Opening up and setting free - the Korg Prologue way

Prologue (photo: Korg.com)

Korg Prologue has seen the light of day as a flagship analogue polyphonic synth, and as it was highlighted here at that point, it had a particularly unique feature among its many attributes that designated it "Best in show" synth at NAMM 2018.

It possesses a digital engine, too, and the user-definable custom oscillators and effects in it were, philosophically, an unprecedented move by any manufacturer in this class of instruments.

If we take away all the technical and musical details, what Korg and Prologue did was almost shocking in a world where individuality is most often seen as something only achievable by limiting the user by what the manufacturer defines as boundaries.

Prologue has taken a diametrically opposite approach, and with the promise and delivery of a software development kit, anybody with sufficient knowledge could write his/her own oscillator module and effects. Naturally, there is always a limitation of the platform in terms of real-time processing power and memory. However, in all other respects the decision to offer such ability to the user suddenly meant that the only limitation was now the user's ability and imagination.

We are now some months after the release of the development kit, or SDK for short - hence one feels compelled to return to this topic at this point when theoretical promise of a creative possibility has become actual reality.

DirtBoxSynth have released not one, but a series of custom oscillators.

FMonsta1 & FMonsta2 have added wavetable and FM synthesis capabilities to the Prologue multi-engine, with eight instantly controllable parameters (via the copious offering of knobs). SUPAwave added PWM-based oscillator with phasing-like effects possible via two different half-waves. ORGANism has added an organ where the harmonics can be controlled in numerous ways, so as the authors called it, the oscillator is an organ with a twist - almost literally...

Custom digital effects have also seen the light of day, an autopanner, a high-gain distortion simulator AMPit, and a custom filter pack.

Why do the examples set by Korg and the set of custom OSCs and effects by DirtBoxSynth matter, beyond the obvious sonic aspects?

There is an age-old debate, often even battle, between advocates of closed and open platforms. In the area of computing, especially personal computers, this has raged on and on for decades.

In the creative sector, which is inevitably blending computing with the arts, Prologue is a very brave incarnation of the more open platform philosophy. Again, to stress, this is not a small manufacturer nor some enthusiast gizmo, like some open source initiatives that can deployed on a Raspberry Pi.

No, this is a flagship synthesizer keyboard from one of the 'Big Three' manufacturers... Instead of imposing on us the predefined limits of an instrument, it lets the techie musician loose in the world of sound generation and processing.

Also, it is a testament to the way in which modular design and software interface definition coupled with clear tooling enables the techie creators. Also, the application programmer's interface (API) is streamlined, clean and clear- which is always a crucial factor in enabling the third party developers. Another important aspect in an API definition is where the owner puts the abstraction boundary, misplacing this can over-complicate the interface (in one case) or not give enough power to the developer (in another case when it wants to stay very abstract as interface).

 The SDK is, as examples above prove, eminently usable and facilitates the creation and deployment of a range of different customised modules.

Interestingly, it remains, in this class of instruments, a unique experiment where the concept of loadable modules is not limited to the manufacturer's own offering (as, for example, plug-outs are).

Whilst some still see the solution to product differentiation as something achieved with highly restrictive approaches, Prologue manages to be a rather individual presence in the synth landscape - and it does this via a philosophy that hands the tools over to the techie musician...

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.

From oxygen to outer space - Jean-Michel Jarre at 70

Photo: AFP

Jean-Michel Jarre, perhaps the most prominent post-avant-garde names of the French School of electronic music, turned 70 today.

Whilst he was already a prolific experimental and soundtrack composer before the 1976 release of his landmark album Oxygène, the latter has really projected his name onto the firmament of both popular and critically acclaimed electronic music.

Even in 2018, the album sounds futuristic, timeless and perfectly at home with state-of-the-art current space rock and ambient electronic albums - a fluid, bubbling and seamlessly flowing electronic symphony that still continues to hold many lessons for budding electronic musicians who choose to compose with intent a descriptive and emotionally involving sub-genre of electronica.

As they say, the rest is history...

Whilst Jarre has become perhaps even more known for the record-breaking gigantic concerts, where audiences were in their millions (absolute record was 3.5 million people) and the stage could often be an entire city even, his imaginative musical creations cannot be ignored.

