Wave futures now: the novel Korg Wavestate synthesizer

Korg Wavestate (photo by Korg)

Wave sequencing exploded into public consciousness with the Korg Wavestation at the beginning of the 1990s.

The synth engine's core concept was innovative and powerful enough for this type of synthesis to survive well into the 21st century - not only as software synth re-incarnations, but also as key parts of flagship workstations like the OASYS and Kronos.

There are many reviews and demos out there of the new Wavestate synth, so here one would focus on the specifics of wave sequencing (as there are occasional misunderstandings in various forums or different digital waveform-based synthesis methods are conflated), and would highlight the central idea that truly makes the Wavestate a stunning development in wave sequencing synthesis.

The synthesis method pioneered by the Wavestation is not to be confused with mere memory-stored waveforms-based synthesis, where digital samples are just played back from memory as the oscillator part of the synthesis chain. In this sense, "romplers", as some call these, are very far from wave sequencing. Similarly, the PPG Wave-like revolutionary wavetable synthesis is eminently different, in that case we have snippets (e.g. single-cycle periods) of waveforms stored in adjancent tables of samples, and the synths is sweeping across these tables in a cyclical fashion.

The crux of the wave sequence-based synthesis is that waveforms played back from memory can be, well, sequenced: one can define consecutive time slots during which different digital waveforms' samples are played back. One can have cross-fade between these, again with pre-defined duration - or no cross-fades at all, i.e. the different waveforms abruptly transition from one to another.

Even if, absurdly, one has never heard wave sequenced sounds by 2020, it is perhaps easy to imagine the sonic possibilities.

If one wishes long evolving pads, then one can use in the wave sequences long cross-fade times with atmospheric sounds used as individual "slots" in the wave sequence. The result can be a moving, changing, evolving sound that is eminently different from other synthesis methods' results.

If one wishes to achieve rhythmic sounds with lots of changes and even full-blown grooves, then one can assemble a wave sequence with the desired timings, loops, and no cross-fades at all, for example.

Transitioning rapidly between components of the wave sequence can lead to phenomenal spectral movements, especially if one can alter the individual parts of the wave sequence.

The possibilities are endless... and Wavestation has rightly become one of the most unique-sounding and characteristic synths of recent decades, with instantly recognisable sounds.

In OASYS and in the Kronos HD-1 engine one could have the joy of finding the full wave sequencing capabilites of the mighty Wavestation, with some extra features added in - including user interface aspects, whereby managing wave sequences has become sublime via large touch screens.

Then comes the Wavestate...

If one has heard and/or grasped the essence and the possibilities of wave sequencing synthesis, then one can perhaps imagine what happens when KORG decides to add individual real-time control to all key parameters of wave sequences, structures them into multiple so-called lanes - and even adds randomisation capabilities.

Not only one has now real-time control via knobs in order to on-the-fly alter the wave sequences' component parts, but there are deep modulation possibilities for these parameters.

Well, with the many examples provided on SoundCloud, one doesn't have to merely imagine the resulting sonic power.

Thus, Wave Sequencing 2.0 is not an overstatement.

The cherry, well, a whole orchard on the cake is that Wavestate has numerous classic and digitally modeled filters (incl. those from the legendary MS-20 and Polysix), up to 14 simultaneous effects (incl. the perhaps most realistic and astonishing reverb, the O-Verb available on Oasys and the later Kronos), and even vector synthesis (via a joystick that we have seen on previous flagship models).

Latter allows real-time control between 4 layers of sounds, and the movements of the joystick can be captured and reproduced as part of the synth patch.

There are gigabytes of on-board waveforms, including the full Wavestation offering... so user can spend quasi-infinite amounts of time creating wave sequence Universes...

Photo: Korg

Tangerine Dream live at Barbican Hall: yet another landmark of electronic evolution

More than half of a century of electronic music came to Barbican Hall last night...

The London venue is renowned for a very varied calendar, in the sense that it makes a self-conscious effort to select the very best of classical and contemporary music.

On the stage where historic performances of ancient to futuristic music could be seen and heard over the years, by legends ranging from Ravi Shankar to Philip Glass, now Tangerine Dream took the sold out Hall into another Universe...

It was an important live performance for numerous reasons, not "just" another live appearance of an electronic music legend. So below impressions are not a perhaps usual run-down of the tracks and moments the audience could enjoy last night...

Firstly, we are now at a point that is more than fifty years after the band was formed - and we could see and hear them turn into luminaries of what became known as the Berlin School of electronic music. However, as difficult it may be for some to believe this, this is as far from a nostalgia act as certain quasars at the periphery of our known Universe are from our planet...

Sure, the audience always welcomes the legendary classics, and Barbican Hall audience was no exception. One could hear and enjoy parts of Sorcerer, Stratosfear, Poland Live, White Eagle, and as a theatrical master strike, second part of Ricochet, among other classics... but each and every composition was given new life and new energy by the current Tangerine Dream line-up.

Some commented within minutes of the end of the concert, that some renditions of compositions like the one from the Stratosfear album were probably the versions to remember. Let's not forget, this is an album from the mid-1970s, performed by a new line-up in 2019, which sadly has lost the founding member and luminary Edgar Froese few years ago...

The fact that new live versions of such classics can be considered by hardcore fans not only full of new life energy, but also somehow 'definitive' versions, is a huge achievement.

Second important point about the Barbican concert is that in a landscape filled with electronic acts that are focused on a more stereotypical type of electronica, Tangerine Dream still, in 2019, represents a unique island.

Why? Well, this is not electronic music where technology is allowed, or happens, to take over. This is not electronic music that is focused on its functional role.

In other words, as strange as it may sound, unlike EDM or ambient acts focused on functional role of music (i.e. to make us dance or to relax us, respectively), Tangerine Dream is closer to the ancient Greek's views on music. This is music that wants and succeeds to be a reflection of the wider Universe, wants to make us feel a sense of cosmic wonder and to take us out of our everyday reality. Pythagoras, whilst working on his musical theories, would have been happy to hear this performance :)...

In this sense, Tangerine Dream, with a set list spanning half of a century of electronic music, have demonstrated yet again that they are still very attached to the central ethos of the very first experimental years of the band: this is, as new age-ish it may sound nowadays after too much aimless over-use of some terms, cosmic music.

Using today's consecrated EM terms and genre labels, it would be quite a challenge to many EM fans to try to squeeze what Tangerine Dream still creates and performs into one of those increasingly narrowing categories.

Technology is "merely" an instrument here, and we could again see and hear musicians jamming and improvising together on stage. Electronic music? No, not in the way many would understand that word pairing.

