the performance-price-manufacturing costs triangle less strident, the manufacturers resort to the emotional side of even hardened electronic musicians.

It is made as very limited edition. It is made by hand. It is, to quote, "aged" before it gets to our studios. It is released in different colors and sizes. Above all, we buy a legend. It is, as one of Ray Bradbury's classic stories says, the haunting of the new.

While manufacturers, even hugely respectable ones with long tradition of sustained innovation, are after the money by releasing different sizes and color versions of the same revived electronic legend, something is deeply wrong. Their interior essence has become less important than their exterior superficial properties.

The electronic and other musicians who use these resurrected oldies for something new, and fuse the newest with sometimes the oldest (think of Theremin revival), are in a tiny minority.

We are chasing something warmer and more human, while we feel drowned in a vastly complex digital world - this is quite acceptable and even predictable, but most of this drowning is our own making as we let the instruments take over rather than be instruments in our creative processes. In many technology areas the same trends and counter-trends occurred and are occurring, as a reaction to some perceived dehumanization.

It is just vastly and deeply ironic, that in some (often mainstream) cases the false perception of some dehumanization results in a mechanical and rather reflex-action reaching for the ultimate in perceived 'warmth' and 'humanity'.

The bad news is, as too many electronic music creations of recent years show, that the result of this mechanical chase for vintage warmth is the very opposite of what the chase was about.

We ended up with countless albums of mass-produced, soul-less and cold electronica that wants to be so desperately individual, like the mentioned denim, that ends up being indistinguishably bland - while reduces, deplorably, the vintage sonic legends, too to mere gimmicks.

As it happened in other areas and in other eras, hopefully this chase for the superficial humanity and warmth again suffers some normalization. Such overcompensation, aided by misguided marketing, has happened countless times - and hopefully this time, too, the revived or genuine vintage legends can occupy a more functional and personalized corner in our studios, in physical and metaphorical sense.

(Post also available on the Niume platform now).

Feeding digital vultures

After two busy summer months, finally returning with a topic that may be of some help to indie/unsigned musicians...

As the late Umberto Eco famously and astutely put it, the internet gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. One would add, some crazy material is not only unreliable, but it actively seeks your money... for dubious services that contradict basic logic of (in this case) music industry and marketing.

In the case of budding musicians wishing to promote their creations, this far from positive take on the internet's wonders applies very much when it comes to the digital vultures that try to capitalize on musicians' aspirations.

The classic recipe is ubiquitous, unfortunately: myriad so-called "push promotion" websites, twitter accounts and the like try to make musicians believe that they shall make the musicians' creations known to N (N is usually a very eye-watering large number) individuals, organisations, forums etc.

No matter how much one wishes to promote one's beloved musical or other output, one has to ask the fundamental question before clicking on some payment button: even if it is true, what do the recipients of these so-called "promotional" services' messages, tweets etc. think? How do they act when they are bombarded indiscriminately by these myriad messages, all promoting myriad artists they never heard of?

It is a rhetoric question. Please, please, do not feed these vultures... If you find them on forums and blogs, mentioning how many "genuine" cases they made famous, most of those are made up usually or... they represent an infinitesimal proportion of artists that via other channels usually "landed" some sought-after objective for themselves.

Look at the case of licensing services, too - the fundamental rule is that if they promise you licensing deals, placements in adverts, films etc., they must not ask you upfront fees. Any, any, reputable and real agency will make their money by representing that artist - yes, yes, it sounds simple and very basic, but it is astonishing how many budding artists end up feeding these vultures.

Let's just name GoDIY Records here as it is something highly representative of the very professional-looking and -sounding carrot dangling outfits. Because I had the dubious honor of being contacted by them very recently, the email exchanges are highly representative and are a perfect summary of how these outfits' business model runs - and would share the classic steps in shutting their attempts down:

Step 1: Highly professional-looking email, with links to websites and social media profiles. Offering the Moon on a very pleasantly shaped stick, but, beware: setup fees and monthly fees.

Step 2: If the artist asks about these fees' justification, further emails, even very touchingly personal phone calls may follow (!). One feels utterly flattered by such attention. They waive the hefty setup fee, offering to only take monthly membership...

Step 3: If the artist asks: have they even listened to my music and can they describe how it fits their clients' needs?... The answer is usually vague: "we found your tracks on xy (e.g. ReverbNation and the like) sites", and "your sound" is perfect...

