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My Thoughts On Musical Technology

by Steven Wagenheim
21 replies
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Every once in a while, I think of some strange things. Today, it was this.

I got my first musical gear back in the late 70s. I got a Hohner Stringvox and a Moog Sonic Six. At the time, this was some pretty good stuff. And it cost a pretty penny too. The Hohner was about $1,000 and the Moog was about $600.

The Yamaha CS 80 that was selling at the time was about 5 grand. It was also like 200 pounds.

Today, we have software synths that blow this stuff away at a fraction of the cost. My whole setup of hundreds of VSTs, DAWs, keyboard, studio monitors, PC itself, was about 10 grand. I have one softsynth that can faithfully emulate the CS 80 and just about every synth that was ever manufactured that cost me about $200.

We have come so far. I can't help wondering. How much farther can we go? I know that history teaches us that there will always be advances. But have we reached the point where advances will be minimal?

I can't imagine things getting anymore cheaper and more powerful than they are now. They will, most likely. I just can't imagine it.

What are your thoughts?
  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    I was looking at new guitars the other day. While the prices of many were as high as ever, you can get a really nice guitar now for less than a mediocre guitar cost a couple decades ago.

    One acoustic Fender I was looking at was $200, and that included a hard case. A guitar of that quality would have been double price that 20 or 30 years ago. Of course, you can still spend thousands on one, too.

    I don't see much difference in the high end prices. Actually, not that much difference in the low end prices either, the quality is just much higher.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill View Post

      I was looking at new guitars the other day. While the prices of many were as high as ever, you can get a really nice guitar now for less than a mediocre guitar cost a coupled decades ago.

      One acoustic Fender I was looking at was $200, and that included a hard case. A guitar of that quality would have been double price that 20 or 30 years ago. Of course, you can still spend thousands on one, too.

      I don't see much difference in the high end prices. Actually, not that much difference in the low end prices either, the quality is just much higher.
      Dennis, do you think they can make guitars any better than they are now or have we reached a ceiling there?
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      • Profile picture of the author ThomM
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Dennis, do you think they can make guitars any better than they are now or have we reached a ceiling there?
        Steve, not to cut in but I've picked up a couple insights from the guitar players I know.
        From what I gathered effect peddles is where it's at now. I've heard peddles either in person or on youtube that can make a guitar sound like an organ, violin, and a few other instruments.
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        • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
          Originally Posted by ThomM View Post

          Steve, not to cut in but I've picked up a couple insights from the guitar players I know.
          From what I gathered effect peddles is where it's at now. I've heard peddles either in person or on youtube that can make a guitar sound like an organ, violin, and a few other instruments.
          Wow, so they've come that far huh? I remember when effects peddles were essentially distortion, wah, volume and phaser. lol.
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          • Profile picture of the author ThomM
            Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

            Wow, so they've come that far huh? I remember when effects peddles were essentially distortion, wah, volume and phaser. lol.
            I was jammin with a couple guitar players last winter and one had a slew of effect peddles. At one point I was looking around the room for the organ player,lol.
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        • Profile picture of the author lanfear63
          To ramble on a bit more It is not a total loss for me, not popooing all of it.. Using Magix Music Maker Pro and the sounds that came with it I was able to produce what is below really quickly! 3.5 hours for the backing track. Inputting via midi would have taken much longer.

          However, it was a fairly basic backing track for a song my wife wrote for a college promo, I also recorded a singer using Magix with just a usb connected mike and was able to quickly multi track her voice multipule times for accompaniment on verse and chorus. by altering the pitch and copying it multiple times over. (she only sang it once.

          What is not possible with this type of software (easily) is doing single note lead accompaniments. The sounds were all sequences, if you catch my drift. But, all just done on a computer. There are, if you listen hard a few pops and hisses which continue to be present even these days. the mob video dance routine did not really work out due to the summertime lack of students and lack of practice time available, a token effort :-)

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      • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Dennis, do you think they can make guitars any better than they are now or have we reached a ceiling there?
        The quality of the workmanship is truly phenomenal now, but I'm someone who likes to think anything can be made better. Better design, better resins, better frets . . . I think the BIG improvements aren't as likely to occur now, but lots of smaller tweaks are possible.

        One thing I liked that I hadn't seen before (bear in mind I hadn't looked at new guitars in years and years) is one of the simplest things, they rounded the edges of the fret board on some models. It may be an old change for all I know, but it sure was a more comfortable feel than the old sharp edges.

