PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Craig Anderton on Synths

As G-Daddy is a devotee of "Synths/Keyboard or Guitar Controllers", both keyboard and guitar synths as well as modules...I have more than I care to list, but I do list some in my "signature".

Anyway.... I've been a fan of Craig Anderton as one of the most prolific writers and techies in recent music memory!

Of course you can catch him at one of my very first music destinations

www.HARMONYCENTRAL.COM

So here I post one of Craigs recent newsleters...

ON SYNTHS.....and you can bet G-Daddy loves this topic.

This article is mostly about synths with emphasis on dance trance "mathines"!! For a Dance oriented ... I use my Triton Synth with Trance Card, or my YAHMAHA CS6X...a wild and wooley little SWINGER BOX 66 Keyboard and sampler.

But synth backgrounds and leads have always been very strong magnets.....FOR VERY SOPHISTICATED MUSIC SCORES...AND SOME NOT SO SOPHISTICATED. Ask Pat Metheny about his many hits on a Roland GR 303....modified, of course.
I recorded a number of synth keyboard CD'S through modules like my Motif Rack and XV-5080 Roland Rack.
Rack.

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Synthesizers Find Their Identity

It took several decades, but the synthesizer has truly found itself



It took awhile for people to figure out that the object of the synthesizer is not always to sound like other instruments, and the synthesizer is now accepted for what it is—a unique instrument in its own right. Two generations have now grown up who never knew a world without synthesizers, so they didn’t try to relate it to existing instruments like the first generation of synthesists often did.

As a result, a lot of the new music we’ve enjoyed for the past couple decades has been fueled not by samplers trying to sound like pianos and French horns, but by players who favor analog sounds, arpeggiators, resonant filters, real-time control, and going through fuzztones or Marshall amps—in short, all the things that were “out” in the 70s and 80s.

For any type of EDM (electronic dance music)—techno, trance, drum and bass, grime, dubstep, psy-trance, hardcore, ambient, chill, you name it—their lifeblood isn’t guitars, or turntables, but synthesizers. World-wide, dance music is huge; and it’s finally starting to get traction in the US. But is it going to reach critical mass?

I turned a friend on to dance music a couple years ago (thank you, Ableton Live!), and ran into him recently. Though not a hardcore musician but an ad rep for a music magazine, he ended up getting bitten by the EDM bug and finding out just how much fun it can be to throw a bunch of patterns and analog noises together to make music. Dance music has the interesting property of being easy to do, yet very difficult to do well, thus making it accessible to beginners and intriguing for pros.

What’s more, a lot of this music takes a generally positive tack. Some call EDM "disco's revenge," and there's a bit of truth in that since we're talking about dance music. But there are far more differences than similarities; EDM is a breath of fresh air that cuts across the musical landscape the same way punk did 20 years ago.

It’s taken a long time, but finally, the most important criterion for judging a synth isn’t how much it sounds like a piano, but whether it has good-sounding filters and cool on-board effects. I think we just may be on the cusp of a synth breakout—the way acoustic guitars hit big during the folk music days, or the Beatles inspired people to get into electric guitars. What’s more, we have some stealth synths getting people addicted, like cool little iPad apps.

Are synthesizers going to start making a major move into the mainstream? We’ll find out.


—Craig Anderton