| Where do I even start with this mess of an essay? I wish the writing style was more clear and succinct. This writer desperately needs an editor. It's hard to tell exactly what they are really trying to say. Instead they meander across a few different broad points like "capitalism is bad" or "the cultural imperialism of western music tech companies is diminishing representation of non-western musical traditions." and it's hard to know exactly what they're ultimately getting at. Instead they pepper the reader with lots of vague grievances without focusing on anything in particular or tying it together in a novel way. While these critiques can certainly be valid, the author doesn't seem to have much to add to old tropes regarding topics of design and product development. There are so many pedantic and silly points for me to contest in this essay that it would bore everyone to go through all of them. Let's see if we can't, instead, address some of the larger points: ------ POINT #1: Capitalism is having a negative effect on the domain of music making plugins: I don't see it. As a producer and audio engineer of 15+ years it's never been a better time to be a music maker. New and existing tools grant music makers tremendous creative power. I can now do processes that would have taken my predecessors 10x as much effort on gear that was far more cost prohibitive than the offerings today and with sometimes worse results. Such tools of today have also never been cheaper. The average price of software tools seems to be trending downwards. They also denigrate companies like NI who offer an ecosystem of hardware and software products that easily integrate with each other for ease of flow and performance. Like that's a bad thing. This integration (when it works - and it does) is very much a desirable quality in music making tools. I don't see any downside to these type of products. Perhaps there's a point to be made about the over-saturation of plugin developers dragging prices lower to the point where they cannot make a living. Some sort of a race to the bottom. But I don't see that being stated in this article. As soon as they start to build steam on these points they shift gears - without warning - to: ------ POINT #2: Non-western music systems are not well-represented in these products. This is valid. Few DAWs offer integration of non-western tuning systems. Those that do offer the feature require extra effort to work in compared to the "native" equal temperament tuning that the DAW is built for. I don't know why exactly this is. I'd certainly be open to this feature, but I suspect that integrating multiple tuning systems in an intuitive and easy manner in a DAW requires a lot of development effort for a feature that a majority of their user base may not be asking for. That said, I don't know what the numbers for users who desire something like this. That said, they undermine their point when they go on to say: <NI sells dozens of sample packs, including the problematic ‘Spotlight Collection,’ monetising instruments based on their vague traditional location (“East Asia,” “West Africa,” “Middle East”). By reducing their tonal complexities to the strict confines of the Western, equal-tempered piano keyboard, NI sustains what musicologist Philip Ewell describes as the white racial framing of musical understanding... Kontakt is a platform for neocolonial musical framing.> As the owner of each of these products I don't see what their issue is. Both the East Asia and Middle East instrument packs feature options for at least 4-8 alternate tuning systems that can then be played on a piano-style MIDI keyboard or piano roll. What more do they want? If they want these tuning systems to be mapped onto something other than a western piano keyboard then it's up the musician to purchase a non-piano (micro-tonal) MIDI keyboard that will support the mapping. There's very little else they can do in this instance. |