His music was seen by some regimes as ideologically clean and "safe", the music of a technological future - hence it is not an accident, that he was the first Western musician officially invited to give live performances in post-Mao China.

While Jarre established himself as an unparalleled visionary when it came to live performances, with hugely innovative multimedia technology at work alongside his futuristic electronica, his use of innovative new musical instruments was also remarkable.

Cities in Concert - Live in Houston, TX

Fairlight, the pioneering sampler that completely changed music across countless genres, was mostly used even by luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Art of Noise and Kate Bush as a digital instrument capable of playing back sound samples.

Then Jarre released the to this day astonishing album Zoolook, where he has taken the Fairlight to an unprecedented level, projecting us into a never before heard sonic Universe.

His use of sound processing and alteration via the new instrument sounds simply stunning even today - and all this was not done in a purely academic manner, making Zoolook actually enjoyable by the masses.

Whilst he ventured very happily into the realm of chirpy, dancey, highly trendy electronica, too, we cannot forget the fact that he also composed vast, almost cosmic requiem-sounding suites like Rendez-Vous, and ventured into "pure" electronic ambient music, too (the epic length title track on Waiting for Cousteau).

Even under the surface of sometimes very pop-sounding electronica, he often managed to hide complex musical ideas. A simple example would be Equinoxe, his second album, where the most popular track has employed time signatures that one is challenged to find in any chart-topping creation...

Even in 2018, even at 70, he is not only keeping up with the absolute latest greatest technological advances in sound synthesis, processing and music production, but he remains an influencer and a shaper of sound technology.

His latest studio double opus, the Electronica Vol. I and II., shows how he can collaborate with numerous electronic musicians who come from vastly different musical and technological backgrounds.

The tracks composed with the biggest names, ranging from Vince Clarke to Hans Zimmer to the late Edgar Froese (founder of the veritable Berlin School institution that is Tangerine Dream), show that Jarre's artistic range and sensitivity is able to integrate myriad musical ideas and sources into a coherent concept.

In ways that transcend particular subjective tastes and electronic music preferences, Jarre's trailblazing efforts in the field have left their mark on countless facets of music technology, including creative tools and approaches to the vast world of synthesizers.

His music is also testament to the fact that the most high-tech instruments are mere instruments, and the human using those instruments remains the key factor in the creative process... making the resulting music sometimes unashamedly romantic even, whilst created with (the still often misperceived as "cold") electronics.

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...

Silhouettes - a perfectly titled new Klaus Schulze album

Quite a few years have passed since the last Klaus Schulze studio album, if we don't count renamed re-releases of material that essentially has seen the light as Contemporary Works Vol. I and II.

Silhouettes is perhaps his most introspective and calm album for some time, and as some have commented on the almighty internet that it is "disappointing", perhaps it is useful to first enumerate what we do not find on this album.

There are no hour-long multi-layered jams, no fiery Moog solos, no sampled phrases leaping at us at any moment, no high-octane sequenced percussion grooves, not even high-octane sequencer runs... No world music-esque Middle or Far-Eastern vocals, no cello or other instrumental improvisations.

So expectation management aside, what does one find on the new album?

It is a quite balanced affair. Four concise pieces of 15-to-20-odd minutes length lend to the album a structural balance, too.

Each piece has a construction that takes us from a calm exposition to a more dynamic part with Berlin School characteristics, and then to a calm conclusion.

The title track is quite fitting, as the lush pads create a pleasant and atmospheric sonic mist, in which the gently introduced sequencer patterns never dominate - they just sparkle and shine through this mist, with subtle touches and variations.

Chateaux Faits de Vents, or Castles Made Of Winds, continues this airy feel, we get an atmospheric intro with the instantly recognizable pad sounds and chord changes... and it leads to a mid-section with gentle sequencer patterns. The variations are subtle and perfectly suited for a meditative listening, we are not treated to any sudden moves or unexpected turns.

Der Lange Blick Zuruck, or The Long Look Backward, is similar in terms of its structure and the characteristics of the sequenced layers in its middle part. The choral sounds before and after the scintillating metallic sequenced parts are giving this track, too a quite ethereal feel.