Thirdly, it is no accident and no empty semantics in the title under which the performance ran: Quantum Of Electronic Evolution - emphasis on evolution.

All the old and new tracks that were performed have demonstrated eloquently: Tangerine Dream has not been, and still refuses to be, a static band. We can enlist the line-up changes, sure, but also more importantly the many changes in (often highly risky) directions. We can consider the still fiery live performances that every time surprise us with something new, which does not destroy the central intent of the original composition that can date back several decades even. Last night's performance was eminent proof of that.

Technology and people have changed vastly over the increasingly many years, but one could challenge even specialists to come up with a solid number of electronic acts that have not stopped evolving since the late 1960s.

The Barbican Hall performance was at the same time, and as paradoxical as it may sound, sublime and Earth-shattering live night exactly because of this evolution.

We can come up with many names that have spent many years performing the same golden gems over and over again, with a few cosmetic or technological twists here and there. This was emphatically not a concert of that kind...

What may be the ultimate open secret of Tangerine Dream is exactly their attitude to technology.

The reason why current line-up of Tangerine Dream can spend almost three hours surprising, enthralling, and animating the audience is because they are firstly musicians, and only secondly tech wizards.

The vast powers tamed or unleashed by them are serving the musical purpose - let's think of the ethereal improvised sections in the by now traditional live composition that closed the performance, with sublime violin seamlessly blending with electronics.

Let's think of the same sensitive violin, then the achingly beautiful and delicate Mellotron flutes and strings of yesteryear, joining forces with sequencers that could make the building shake.

Let's think of multi-layered and uniquely Tangerine Dream musical lines and curves that build up into compositions where the brain simply, and joyously, gives up trying to follow and analyse what is going on. The renditions of parts of the latest studio album, Quantum Gate, or the classics from Poland and Stratosfear, can be enumerated here.

If Tangerine Dream fans ever needed it, the Barbican Hall performance is once again reassuring them: this band does not stop evolving... 

Paul Frick, very notably, joined the Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane and Ulrich Schnauss trio in the second part of the concert... and as a theatrical master strike, he surprised us with the legendary piano intro to Ricochet Part II, which still remains a master class in live electronics.

As a fan, a huge thanks to the band for making more than fifty years of electronic music sound utterly contemporary, relevant, meaningful and, above all, moving!

The passing of a visionary: Alan R. Pearlman, founder of ARP

Alan R. Pearlman, founder of, and creative genius behind, ARP Instruments has died on 6 January, aged 93.

Even as a student, after the 2nd World War he was dreaming of electronic instruments that could be real musical instruments for musicians, instead of laboratory curiosities. When he founded ARP Instruments, he started to put his dream into practice - and the list of his patents is impressive to this day.

When Moog and ARP Instruments were rival companies, ARP being the second most known synthesizer brand, even Bob Moog recognised the technical merits of ARP 2500. First of all, unlike Moog synths of the day, the ARP had famously stable oscillators - so it didn't need the notorious frequent re-tunings due to oscillators drifting over time.

Unlike the modular Moog, this ARP legend has employed a matrix system and special pins to achieve the patching, instead of a mass of cables.

Illustrious names used the ARP 2500 and its more affordable successor, the ARP 2600: Pete Townshend, Jean-Michel Jarre, Jimmy Page, David Bowie, Herbie Hancock, Jerry Golsdsmith, Jeff Wayne... and many uses of the legendary synths are as famous as some of these artists.

In Star Wars, the R2-D2 robot's whistles and bleeps were made via ARP 2600, and a few years earlier, the musical communication with the UFO that landed in Close Encounters of the Third Kind was made on an ARP 2500...

Jean-Michel Jarre to this day possesses and uses an ARP 2500, and he employed it on the recent live revival of his classic Oxygene album, too.

As a masterstroke, ARP has also released a charming and eminently portable synth, too - the ARP Odyssey. It was a duophonic, compact and quite affordable powerhouse of a synth has become another sought-after legendary instrument, featured on countless records. Everybody from Klaus Schulze to Chick Corea to ABBA to Billy Currie has used this synths that was ultimately made in three versions.

What can illustrate better the longevity of A. R. Pearlman's ideas and innovations than the fact that mighty Korg in 2015 has resurrected the ARP Odyssey as something that some abbreviate fondly as the KARP Odyssey...

To quote Richard Boulanger, "even at 90 and beyond, Alan R Pearlman was still dreaming of new circuits, modules, and controllers! Undeniably, Alan R Pearlman was an engineering genius. Everyone recognizes that his synthesizers were beyond brilliant. But I truly believe that the heart and soul in his machines drew their spirit and life from Alan’s musical virtuosity on the piano, his truly deep musical knowledge, his passion and enthusiasm for “all” music, and his nurturing and generous support for young composers and performers, regardless of whether they were into classical, avantgarde, film, fusion, rock or pop."

Korg ARP Odyssey

It is extremely rare to have a brilliant engineer and innovator with deep musical sensitivity and understanding of what a musician needs. On top of that, Alan R. Pearlman had superlative feel for ergonomic design, for aesthetic considerations - therefore his creations were true gems of electronic instruments, in the fullest sense of that word.

It is not overstating his and his creations' significance if one says that his instruments had life-changing impact on many, on both technical minds and on great musicians who embraced technology.

Rest in peace, relentless innovator and dreamer...

Fifty switched-on years: Wendy Carlos, a modular Moog... and Bach

The 1968 original cover

In October 1968, the seminal album Switched-On Bach was released. Wendy Carlos, using an era-defining Moog synthesizer, has surprised audiences with pioneering electronic renditions of selected Bach compositions.

In 2018, this may sound absolutely banale - even if in 1968 none other than the legendary pianist Glenn Gould held the ground-breaking performances in the highest regard. We are  nowadays taking electronic instruments for granted, and synthesizer reworkings of classical pieces have been ubiquitous...

One really needs to put Wendy Carlos's unprecedented achievement in technical, musical, and also cultural context.

Electronic instruments, even with the arrival of Robert Moog's classic synthesizer, have been laboratory curiosities until then. Even if some electronic works so-to-speak escaped into the popular realm well before 1968, synthesized sound has not truly exploded into popular consciousness until then.

The technical challenges were numerous, and one can get an insight into this by consulting countless notes and interviews done with Carlos and others. The list is quasi-endless, from notoriously unstable tuning to the often overlooked fact that the synth on which Carlos performed the Bach pieces was essentially monophonic - i.e. it could produce sound for one note at a time. Custom "chord generators" had to be made, with chained-together oscillators, such that Bach's chord structures could also take shape.

