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

I remember Craig Anderton from his old Mandrake Memorial days in Philly.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrake_Memorial


Great band, nice guys. Their signature sound was created with the “Rock-Si-Chord”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocksichord

Thanks for the link...I personally remember his writing in the music mags. I was well into my 15th year playin' music in Chicago Jazz "congregations" and doing single gigs in local Bistros along Rush Street. Sort of lacadaisical about R&R!!

I was becoming much more interested, through Craig's writings, into the "electronics side"...synth and effects hardware, etc.

He wrote extensively for several music industry publications including Synapse and Keyboard Magazine, and was the editor of Electronic Musician magazine 1980-1990. His circuits appear in products from such manufacturers as TASCAM, Peavey Electronics, PAiA Electronics, Steinberg and Kurzweil Music Systems. He produced and guested on dozens of albums throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He released a solo album on cassette in 1977 and another (Forward Motion) on CD in 1989. He remains active as a producer, engineer and consultant

Yeah, I've read his stuff for years, but I didn't realize he was in Mandrake Memorial until a couple months ago when I was playing their first LP.
It was a very small scene in Philly back then -- everybody knew everybody. Flower Power, Baby!

I've been a big fan of Craig Anderton since his early projects in Guitar Player magazine in the mid 70s, plus his book Electronic Music Projects for Musicians, several of which I built successfully. I own a couple of pre-MIDI monophonic synths, the Korg MS-20 (with the radically innovative built-in pitch-to-voltage converter) and the Moog Rogue, as well as the uber-software synth, Propellerhead Reason.

I'm here to agree that synths rule--but don't understand CA's question about whether they are "finally" going to make it to the mainstream. If Keith Emerson's use of the Minimoog in the late 60s, or Pete Townshend on the Arp Odyssey, or Pink Floyd with the VCS-3 in the early 70s don't qualify, then surely the prominent use of polyphonic synths in pop music from the early 80s on must. What am I missing here?

Richard

Imo it's because as legendary as those guys were, they're still relatively small potatoes compared to the true superstars of the last 40 years, The Stones, Michael Jackson, Hendrix, Elton John, Elvis, The Beatles, James Brown, etc. The tell is what do you hear right now in movie or tv soundtracks and classic radio? It's mostly these groups, not Emerson or The Who. To me that's the final historical validation or who actually made it to pure mainstream status.

This article is making the point I've posted here several times lately, that Abelton Live and this style of electronic music seems to be finally taking over the young people, like it or not. Without repeating myself more than I usually do I'll just say for me, I can't stand a lot of it but I do recognize the talent there.

Bob