In some ways, one could say that the sequencer work on these tracks is sharing some DNA with the floating, fluid, sparkling motif that returns from time to time in the track Sebastian im Traum, on the double album Audentity.

Quae Simplex, or That Simple, is the most energetic track - not just in its opening, as this is the only piece that starts with confident sequencer lines, but also in the fact that it contains classic and non-sequenced sounding drumming, which is jamming along the layers of sequenced motifs. In many ways, this is the track that looks back to an earlier sound and style - we can think of the '70s Schulze studio and live releases that featured drum tracks of this type.

There is, though, a stronger similarity at work on this album and it may be contributing to some of the more negative takes seen so far.

In its gentle layers and soft sequences, it reminds us in a very nice way of the feel of the double album In Blue for instance, or the more introspective parts of aforementioned Contemporary Works.

However, the similarities with the sequencer work on Shadowlands or Big in Europe are surprisingly, perhaps even too, strong. Down to the actual patterns we hear, the sounds they trigger and the time signatures, it really gives a strong deja-vu, or deja-entendu, feel from just few years ago. In some parts we may have the feeling that certain sequencer lines were straight transplanted from another album's sonic layers and even kept the same synthesizer patch selections for them.

However, if one dissects it too much, it ruins the overall feel and imagery of the album... so if one is bothered by these very strong similarities, perhaps best to treat the album as a standalone venture into a calmer, contemplative realm that we have not really heard from grand master Schulze for many years.

In that respect, it is one of the best and most comforting, gentle albums he's ever made.

It is, hopefully, not overstating that one hopes the great Berlin School master will continue treating us to many more such polished and confidently beautiful albums in the future.

What we are supposed to sound like....

The discourse on music's eminently different two roles, one functional, the other well above and beyond functional, dates back millennia.

The Harmonic Scale, Franchino Gaffurio, 1480 

Even when musical scales were defined and explained in ancient times with presumed, or sometimes vaguely empirical, ratios between orbits of celestial objects, music had at the same time a recognised functional role of entertainment, and a spiritual role with even cosmic connections...

Fast forward to contemporary electronic music... and we have something that, perhaps more than any other musical genre in history, abounds with cosmic references. Even vast sub-genres like space ambient or fusions like space rock are making direct references to that outer realm, which is immediately giving such music a higher purpose.

Apart from such philosophical and historic aspects, the democratisation of music making has been an unprecedented phenomenon in our history.

One is not thinking of the availability of an improvised woodwind instrument and the tunes that any shepherd could produce at any time during our many past millennia. Making music at this level and having a few mates around to perhaps listen to it was a possibility for anyone with any background in any historic era.

Trident Studios in the '70s

However, the democratisation of cutting-edge and professional music production has been brought along by affordable electronic instruments and studio equipment. Only very few decades ago a musician had to command a very respectable budget in order to produce something that could stand up in the market of mainstream or more elitist genres. The process of getting the end product onto that market has also changed radically in recent years, but this is an entirely different topic.

Apart from the technological and financial aspects, the actual process of music making has shifted toward a state of affairs that vastly stimulates both inspiration and the creation of well-polished end products - even eminently improvised ones. The end products no longer require in-depth knowledge of music theory, many rhythmic and harmonic aspects are taken care of, in real time, by the algorithms at work in the gizmos or computer apps populating the home studio.

But let's firmly and rapidly side-step any polemic on how technology helps talent-less people create music. This is a topic that, with all its fundamental factual, conceptual and historical errors, keeps turning up like rheumatic pain. It is similar to what happened to the replacement of dark rooms with digital dark rooms, similar arguments were and are endlessly made about how it brings the death of artistic photography. It did not.

AKAI MPC-X

What technology does immensely help with nowadays is the compositional process itself. Hugely sophisticated, whilst affordable, gadgets can radically change the creative workflow. Again, as the old saying goes, anybody can do it nowadays. Well, again, let's side-step this for a moment.

One of the more abstract effects of this technology (from superb MPCs to Ableton Push to full-blown music workstations with KARMA algorithmic composition) is the shift in our perception of how what music created in such ways should be like.