We must not forget, this was Bach actually played on the Moog - no automation or programming of any sort has taken place. A revolutionary touch-sensitive keyboard allowed very articulated performances. Still, it necessitated an almost superhuman way of playing when faced with a monophonic keyboard - something that Carlos modestly called "detached" playing, as each key had to be activated on its own. Try and keep an eminently fluid and spirited performance going, playing on such an instrument...

These technical difficulties, heroically overcome by Carlos, lead us to the musical achievement.

This may well be a switched-on and fully electronic Bach, but it is very switched-on from musical performance perspective, too. As much as some voices denigrated the results, even "serious" musicians, like the aforementioned Glenn Gould, and the unexpectedly numerous public embraced it.

Even now, half a century later, Carlos's performances (including the particularly superb choices made in terms of the arrangements, i.e. synthesized timbres) range from eminently subtle to joyously bouncy.

The cultural impact and its effect on the public's perception of the new electronic instruments have been immense.

The first cohesive and large work, with truly world-wide popular success, recorded entirely with synthesizers was not a stereotypical pop or rock tune (like Telstar in 1962). It was an entire album of popular works by J. S. Bach... as a result of a stunningly audacious adventure centred around a synthesizer monster that was just about emerging from its laboratory environment...

Wendy Carlos in 1968

Have all negative preconceptions, by now simply anachronistic prejudices, related to electronic instruments been put to rest during the fifty years that followed?

Yes and no.

Both utterly high-brow and utterly popular music widely employs synthesizers, and so does pretty much everything in-between... Very often, the artificial delimitation line between non-electronic and electronic instruments is entirely blurred or non-existent, as audiences may not even be able to tell the difference between some samplers and the instruments they sampled. Also, often complex processing of traditional instruments' sounds makes those sound eminently electronic when they are not...

However, some still see electronic instruments as tools for creating "sterile", "not human", "machine" etc. music. Some sub-genres of electronic music, which heavily rely on robotic rhythms or entirely intentional robotic aesthetics, certainly do not help in shifting these out-dated misperceptions.

Even within the Berlin School of electronic music, e.g. Kraftwerk represents a diametrically opposite aesthetic and artistic intent compared to e.g. Tangerine Dream. Former had a specific message centred on technology, whilst latter explicitly used technology as merely a creative tool and never let it take over. See Kraftwerk standing immobile with their laptops, and see Tangerine Dream still, 50+ years on, jamming in lengthy live improvised sets... The concept and the intent behind their respective art is vastly different - and the resulting music also shows the radically different, even opposite, approaches to synthesizers.

The great Romantic passion in works by Vangelis are quite different from the energies unleashed by any of the trance or techno acts, and comparisons are unfair to make - as there are no valid comparisons between eminently different musical intentions and aesthetics.

However, one could say that views that consider electronic music to be "sterile" have been conceptually wrong from the very beginning.

Even in 1968, people looking at (as some never listened or wanted to listen to) Wendy Carlos's monster Moog synth as a tool for "machine" music were committing a fundamental error.

Not because of subjective pros and cons and tastes... but because it is an (intentional or not) confusion of three different things: instrument, medium, and content.

Synthesizers, as obvious it may seem when rationally thinking about them, are merely instruments... One can make, and has made ,sterile or cerebral music with a flute, too...

As the late, unparalleled Isao Tomita said once, synth-made electronic sound is as natural as the sound of thunder made by nature's electric discharges... After all, what creates the sound doesn't matter - the boundaries and preconceptions are in our minds only...

Cosmic dialogues: Tangerine Dream's 'The Sessions III'

When recently the first live composition sounded at a Tangerine Dream concert, the new line-up immersed the audience in a sonic world they, and TD fans in general, have not had the chance to hear since the pioneering 1970s.

These structured improvisations, first unleashed on the wider audiences on the CDs Particles and then Sessions I,  have shown that yes, in the second decade of the 21st century, Tangerine Dream is still synonymous with a type of electronic music that is eminently human.

These live compositions are not only spirited jams one would traditionally expect to hear only in rock and jazz concerts, but also show that for TD, technology never became an all-dominating factor nor an end in itself.

Sessions III continues the series of CDs started by Sessions I and II, both covered on this blog, too. The listeners, who may not have had the chance to witness the live material in Hamburg or Berlin, are being treated to two lengthy live pieces again, the album totaling 77 minutes.

There is something rather poetic about the by now well-established titles, which always contain the exact time when the live pieces were born. The musical content is rather timeless, hence the timestamps even more poignantly suggest the ephemeral and one-off way in which the pieces were created...

Hanseatic Harbour Lights was recorded in February 2018 in Hamburg. It runs for a highly pleasing 35 minutes, and it is has everything old and new fans of TD like - most notably, the disciplined, never self-indulgent introduction of characteristic sequencer patterns and the floating meditative section. The presence of the violin in the vast electronic vista is sublime as usual, adding a very organic and intimate-sounding element...

One just knows, simply knows, that things will happen when the first metallic sequenced notes appear - and the track develops into a full-blown cosmic journey. That sentence may sound so 1970s - but the music is not a retro nostalgia exercise, far from it...

This is 21st century Tangerine Dream with the breadth and the trust in listeners' attention span that was characteristic of electronic acts of some heroic early decades. Once again, this track demands attention and it is a rewarding demand on the listener - as it takes us from the ethereal first drone through sequenced textures to gentle, meditative piano improvisations floating on top of the electronic ocean.

The energy is carefully dosed, never too abruptly, no rigid shapes, no harsh angles, just waves and swirls exist here. Same goes for the second track, recorded at the Synästhesie III Festival in Berlin...

A masterclass in Berlin School-style electronic music in... Berlin, it doesn't get more superlative than that. Although edgier and more heated than the first piece, it has its oases of quiet ambience, with the inevitably and achingly beautiful violin and Mellotron flutes.

One experiences that Ricochet-era feeling: it is perhaps satisfying to keep track, up to a point, of what is going on - but one can be absolutely sure, it will not be possible to catalogue every inter-twined sonic sequence and layers upon layers of textures... and then comes the best moment, when listener has to give up and just let him/herself float away on the currents of this electronic ocean.

As this track also demonstrates, in the TD sessions each section is important and never rushed - we know the expositions and the middle sections can be mind-bending and expansive, but so are their sonic constructs in the closing parts.

The trio, namely Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss, and Hoshiko Yamane, have again delivered a pair of live compositions that, for the entire length allowed by the physical medium, take us on a spellbinding musical journey.

Sessions III continues the series that show: the new Tangerine Dream line-up remains absolutely connected with one of the core principles that has always characterised the band: make, even if channeling something from other galaxies, eminently living and pulsating rock music that happens to employ electronic instruments...

