[klodolph]

> Producers invariably have favourite, go-to plug-ins which are instrumental to their artistic identity.

Lol. Most producers talk about how the plugins are fairly interchangeable, and almost none of them will really change how you work or the sound you get. The VST / plugin market seems really saturated. Not like it’s so saturated that you can’t make money, but any problem you want solved is likely solved by a battery of different plugins.

People fetishize hardware and talk about how it’s essential to the sound that they want, and usually, when you dig into it, you can replace 95% of your hardware with something else and end up with something nearly indistinguishable. There might be some synth or guitar pedal that you are in love with, or even several, but it rarely turns out to be critical to your personal sound. Like, if you want to sound like Van Halen, maybe you want to buy an EVH cab, but don’t bother tracking down exact replicas of guitars and amps… despite the fact that fans obsess over his guitars and amps, that stuff is easy to replicate.

The software side is similar, it’s just that most people don’t fetishize specific pieces of software beyond, say, drooling over a few big names like Serum, Omnisphere, or Pro Tools.

> Once monopolisation is achieved, enclosure accelerates, locking users into an ecosystem with few alternatives or competitors.

I’m not convinced monopolization is going to happen. What I see happening today is that the software and hardware is so cheap it’s ridiculous. The prices have been falling for ages. More companies are making this stuff than ever before. The platform seems wide open. Tons of free VSTs, even good ones, abound from tons of different software companies. Real analog synth hardware is way cheaper (Behringer) than it ever was, even in nominal dollars.

Meanwhile, a lot of the stuff you see at music stores seems to be glorified toys. DAWless setups aimed at Instragram or YouTube which are terrible for producing music, but look good on video. I’m not trying to be gatekeeper here and say what “real music” is, or how you should make it, but there are segments of the music equipment industry which are competing against Lego. That’s where the money is.

After all, real, working musicians seem to have less money these days, so it’s only natural that the industry shifts. As far as I can tell, this is what an infusion of capital will be aiming at—people with discretionary income that love music toys (whether or not they actually make music with it—it varies).

That quote from Adorno is really wedged in there, I guess you gotta show off who you read.

[alfiedotwtf]

> There might be some synth or guitar pedal that you are in love with, or even several, but it rarely turns out to be critical to your personal sound.

The 303 defined acid, the Juno gabba and early rave, and sliced 4 bars of a single song defined jungle. Maybe in what you're saying is true, but on the other hand for other genres, synths = genre

[klodolph]

The 303 defined acid, but now that we know what acid sounds like, you don’t need the 303 any more.

Like, 90% of what made 303 lines sound unique is in the sequencer, which you can program into a DAW or something once you know how it’s done (it’s a fairly basic step sequencer with a couple quirks, but those quirks are easy to replicate). Use a simple subtractive synth, turn the filter knob around, set the resonance pretty high, and bam… you’ve got acid.

That’s what I mean when I say that something rarely turns out to be critical to your sound. Once you understand how a sound is made, it makes it possible to achieve similar sounds in other ways.

That last 10% is not something that people listening to your music care about, by and large. The TB-303 has a unique diode filter design… kind of weird, you might say “3+1 poles” (is it 24 dB/oct? or 18 dB/oct?) with a built-in high-pass filter. However, despite the fact that the TB-303 has such a unique filter design, and the 303 sound defines acid, and the 303 filter is a key part of that sound, you can replace the filter with some boring random 4-pole VCF and still end up with an acid track.

So you don’t need a 303. This is good news! It means that it’s easier to create acid than it ever was. The 303 is no longer manufactured. You can grab a cheap clone like the TB-03, TD-3, or program the 303 sound into a more powerful synthesizer that you already own.

[alfiedotwtf]

> “3+1 poles”

I see you know your 303s :)

The acid I can get from a Virus or SH-101 is acid but not from a 303, and the sequencing I can get from a Rytm definitely has that slide/glide vibe, so I totally get what you're saying.

... I guess if you know what you're doing you can make anything sound like something else, especially in a mix, it's just that sticking with a certain synth for that sound can make it hell of a lot easier

[klodolph]

Oh, for sure. The TB-303 makes it easy to get that sound right away. I think people should be picking out synths based on UX… the faster you can get the sound that you are looking for, the more time you spend making music. TB-303 gives you acid, like, instantly. Course, if you’re picky about tweaking your pattern and getting it just the way you like, you might hate the TB-303’s sequencer—something that became much easier if you e.g. had Virus and a MIDI sequencer, once that was available circa 2000.

[alfiedotwtf]

Totally. I've sold a lot of gear because they had all the features yet took a long time to get what I wanted. Simplicity is what I'm aiming for these days and it's changed my workflow completely. Creativity rather than frustration!

... you're totally right - the easier it is, the more time you spend making music!

[GhettoComputers]

I completely agree with you. If you use all their plugins you’ll get a flattened song especially if you don’t know what your doing and are focused on identity politics, turning musical melodies into racial statements and see music software through the lens of experimental cultural forms, historical communism, technological development, the means of music production and pop song composition.

It’s a not very subtle attack on music software though the lens of oppression, and even making the software more accessible is seen as bad because they didn’t make unique music with it. It’s like not knowing how to play a Stradivarius and so the violin is the issue, not the player who didn’t use it properly. It’s quit telling they don’t publish the music they made, or show samples, it’s a bad artist blaming everything but themselves for the bad music they made.