        The reason I was looking is because I've worn out some of my frets. It costs as much to replace them as some new guitars cost, and they said it wouldn't look as good when it was done. Maybe improvements could be made with the actual frets, too. Or maybe I just shouldn't do so much string bending.
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    • Profile picture of the author ThomM
      Drums have certainly come a long way in recent years.
      Electronically you have drum machines, electric drums, and now drum triggers for acoustic drums that basically turns them into electronic drums with a whole new range of sounds and effects.
      Even acoustic drums are haven't reached their limit as far as technology is concerned.
      DW has been leading the way with using different types of woods, grain orientation, and plys. Their drums are pricey, but there's not many companies where you can choose the wood types, grain orientation and plys of your drums, unless you go with a smaller micro-builder.
      Better hardware and mounting systems are always coming out, each getting closer and closer to truly isolating the vibration to the drum. One company out of England (Sleishman Drums) has invented a tuning and suspension system that doesn't require any lugs or other hardware to touch the drum shell. With their system you only have to tune the top head and the system automatically tunes the bottom head to the same tension.
      Even the drums I have now which are really cheap have a better tom-tom mounting system then the Ludwigs I bought back in the late 60's.
      Many companies and craftsmen are building drums today that blend different woods and different materials giving you and incredible range of sounds.
      Another advancement I really like is in having the ability to build your own drum or drum kit. I can (and will be soon) build my own snare drum pretty easily nowadays. I can order a shell made out of a variety of different woods or metals. I can get one of any number of plys (or a stave shell) with holes pre-drilled for lugs and with either one of three different bearing edges or I can cut my own edge.
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  • Profile picture of the author lanfear63
    Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

    Every once in a while, I think of some strange things. Today, it was this.

    I got my first musical gear back in the late 70s. I got a Hohner Stringvox and a Moog Sonic Six. At the time, this was some pretty good stuff. And it cost a pretty penny too. The Hohner was about $1,000 and the Moog was about $600.

    The Yamaha CS 80 that was selling at the time was about 5 grand. It was also like 200 pounds.

    Today, we have software synths that blow this stuff away at a fraction of the cost. My whole setup of hundreds of VSTs, DAWs, keyboard, studio monitors, PC itself, was about 10 grand. I have one softsynth that can faithfully emulate the CS 80 and just about every synth that was ever manufactured that cost me about $200.

    We have come so far. I can't help wondering. How much farther can we go? I know that history teaches us that there will always be advances. But have we reached the point where advances will be minimal?

    I can't imagine things getting anymore cheaper and more powerful than they are now. They will, most likely. I just can't imagine it.

    What are your thoughts?
    About the synths, I started messing around with making music with 8 bit samples using the Amiga and Octamed back in the eighties. I quickly realized they were poor quality and not good enough, always started with a pop, crackle. I bought a yamaha psr and later an Sy35 to get high quality sounds and not being a keyboard player I still was able to piece together music using chords and notes, felt my way around using the midi capabilities of the tracker program. Produced music, backing tracks etc, even sold cassettes of it. The Amiga tracker could map the earlier midi configurations of these keyboards so sound selection was possible from the computer.

    The tracker (downward route) was very easy to get on with and you could create blocks of notes and chord sequences and copy and paste etc, up to 16 tracks, different midi channels allocated to different sounds. I also witnessed an early CD rom game and thought, given the computers storage possibilities and use of cd roms to store 16 bit sounds, the skys the limit.

    The tracker did not really survive apart from a much later version called Med Soundstudio which you can still download online! The original creators are now old and have abandoned it and never got it to work with midi properly mapping all the instruments and banks of any keyboard (on screen selection) for the pc version. Now all we have are these incredibly complicated sideways scrolling programs which I find hard to get along with and if your not a player and don't want to get into soft synth sound creation its tedious.

    What I hoped for was high quality sound samples by the bucket load, every thing you could think of to use as presets. There would be no need to mess with soft synths. And, that you could use them with a tracker.

    What we have is sounds that still suffer with pops and clicks on playback to this day.

    So, using my version of med, to get the best results I still have to set up 16 midi sounds on my Roland Fantom G6, save it. Then select the midi track numbers via the software. Cant do it all onscreen. Cant controll the keyboard sound selection from it anymore!

    Difficult to describe all this but I wish they had developed tracker programs further, they were so much easier.
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  • Profile picture of the author bizgrower
    It's been about six or seven years since I've seen these guys (Tom and Trinity)..
    http://www.thirdroadhome.com/index.html

    I don't recall which CD (probably "Venus in Retrograde"), but they recorded it in their living room and Tom mixed it on his computer. It sounded studio quality to me, which I thought it was amazing.
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  • Profile picture of the author thunderbird
    I think a lot of stuff can still be developed that would be far out. Right now there is auto-tuning so even someone who can't sing can produce songs, eg a buffoon by the name of Kanye West. I imagine a sample of anyone's voice could be enough for computer generated singing. I don't know how advanced things have gotten with sound, but I've been playing around with computer-generated voices. One can still distinguish between them and actual people talking, but they are much more real sounding than those of the past. Could you record a sample of someone's voice on the street, make a CD in front of them and sell them original songs with their voice. That would take "busking" to a different level.