New Yamaha MODX - an FM synthesizer Groundhog Day

Photo from GearNews

As very recently "leaked", Yamaha is releasing a new digital synth at a surprisingly attractive price point. The MODX is essentially a cut-down cheaper version of the Montage two-engine synth from a few years ago.

It is, once again, an FM + AWM2 synth that, as a powerful combination, we could get used to since the late 1980s when SY-77 demonstrated the capabilities of the combo.

Yamaha did not call the Montage a workstation, as it really wasn't one - but its trimmed version MODX is now being called a workstation. Well, Yamaha called even the Genos, an arranger on steroids, a workstation... Since Ensoniq and Korg long ago have established the very definition of what a synth workstation is, we can  abandon any and all hope of Yamaha respecting fundamental instrument categories.

While this may be an intentional overstating to mask the glaring stagnation (in terms of lack of actual synth innovation), it is all the more audacious when we look at the leaked specs of the MODX.

What is very telling again is what Yamaha has not done in the MODX.

The FM engine is still a repeat of the usual 8-operator affair - which is an FS1R cut in half. Actually, much less than half.

FS1R, the supreme FM monster from almost two decades ago, had 16 operators - but they were also of voiced and unvoiced types. Add formant filters and the ability to sequence formant movements, to create absolutely unique sounds.

Just to be superbly annoying, it was rapidly discontinued by Yamaha - a great role in this was played by Yamaha's shocking inability to see the potential everybody raved about. Thus they never even provided software tools that could enable the user and allow one to capitalise on the unparalleled and truly novel capabilities inside the box - only a freeware (hobbyist-created) app exists. The customised SoundDiver could not access the formant sequencing capabilities at all, but at least presented the thousands of parameters in some usable form.

Then there was also the EX5/EX7 - with their multi-engine combination, which even today can blow a sound designer's socks off. All the more remarkable, as we have had since then the OASYS and Kronos from Korg, as multi-engine synths.

In 2018, MODX, with all the hype and "leaking" of an "exciting" new FM synth, it begs a few questions.

What is Yamaha doing three years after Montage, and almost two decades after FS1R, in their R&D labs? Especially as MODX is not only a repeat of an earlier synth engine combo, but it still represents a vast step back from what their earlier synths could do.

With touch screen and outboard software that is possible nowadays, considering the many years that have gone past since the arrival of this dual synth engine, is there any interest whatsoever in Yamaha to give not just performers but synthesists / sound designers abilities that, no pun intended, sound like they are dated 2018? At least 2001 please?

Yes, sample storage has been increased and we can bet that Yamaha sound designers have created (on top of what Montage has) lots of superb presets. We can bet the quality of the AWM2 section is top notch.

However, while all too busy with blurring of very well-defined and long-established lines between product categories, the absolute lack of innovative thinking is depressing (if we discount the so-called superknob from Montage, present also on MODX - but that is merely an element of the user interface).

From business perspective, it is understandable, if one can release the same thing over and over again, and it sells. MODX will sell extremely well probably, as it is very attractively priced for what is under the bonnet.

Yes, it seems to be a powerful FM+AWM2 combo, but we can't even say it is state of the art. It is not even a repeat of 2001, with AWM2 added to it.

Frankly, it is hard to imagine what an FM engine from the FS1R could do when combined with the sample-based engine nowadays, considering what it was capable of on its own. Imagine that with touch screen and a proper software to leverage the formant sequencing.

We are stuck in a Yamaha groundhog day - not only MODX repeats essentially a dual synth engine for the Nth time, but it also repeats just one metaphoric day of the timeline - i.e. we cannot even go back further in time, in order to resurrect much more potent Yamaha engines of the past.

Remembering Richard Burmer

When Vangelis in the 1970s' European musical landscape has started to release electronic music albums that were not sounding at all as many have expected electronic music to sound like, there was no other synthesizer artist who achieved that level of fusion between vastly different ancient musical traditions and electronics.

At that time, he was a composer of synthesizer music of a rather special kind, with emotive and evocative imaginings that were blending anything and everything from elements characteristic of African tribal music (La Fete Sauvage) to Celtic ballads (see Irlande on Opera Sauvage) to Far-Eastern music (see the LP China) to "pure" ambient sonic paintings well before Brian Eno was heralded as the creator of ambient music (see Creation Du Monde on Apocalypse Des Animaux).

While Vangelis was the most notable exception to what dominated the European electronic music scene of the time (Berlin School, French School, Synth Britannia, etc.), something happened on the other side of the Atlantic, too a decade later.

It demonstrated that even when it was not emerging from close-by ancient European and Eastern musical roots, electronic music of similar DNA could be born in the most unexpected ways. It did not emerge from the academic environments of major cities like New York, nor from some intellectual  West Coast movement's creative laboratory. Minimalism in the 1980's was a success already, often relying on electronics, too, Detroit techno was making strides, space ambient was very much active (Michael Stearns's seminal works, for example), Wendy Carlos long before rocked the world with classical reworkings... then something very different turned up...

Richard Burmer was born in 1955 in the town of Owosso, Michigan. He studied music composition in college - but established himself as a thoroughly imaginative sound designer for none other that the legendary E-mu Systems. The mere mentioning of the name Emulator is perhaps highly sufficient to summarize what era-defining instruments he created sound banks for.

However, in the 1980's he did not stop at the level of technical creativity - his first album Mosaic, beyond its electronic prowess, had tracks that already heralded what was about to come.

Delicate and atmospheric compositions like Under Shaded Water or the superbly sensitive electronic reworking of the Medieval music piece Lamento di Tristano already in 1984 told us that Richard Burmer is not embarking on an ordinary electronic music voyage.

His side-stepping of existing US-based electronic music of the time was actually achieved via superlative artistic sensitivity and a seemingly effortless blending of music from distant European centuries (Medieval and Renaissance era) and state-of-the-art electronics.

One could very much dare say that in the same way that Vangelis for a long time represented a unique voice in the electronic music landscape, Richard Burmer created a unique sound in the American synthesizer music vista.

His approach was and still remains rare: synthesizers were not seen as merely trailblazing sound generators, nor as instruments that would end up defining what music one was "supposed to" create with them... Hence we cannot find any forays into trendy electronica in Burmer's discography...

Richard Burmer viewed synthesizers as instruments that can connect and blend musical traditions from vastly different historical periods and geographical areas.

His album On The Third Extreme is a spellbinding work for those who like Eastern and Far-Eastern music flavors, Renaissance (specifically) and Early Music in general, all seamlessly combined in evocative and passionate soundscapes.

The track The Forgotten Season could be at home in any Early Music show that airs songs from the troubadours of the early Renaissance period.