Step 4: Artist ask them: how come they have not googled or looked in myriad other places where the music is reachable, why do they build a vague and sweeping opinion based on one or two tracks on an anyway dubious "artist promotion" website? Reaction: usually silence and communication ends.

Step 5 may follow sometimes: Ask them how do they differentiate themselves from other "services" that need upfront fees for the honor of being "represented" and are simply praying on budding artists? Result: usually silence and all communication ends. At least with the mentioned outfit, this, instead of a reply detailing their business model and "success stories", resulted in the (very much expected) silence.

Budding musicians, please, no matter how enticing some vultures sound, please, do ask the pertinent questions.

Corner them.

Use their own rhetoric and probe, probe, probe.

What have you got to lose?

A genuine service (never mind that it would never want money upfront) would be able to answer the basic, but surprisingly effective, probing questions.

You do not offend them. If they are in the business and if they are professional, they a) fully appreciate your objective queries, and their motivations, b) they are after your music and they do not just drop you because of some justified probing questions. If they do, it is already a sign that you should stay well away from them!

The internet has brought countless such digital vultures and, alas, judging by their number, they are making a living because indie/unsigned musicians are feeding them...

Of two poles

Photo: Karma-Lab.com

Vangelis, in one of his '80s interviews, stated quite aptly that a lot of development has gone into electronic instruments, but what he really lacked in synth producers' output was the effort put into making the instruments, well, really musical instruments for musicians...

A lot has changed since, and by not only going for the usual "endorsements" from keyboardists but also involving them in the creative process, synth makers have been releasing gear that could increasingly be seen as intuitive instruments. With the exponentially increasing complexity of the synth engines, this was obviously not an easy achievement...

Apart from this obvious evolution that we now take for granted whenever we approach a new synth beast, there has been an intriguing polarisation of the gear landscape.

One one extreme, we have what one may call the "total" syndrome (as in some toothpastes). Forgive the analogy for a tiny moment... and let us think of e.g. Korg's Kronos workstation. A mighty beast by any measure, and a major evolutionary step after the already unprecedented M3's achievements.

However, it is philosophically belonging to this "total" approach: let us cram as many as possible synth engines into it, integrate them nicely, make a revolutionary change of direction toward expandable/upgradeable software rather than focusing on mainly hardware updates.

Musicians in certain genres may never use the myriad Hammond organs, nor the myriad piano or physical modelling capabilities, hence ignoring some if not most of the packed-together synth engines.

Something like Kronos wants to do everything, albeit in an integrated way, but without major customisation possibilities in the sense that e.g. some musicians in certain genres may wish to only pay for some of the synth engines, whilst enjoying what the user interface and the operating system offers. As long as this "total" approach does not take one away from the focus on what musicians really need as users, then fine...

On the other extreme, we have the small, focused, sometimes tiny and bordering on the irresistibly cute, synths... Think of Roland's Boutique series, Korg's analogue (and analogue modelling) gear released in the past few months, or the interesting comeback of hardware sequencers and, generally speaking, the revival of the "oldies and goldies"... Even Minimoog Model D has seen a re-release few weeks ago...

Therefore, personally, it will be very interesting to see where the next evolutionary step comes from and just what the next strategic step will be. Also, personally, one hopes it will not be the direction of the, again forgive the closest analogy, "total" toothpastes with added endless series of comma-separated words that were not in the after-all-not-so-total previous products...

The risk is that workstation landscape will shift toward this latter nightmare-ish scenario that will take us backward, focusing away from what was becoming more and more instrument-like despite its inner complexities... One hopes that with the trend seen so far, the big names shifting the big workstations will not be seduced by such marketing race, i.e. cramming more and more into same or updated hardware.

If the success of "total" workstations will be seductive and make strategists take this latter path of bloating the beasts without really thinking of the musicians' needs, hence inevitably, as seen many times in the past, sacrificing usability, spontaneity and playability in favour of feature lists... then that would definitely be a huge step back.

As Klaus Schulze said few decades ago, when digital gear was seemingly taking over the world and there was seemingly no return, one does not want to stop for minutes, or, one may add, tens of minutes, for poking around menu systems in order to set something up. Hopefully neither "total" magnificent workstation beasts, nor the specialised little beasts will take that route again...