When Billboard magazine, of quite some pedigree, managed to judge Gary Numan's latest album as "not electronic enough", it unwillingly created a case study in this perceptual shift. Billboard fundamentally misjudged the concept album despite its content, because the stereotype of what electronic music should sound like has been drastically shifted - and encompasses only a few very specific sub-genres.

Ade Fenton & Gary Numan

Numan's album was around 95% created and finalised with electronic instruments, according to both the artist and the producer, Ade Fenton. It certainly sounded eminently electronic, superbly futuristic, and as it happens, loaded with actual meaning and messages.

However, it only sounded eminently electronic to those who did not drastically limit the scope and extent of electronic music to typical results created with drum and sample loops, something that aforementioned creative tools excel in.

Electronic music, from its early days and years of imaginative demolishing of all boundaries, has ironically become a semantic tag for just a few very narrow genres and sub-genres.

If one looks at what is included in the category of electronic music, then it becomes clear that in our perception this music has largely lost its non-functional roles.

Dance music, and all its sub-genres, is making us... well, dance and have a good time. Even the not so mainstream, but abundant, ambient and chillout electronica is here to helps us relax, well, chill out...

When talking to creators of mainstream electronica, it is also becoming obvious how even the concept of composing with a primary intent, hence setting an objective in terms of what the music expresses or describes, is becoming an alien one or something never heard of. In best case, it is seen as "old-fashioned".

Whilst both technology and its users are creating, among the inevitable ocean of mediocrities, gems of mainstream electronica, we really are increasingly pushing traditional composition and traditional musical values into, at best, marginalised and quite niche sub-genres.

Vangelis in his former London studio

Traditional composition here is not meant along the lines of doodling with a piano and taking out pencil and paper with staves. It is meant as approaching the task of creating a piece of music with actual intent, even when merely improvising on our gadgets... and keeping focus on what the music is meant to express.

This, though, requires command of music theory, and examples of supreme masters with no such formal knowledge are rare - let's just say, there are not many Vangelis-like phenomena in electronic music...

Just saying this makes one sound hopelessly elitist, because the ways in which we can create electronic music nowadays has distorted our entire vision on what the creative process is, and what it is supposed to come up with. Electronic music that is released on, heaven forbid, concept albums, is deemed old-fashioned. Undoubtedly, the excesses of progressive rock have made the term "concept album" an almost pejorative one in the eyes and ears of many punk and post-punk generations of music creators and consumers.

It is ironic though, that in the most limitless genre, huge proportion of electronic music is created nowadays with merely its functional role in mind. This pretty much drives our definitions and expectations of what electronica "must" be.

Some niche sub-genres are either unbearably academic (continuing the eminently experimental traditions), or labelled with the by now pejorative-sounding new age term. Latter has anyway become a bucket not just for pretentious and often ludicrous "spiritual" electronica, but also for just about any music that happens to be a fusion of orchestral, ethnic, traditional and electronic. In the same way that progressive rock has eventually become a bucket for everything that didn't fit into rigid rock sub-genres, new age has become the same for electronic music.

Nils Frahm

The perversity of our shifted preconceptions and perceptions of what electronic music is supposed to sound like are made even more evident when the unparalleled pioneers or novel acts of far-out electronic music are pigeonholed into the new age genre.

Tangerine Dream ending up in that category? Really? Harold Budd, Kitaro and even Vangelis? Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm? It is simply tragicomic.

However, like the unstoppable and quite uncoordinated  changes of ever-changing human languages, this movement shows the shifts and currents at work. It is absolutely commendable that our drum boxes and sequencers allow anybody to lay down musical ideas at any moment, in a vein that the great composers of yesteryear would have given an arm and a leg for.

Improvisations are no longer lost forever, and can be the origins of major and complex works. Technology really is here to help, as long as the human maintains creative control.

It just remains painfully ironic how the vast new abilities and powers of this astounding and still new musical Universe are achieving the opposite effect: instead of increasingly leveraging the possibilities created by the unprecedented technology behind this music, we are increasingly limited in our rapidly narrowing perceptions of what this truly limitless sonic Universe "should" sound like. And latter is confined to the functional role of music, despite its new abilities to take us beyond the party moods, ambiental wanderings and relaxation attempts.

One has to wonder what the early pioneers would think, if they could witness what this phenomenal new genre of music has become in our aesthetic definitions and expectations.