Celebration In The Four Towers brings us moods and sonic visions that would find themselves at home in a grandiose scene of some Medieval-themed historic or fantasy movie.

Magellan brings us Eastern influences and driving ethnic percussions, fused with that emotive sound world that Burmer could produce with such immediate impact.

Turning To You is an example where ambiental, later labelled as "new age", soundscapes can be abstract, atmospheric and emotionally evocative at the same time.

We have a technically extremely competent engineer-composer-performer, who did not get lost in the enticing possibilities of the instruments, and did not end up putting the instrument in front of the artistic intent.

Instead, Richard Burmer had started from musical worlds that had central aesthetics that were diametrically opposite to the, then still novel and path-finding, electronic music - and leveraged the possibilities of the new instruments to make boundless and poignant musical journeys across unexpected expanses of space and time.

If his electronic music made us dance, it did that in the style of ancient music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. If his music made us dream, it did that with nostalgic, often uniquely elegiac, evocations of idyllic landscapes - hence compilations like Shining By The River are very aptly titled.

Richard Burmer passed away in 2006, aged only 50 - a memorial page was established on his official website, and the 12th anniversary of his passing is on 9 September.

Hot summer months can make us think of the Electronica festivals springing up all over the Northern hemisphere - but they can remind us of his wonderful sonic journeys, too, which often evoke idyllic summer vistas.

Presets - the good, the bad, the clichéd

When it comes to various forms of purism or certain dogmatic views, music production is by no means special among the creative activities of various art forms.

One can find strong analogies between music and photography, for instance, when it comes to gear-related irrational claims and views. In other cases, when elements of the creative workflow are massaged into sweeping generalisations, one can go further...

Such is the case of famous, infamous or just everyday presets... We take them for granted, as nowadays synthesizers with memory, or those assisted by external gadgets, allow instant recall of a set of parameters in order to recreate specific sounds created by the instrument manufacturers' sound designers.

As everything in the field of electronic instruments, presets, too have been elevated from their merely utilitarian role in music production to the level of vehement, philosophical-sounding, and at their core always self-asserting, statements. However, many of the latter actually build on self-contradicting fallacies - and in terms of a cognitive process, it is fascinating how the most boundless music genre and its by now virtually limitless technology can produce the narrowest views so often...

Hence we see and hear numerous statements along the lines of:

1. "I never use presets" 

It is quite commendable to only rely on one's own sonic creations, however, as much as this wants to sound superlatively creative in all its fervour, it ironically disregards many nuances of the creative process and its objectives.

Bach never rolled up his sleeves to produce a prepared version of his harpsichord, nor attacked church organ pipes and valves with various blunt or sharp tools, nor did Debussy go on Cage-like adventures inside his piano... but... it would be ludicrous to attempt to make the point that somehow they were not "truly" creative in producing evocative soundscapes. Stravinsky's landmark The Rite of Spring is quite a juxtaposition of, well, presets... so is Terry Riley's seminal In C. 

Ergo they were not as creative as an electronic musician constantly going on about "never using presets" in his studio... ? After all, latter musician has the luxury of creating and/or using any sound imaginable, while mentioned gentlemen were confined to pre-defined sounds of their instruments - but this is where the "can" transforms into a "must" and becomes a tool in self-aggrandizment.

Many of the biggest names of the electronic music genre, too were and are perfectly happy to employ presets, as the latter may well be the most perfectly fitting sounds for the piece they envision.

Klaus Schulze - a vintage jam session

It would be pointless to count how many Yamaha CS-80 presets occur in the classic Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis, as it is virtually entirely built from preset sounds..

Nor would it help counting how many presets have the grand masters and pioneers like Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream used - as there were countless.

Ultimately, it is about the sound - and how it fits and/or expresses what the creator imagined. Did that sound come from a factory preset or from a custom setting created from scratch? Well, does it actually matter, if it fits what the creator wanted in the end result? 

Does the use of cobalt blue or cadmium yellow make a painter less creative as he/she may have employed them as is, without personalised alterations of the colour tone? 

Would we call Turner's skies relying on standard cobalt blue less creative? Certainly Van Gogh must have been a hack for employing plain cobalt blue as a cheaper option to the (then) horridly expensive natural ultramarine...

2. "That piece used some very cliché presets"

Indeed, some instruments had and have "killer" presets that have been (over-)used with wild abandon by many. We can all come up with considerable lists of such sounds across the decades of electronic music, and perhaps the '80s and '90s are the most guilty decades... 

Going back to the essence of the creative process, the fundamental question is whether the perhaps clichéd sound works. 

To go to a painting analogy again, Raphael and Vermeer, to name just two painters, have made quite some use of natural ultramarine - which was, already well before they made use of it, a quite expensive colour cliché, a mighty "preset" on the colour palette. 

Does Raphael's Madonna strike us as a boring cliché because of the use of natural ultramarine? Yes, a clearly rhetorical question... and there can be countless similar ones.

3. "I always start from scratch"

It is another version of "I never use presets", but it emphasizes the labour that takes one from a moment of sonic inspiration to the moment of recording the imagined or just improvised sound. 

If one over-emphasizes this process, then one actually disregards (at best) or belittles (at worst) entire alternative creative workflows that may not work for that person, but they work splendidly well for other artists.

Once again, the ego is at work instead of reason and balance in creative choices. 

Schulze's seminal Timewind, which led to the grand prize of  the Académie Charles-Cros, was put together in a bedroom session and although it used modular gear, too, it certainly didn't start with a blank setup. Nor did many of his and his contemporaries' spellbinding studio or live sessions...

Many era-defining pieces and entire albums by Vangelis were put together in improvised sessions, not seldom in single takes especially after the availability of his custom-built so-called Direct boxes.

Heavily improvisation-based works have started from a lot more than a cleaned-up modular setup or wiped sound banks... and often their unparalleled strength lies in their spontaneity that relied on readily available and easily switchable presets.


The problem with many of these over-stated and over-emphasised heroics implied in "not using presets" is that they are meant as emphases on the self-perceived value of the end result, and often as qualifying statements of one's own creativity. 

Alas, these grand statements achieve quite the opposite - as an interesting inverse correlation can also demonstrate. See how often defining names of the genre go on and on about their refusal to use presets (or about any other rigid preconceptions for that matter when it comes to the creative process) - compared to budding electronic musicians doing the same in myriad internet forums...

Shaping sounds... with good KARMA

One doesn't normally start a music technology-related piece with a (for all the wrong reasons) alleged and memorable expression from a former president... However, KARMA is perhaps one of the most "misunderestimated" technological innovations out there...