    Then there is the actual relationship between color and sound. Could photographs and suchlike be converted into songs after some tweaking? Imagine a singing portrait.


    Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about and it was all wild speculation on my part.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
      Originally Posted by thunderbird View Post

      Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about and it was all wild speculation on my part.
      I don't know about that, but you are an interesting person. You remind me of a friend of mine.
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      • Profile picture of the author thunderbird
        Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill View Post

        I don't know about that, but you are an interesting person. You remind me of a friend of mine.
        This has stuck in my mind because it is very rare that anyone says that I remind them of someone. I can't even offhand recall if anyone ever had before. I guess I have one question: Is that friend of yours autistic?
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        • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
          Originally Posted by thunderbird View Post

          This has stuck in my mind because it is very rare that anyone says that I remind them of someone. I can't even offhand recall if anyone ever had before. I guess I have one question: Is that friend of yours autistic?
          ha ha, nope, he's not autistic. He's a retired jailer. The reason for the comment was because, like you, he has a very diverse mix of interests, comes up with unusual ideas, often has a very unique perspective on topics, and can still surprise me even though I know all this about him.

          He has a brother that is the same way, but his brother is annoying as hell.
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          • Profile picture of the author thunderbird
            Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill View Post

            ha ha, nope, he's not autistic. He's a retired jailer. <snip>.
            Interesting. It is a setting that offers a lot of reading materials, if I am not mistaken.
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            • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
              Originally Posted by thunderbird View Post

              Interesting. It is a setting that offers a lot of reading materials, if I am not mistaken.
              I don't know, I never hung out with him at the jail. I'd guess there's some down time, though.

              He was thinking about writing a book about his time as a jailer. I'll have to ask him about that. I remember one incident he told me about was when an inmate tried to commit suicide by drowning himself in the toilet.

              Another jailhouse genius. Hey, Jailhouse Genius would be a good name for his book. I'll have to pass that on to him if he's going to do it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Originally Posted by thunderbird View Post

      I think a lot of stuff can still be developed that would be far out. Right now there is auto-tuning so even someone who can't sing can produce songs, eg a buffoon by the name of Kanye West. I imagine a sample of anyone's voice could be enough for computer generated singing. I don't know how advanced things have gotten with sound, but I've been playing around with computer-generated voices. One can still distinguish between them and actual people talking, but they are much more real sounding than those of the past. Could you record a sample of someone's voice on the street, make a CD in front of them and sell them original songs with their voice. That would take "busking" to a different level.

      Then there is the actual relationship between color and sound. Could photographs and suchlike be converted into songs after some tweaking? Imagine a singing portrait.


      Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about and it was all wild speculation on my part.
      Here is what I have always wanted. A box or some kind of software that I can plug a mic into and sing and somebody else's voice comes out, somebody who can sing because i can't sing to save my life and is one of the main things killing my vocal tracks.

      I don't understand why they can't do this. It doesn't even have to be a known singer as that would probably cause copyright issues or something. In fact, it would be better if it was just some unknown they hired to sing into their software.

      I have no idea how the technology would work or if it's even possible. But that's what I've wanted for years. Something other than autotune (yuck) that can make me sound like a good singer.
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      • Profile picture of the author thunderbird
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Here is what I have always wanted. A box or some kind of software that I can plug a mic into and sing and somebody else's voice comes out, somebody who can sing because i can't sing to save my life and is one of the main things killing my vocal tracks.

        I don't understand why they can't do this. It doesn't even have to be a known singer as that would probably cause copyright issues or something. In fact, it would be better if it was just some unknown they hired to sing into their software.

        I have no idea how the technology would work or if it's even possible. But that's what I've wanted for years. Something other than autotune (yuck) that can make me sound like a good singer.
        My guess is that it is possible. Voice recognition software that reacts to commands exists. This would be some combination of voice recognition software (and probably some autotuner) that automatically commands software to produce the song in another voice. It would have to be fast and powerful enough to do it in real time, simultaneously with singer. I'd be surprised if something like that didn't exist in some form or other.
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      • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Here is what I have always wanted. A box or some kind of software that I can plug a mic into and sing and somebody else's voice comes out, somebody who can sing because i can't sing to save my life and is one of the main things killing my vocal tracks.
        Have you tried using software to change the tone and pitch? You can make yourself sound completely different.
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  • Profile picture of the author hardraysnight
    i must be doing something wrong

    record in analogue

    only use valve amps

    my newest main guitar is 1968

    sounds just fine
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    • Profile picture of the author thunderbird
      Originally Posted by hardraysnight View Post

      i must be doing something wrong

      record in analogue

      only use valve amps

      my newest main guitar is 1968

      sounds just fine
      I hear you. I know I'm just imagining things, but I sometimes feel as if I can almost see cube-shaped pixels with digital recordings.
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