Some have asked recently in some synth groups whether KARMA is basically an arpeggiator of sorts. Well, that might be just one ice crystal on the tip of an impressive iceberg... and as KARMA has many modes, generated effects, and quite some depth of parameters, a number of its capabilities are exemplified below with some techie elements, too.

Korg KARMA workstation

KARMA (Kay Algorithmic Realtime Music Architecture, named after its inventor Stephen Kay) has had its debut on the Korg Karma music workstation. Latter has been used by Peter Gabriel, Rick Wakeman, Vangelis, Herbie Hancock, to name just a few...

Subsequently the technology was incorporated in flagship workstations like the Korg M3, OASYS, Kronos, but also as separate software app that can be used with e.g. the Yamaha Motif series synths, too.

Well, while it can be used as an extremely powerful and quite unprecedented generator of musical accompaniments, it has modes (or in proper KARMA terminology, generated effects or GEs) that possess some really dazzling capabilities.

True, it generates MIDI events basically - but  one must not think of MIDI events just in terms of musical notes. KARMA can actually control many aspects of the sound, hence it can actually be a powerful sound design tool, too. It is at its most powerful when integrated closely with the synth, so that coupling between the user interface (think of M3 or Kronos's panel of sliders and switches) and what it controls is tight.

Many of its GEs can create complex musical sequences whilst monitoring what one plays. The myriad parameters, which one can have real-time access to, elevate the resulting melodic and percussive lines far beyond the stereotypical and often robotic arpeggiator outputs. Real-time control of note randomisation, swing, generated pattern complexity etc. can give the resulting sequences a surprisingly human feel.

The fact that vast sets of parameters can be organised into so-called "scenes", and transitions between these can be done instantly while playing, means that user can build up different sections with helpful assistance from KARMA.

This clip shows some examples by Stephen Kay, with KARMA scenes and controls on the Korg M3. Some  subsequent clips are taken from the net, but unashamedly from one's own tracks, too, where at least one knows exactly what was done with KARMA settings and why...

The areas where KARMA really starts to cross into a whole new realm is where its GEs create realistic imitations of how some instruments are played. Hammered dulcimer can be played with stunningly realistic action, as a section of this clip illustrates on the Kronos workstation - and one has fine control over how that hammer action shapes and decorates the resulting sound.

Similarly. KARMA can imitate strumming and specific ways of playing ethnic instruments with typical phrasings - from guitars to sitar. There aren't many things as annoying as a sitar or a koto that sounds like a keyboardist played it on a keyboard with some sitar or koto samples... KARMA's assistance in performing realistic triggering of notes and phrases of even fiendishly difficult instruments can be quite surprising.

However, one is very free to apply such KARMA modes or GEs to eminently different things - try run a "gong roll" effect on the decay parts of a piano sound for instance, stand back and admire what happens - a pulsating ambient texture unfolds.

The harmonic "modes" or GEs are hard to describe until one hears the effects. Not only they create chord structures, but also they can subtly alter and move notes, creating shifting textures. The exemplified section of this track was created with a  modified Korg M3 combi, which uses subtle KARMA movements that slowly shift and decorate the ambient music-like textures.

Often the MIDI events are so rapid and subtle, that they do not actually fully trigger notes - but their effect on patches can be quite interesting. Some of the so-called "pad holder" GEs used with, one can guess, pad-type sounds can really move and blend things, creating interesting sonic textures.

One can unleash KARMA effects on patches that benefit from gated GEs and such, the MIDI control events ending up moving and shifting the sounds in ways that can give countless ideas in sound design, too.

Korg M3 workstation

This clip shows two Korg M3 modules connected together, and a lot of inventive custom programming allowing the improvisation to benefit from touchscreen controls changing parameters, while KARMA is creating the ambient sonic textures.

One, perhaps not every day used, ability of KARMA surfaces when one has the audacity to use a certain mode or GE for something entirely different compared to what it was actually meant to be used for.



Why not use something intended for a piano chord frenzy on a rich choral patch to create some interesting motions and atmospherics? The first section of this track inspired by Cordoba Cathedral is an example of this.

Or why not use gated GE to move some sounds around? Opening part of this track and the main motif uses this to add a lot of animation, as certain patches can react quite pleasingly to the KARMA controls (instead of merely hearing e.g. a panning effect).

KARMA ticking along with different scene settings while one builds up a largely improvised track can result in immediately usable results, for example a track dedicated to the Hubble space telescope has had the percussion and bouncing background patterns entirely created with KARMA scenes, which were set up before the improvisation session started. Clean up the result, add some ambiental intro and outro... and there it is.

Speaking of improvisations, the middle section of this semi-ambiental and new age-ish track was set up with two KARMA modules ticking along and playing calm inter-twined motifs on sitar patches... while improvisation could be layered on top.

Wave sequencing is also an area where the technology can create real time controllable sonic magic, if the synthesizer controlled by KARMA can do wavesequences - as exemplified in this clip . Latter  shows the KARMA software that can be used on a computer, while it controls the connected synth, if latter has no built-in KARMA.

Can KARMA be used to bridge musical traditions several centuries apart? Well, yes, two of its modules with real-time controls provided backdrop and the electronic swells for a track that used a theme by John Dowland (Flow My Tears, 1600) and projected it into the sci-fi atmospherics of a Philip K. Dick-inspired album project.

The eternal discussion can ensure of course: what percentage of human input is at work, and how much is done by the algorithms...

Well, perhaps one is biased after years of interesting idea-triggering KARMA experiments, but the fact is that what makes the technology perhaps so non-obvious is actually its greatest strength: it has myriad, truly myriad, parameters one can set up and control also in real time.

So the human input cannot be ignored in setting up the desired KARMA scenes and the parameters of each. Even custom GEs can be created at will... As any tool, this, too it can be used for mechanical results or something human and creative. The difference is in the user, not the tool...

True, once it is set in motion, it runs along the human player, monitoring what is being played on the keyboard or in the incoming MIDI information set to trigger it. So one can forgive some beliefs that it is "just" a complex accompaniment generator.

However, the delimitation line between the human user and the tech at his fingertips is a very blurry one. Even mere step sequencers and arpeggiators in the right hands (think of Tangerine Dream's or Klaus Schulze's trailblazing and mind bending sequencer jams) can be astonishing creative and performance tools.

KARMA is light years beyond step sequencers and arpeggiators... so with all the philosophical doubts and debates one might have, we cannot consider it a robotic add-on in the creative or performance processes in studio or elsewhere.

Like everything else, it can be used for utter robotics, sure... but one can only blame one's own affinities and imagination if rigid patterns are the only things coaxed out of this technology...

Korg Kronos workstation with latest incarnation of KARMA technology

A subtle but epic journey: Ourdom by Solar Fields

It is safe to say that by now one can firmly expect Solar Fields albums to have impeccable production, delicate care taken in sound design, subtle details in the mix and no self-indulgent technological showing off.

Ourdom, the very recent release by Magnus Birgersson aka Solar Fields is no exception - but apart from the polished technical elements, the musical aspects of the just-under 80-minutes-long album don't let expecting fans down either.

In today's collapsing attention span, shrinking to almost a singularity, it is quite uplifting to see an artist trusting us with well-structured, seamlessly flowing long pieces in the vein of the epics by Klaus Schulze.

Burning View, the album's opening track, is gently introducing the epic musical adventure with a floating ambience and subtle sonic ornaments. The gradual transition to solemn piano chords in Shifting Nature, then to the anthemic uplift of Into The Sun is a typical and very satisfying Solar Fields construct.

One can fully expect to be gradually taken to climaxes like Mountain King and Moving Lines, which are high-octane, but perfectly economically done EDM pieces with imaginative changes and variations.

Tracks like Wave Cascade provide a repose and a chance for introspection between the energetic currents of the aforementioned tracks, and Ourdom is very capable of shifting us between inner states as it does so with musical epochs, too...

Joshua's Shop with its ascending playful notes is taking us from electronic ambiences to a classical period, when the first glassy harp-like notes appear... As a delicate, nostalgic and exquisitely economic piece, it again shows how sound design, musical elements and thinking in structures can produce a concise and evocative sonic picture.

If one was not convinced by the range of imaginings heard so far, then A Green Walk and Parallel Universe can show us how eminently ambient atmospherics and spacey harmonies can fit in with the more soaring and driven passages of the album.

One can appreciate in some perfectly put-together long mixes the way in which different moods and tempos can be combined into a whole sonic journey, the mix becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

However, to state the obvious, here we have original material composed of 13 tracks, each seemingly conceived to be organic parts of the greater unit: just inspect closely the subtle way in which musical elements of a track can reference other sections they build up from or dissolve into...

It is a rare treat, and in a rushing world it is perhaps outrageous to strongly emphasise that Ourdom is best enjoyed, due to above reasons, as a single musical journey - and not track by track. Having said that, each track perfectly functions on its own, and, again, in typical Solar Fields fashion, each is a little electronic gem.

The album flows and connects very distant moods, from pure atmospherics to playful melodies to energetic motions, but the transitions are never with harsh edges...

On Ourdom, there are no right angles nor sharp edges, only ascending and descending waves and curves...

Converging worlds, stable antagonisms

Famously, and somewhat infamously, Klaus Schulze's first fully digital recording Dig It proclaimed the "death of an analogue" in one of its tracks.

Although the lyrics were ironic, and digital was understandably called an "automat" at that time, 1980 was not quite the best moment for heralding a tectonic shift toward an exclusive relationship with the emerging digital instruments.

Eminently digital synths (from early samplers to the later FM synths and beyond) have expanded the sonic palette to before unimaginable dimensions - but when it came to an "analogue" sound, they had been operating with a couple of crucial limitations.


In terms of sound synthesis and processing, the available computational power  was one of the factors that had been limiting the bit resolution and sample rate of the digitally represented signals that the synth operated with. This then introduced sonic artifacts, e.g. the especially notorious aliasing and a puny performance of early digital filters. Many of the still surviving, and largely outdated, stereotypes about the "digital sound" artifacts originated in this era.

The revolutionary Fairlight CMI

Both sample size and sampling rate also meant memory impact, especially for samplers. The characteristic sound of a Fairlight was partly due to its humble 8-bit sampling. 

Early Emulators used nonlinear compression tricks from the field of telecommunications standards, which exploited the way in which we hear things. Ergo they could store increasingly decent audio with fewer bits, hence with less (ludicrously expensive at that time) memory usage.

In an FM synth, like the revolutionary Yamaha DX7, the processing power was limiting the signal representation, the precision of the mathematical operations and how many of those it could perform in real time. 

The maths involved in even much later synths, like the E-mu Morpheus with its mind-bending morphing filters, limited how much control and changeability they allowed the humans to have in real time.

This was another key issue: how much we, users, could meddle in the inner digital processes and how much instantaneous control we have over the parameters that shaped our sounds.

The user interfaces on these digital synths were notoriously minimal, compared to the analogue synth users' joy of having an immediate, continuous and direct control over myriad parameters via many lovely knobs.

Even if some "programmer" kits helped one a little bit to get inside the digital beasts, the processing power still meant that one could not expect major real-time control over major number of key synthesis parameters. Notorious example, alas, is the aforementioned DX7, but even something like a Roland D50 engine was not a dream to deal with even with the programmers manufactured for them.

However, the analogue and digital worlds began to converge, and with huge steps in more recent times. NB convergence does not mean that the two (may) end up absolutely indistinguishable from each other, nor that someone may have the sheer audacity to claim that. Latter would immediately assemble the either purely digital, or purely analogue (never hybrid) execution squads in many internet forums...

The age-old debate about how much, in what conditions and in what way can one hear or not the differences between real analogue synths and their digital emulations have never been more heated.

It may be obvious, but it is most often missed: the very factor that makes such debates on increasingly subtle aspects even possible is the huge strides achieved in the digital/analogue convergence. At the time of  the release of Dig It, the topic would have been hilariously absurd.

With current sampling frequencies and bit-precisions achievable in internal computations and sample representations, with current volatile and non-volatile memory amounts, and considering the sheer processing power in multi-core engines, the ability to emulate analogue circuit behavior has increased exponentially. So did our ability to control the processes - think of the user interface of a Roland System-8 or Korg Radias for example.

VA, or virtual analogue, synths have the increasing ability to handle many tweaks to many beloved knobs, altering in real time the synthesized and processed signal. We take this for granted now, but not so long ago this came at huge expense, if it was even possible. Also, the level at which characteristic irregularities in analogue circuitry can be modeled have vastly increased.

The Roland JV-1080 (and its successors) tried, for example, to imitate some crucial irregularities and instabilities with what they called the "1/f modulation". Fast forward, and now certain Roland VA gear, like the Boutique series, have detailed circuit modeling with even a control to adjust the age of the instrument - in order to simulate the components' sound-altering decay over time.

Which then lands one in the everlasting debates about how "good" they sound or whether analogue reigns supreme, full stop.

Roland Boutique series JP-08 VA synth

The answer to latter, looking at some forums, is typically a resounding quick "yes", or similarly emphatic "no". 

However, both such irrational extremes disregard a core contextual element.

"Analogue sounds best" is still very true, for...  the sphere of analogue synth sounds, especially within the confines of substractive synthesis. 

There is a very obvious reason why even decades ago creative minds embraced all other synthesis methods, too, including eminently digital gear... but even in current times some lock themselves into an exclusive, hence by definition self-limiting relationship with just one specific corner of the sonic Universe.

Latter is possible within the confines of certain sub-genres of electronic music, so exclusion of vast other sonic possibilities is not an issue. 

There is psychology at work, too, especially if one defines oneself by the used tools - instead of treating them as just tools. Musicians fall into the very same trap as e.g. photographers have been doing for ages, we really are not as different nor special as we sometimes would like to believe.

While many photographers were caught up in film vs. digital debates, the creative bunch embraced both technologies and used what was best for a certain purpose - same goes for synth artists of recent past and present.

Taking such shamelessly utilitarian approach, it boils down to something eminently simple but missed completely on a daily basis in many forums: is the tool in question the best one to use for the task?

Questions like "how can I create a realistic piano with my XY analogue gear" or "how can I do multi-operator FM synthesis via analogue means" (to quote two concrete examples) show how the use of the right tools for the job is entirely ignored in favor of a bordering-on-fetish approach. 

In the two examples, the approach itself is a by-definition failure from the start. If one thinks of e.g.  multi-operator FM synthesis's vast sonic changes introduced by minute alterations of some parameters, lack of precise and exactly reproducible control in a purely analogue approach makes the task eminently pointless.

Also, the task in question may well have not just parameters like music genre, musical or sonic style, technical range etc., but also crucial factors that define personal work flow.

If one needs instant recall and stability, then one goes for a hybrid or a fully digital tool, in order to be able to focus on reproducing the needed sounds as quickly and precisely as possible.

If one puts the sound source through (no pun intended) convoluted chains of processing, the "I can hear the difference immediately" between an analogue or digital source may no longer actually mean nor matter much- especially not in the final mix. Internet forum rhetoric is superb, until one plays games with an audience and subjects them to creatively processed sounds from plethora vastly different origins.

There is also the effort element in the workflow. It is often left out of the sizzling debates, exactly because it is highly personal and goes to the creative process of one or the other individual.

Ansel Adams's superb prints can be appreciated not just because of their visuals, but also because of the dark room efforts they involved - latter efforts can be nowadays reduced by order of magnitude in a digital dark room. Let's just think of his elaborate multi-masked dodging and burning, which required often a dozen paper cut-out masks to adjust precisely and locally the tones... However, he and many others used the best possible tools available to achieve what they set out to visualize.

Ansel Adams in his darkroom

As fundamental as it sounds, it is remarkably absent in many debates: as much as one may subjectively appreciate the mechanics of translating ideas into images or sounds, those are just the mechanics of the process - and some actually distance one from the end goal. It is admirable to suffer through a certain workflow for the sheer heroics involved, but...

Even seasoned judges in photography competitions have fallen into the trap of trying to guess, when separate categories were not defined, whether the photograph emerged from a digital or a traditional dark room. Watching them agonize over the prints was in a way entertaining. Did the origins of, and workflow leading to the image, really matter? In some cases, perhaps, but trying to reach judgement centered on content and message while mixing it with considerations on medium, process and tool-related aspects was and is symptomatic of the subjective traps.

There is marketing and financial side, too. Clearly, spending vast amounts on a certain piece of kit takes a huge degree of objectivity and honesty to allow the owner to admit that some kit at a fraction of cost is "close enough" for what the end result wants to be. It is not different from the debates about whether an Alien Skin plugin reproduction of the special je-ne-sais-quois feel of a certain film stock is good enough compared to shooting on that very film, then scanning and post-processing it...

Even digital relics have been brought into the present, with extra oomph... The Synclavier monsters' computational power nowadays can fit multiple times in an ordinary laptop,  and a Fairlight dinosaur can come to life in a cheap plugin. A legendary monster like the PPG Waveterm is nowadays wonderfully reproduced by apps like Audioterm coupled with a super-affordable Waldorf microWave or Blofeld that emulates the PPG Wave's characteristic analogue filters.

Synclavier

A Roland Boutique VA synth can reproduce "well enough" the analogue originals at a fraction of the cost.

It is a cliche by now that the compromise between "good enough" and cost & effort is an eminently personal one.

Perhaps warranty periods and obtainable state-of-the-art (and affordable) components outweigh in some studios subtle differences in sound.

However, putting to one side psychology, ego, preferences in work flow, personal finances and priorities (feeding into the subjective), the brutal technological fact is that if something nowadays has set out to be a good VA instrument, then it has unprecedented chances of coming "close enough".

In some debates on "close enough", the use of arguments centered on aliasing, converter bit precision, computational precision and complexity are rather anachronistic nowadays, unless it is a really badly made gear. The subjectivity of such arguments is betrayed by how much they are in denial of the signal processing realities lurking under the bonnet.

When it does go wrong, it may actually add character... Waldorf Blofeld's surprisingly bad metallic reverb is horrid to some ears, but perhaps in someone else's studio it adds a characteristic thing that is missing in the other superb quality digital effects... In certain patches, it actually becomes essential to the final sound and pumping it through good quality reverb loses that certain something...

So while the galaxies of personal motivations, attempts of self-definition via the used tools will continue to swirl on and on, the convergence up to a point of the two (in some minds still) antagonistic worlds is also unstoppable.

Does true analogue sound best? Yes, for true analogue sounds, if that is all one needs... and when target audience can hear the current VA vs. analogue differences... and when they self-consciously care.

Does the audible differences in analogue-wannabe digital imitations matter? Yes, if in the sonic creation we make that authenticity a priority over myriad other artistic elements. Even eminently analogue legends perform nowadays with their vintage pieces emerging live from digital and hybrid gear, while internet forums of home musicians spiral into a frenzy for months and years debating some VCO vs. DCO sonic differences.

Thorsten Quaeschning of Tangerine Dream

While Daft Punk famously replied "Daft Punk" to the question "who will hear the difference between the three different microphones" on the track Giorgio by Moroder (from the album Random Access Memories), they embraced all technology at their disposal for achieving the creative goal.

How many listeners of Tangerine Dream's expansive improvised live sets on recent Sessions I and II albums lose sleepless nights trying to identify where the Doepfer modular ends and the JD-Xa's digital engine part begins?

As simple and obvious as it may be, countless such electronic artists, who do not have cramps about self-defeating puritanism about one sort or another, have demonstrated that even having attention to detail at obsessive levels is not an obstacle in going for the main goal that matters to them: putting every available tool in the service of creativity.