#22

I like the idea of it being the new guitar. And if you look at the guitar today still loads of interesting players

The impermanence is one of the things I love about it and fits with my goals of being fluent enough with this tech to conjour music in real-time just as a guitarist or clarinetist might

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#23

I personally feel incredibly privileged to be able to be in the position that I can vaguely afford such expensive tools. They’re definitely cheaper than they were, but they’re still quite cost prohibitive for a lot of people. One of my favorite things about the live coding scene is that some have suggested their commitment stems from the economics of using a computer that is relatively affordable and accessible (compared to so much hardware). I find that a beautiful idea.

One of my pals doing great music is Robert Beatty/Three Legged Race, who makes incredible music with a relatively affordable and super compact little setup. I’d be willing to bet he isn’t vibing on the cost of so much hardware these days or he simply chooses not to explore it as an objection to the cost of entry. Love the people who make due with what they can and continue to make brilliant music without ‘the best/shiniest/fanciest’ tools.

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#24

I think the laptop is the new guitar for that reason, the cultural impact of eurorack is exaggerated in hobbyists forums in my opinion.

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#25

Yeah. Cheap synths and audio equipment in general might be the ‘new guitar’, surely we have all seen more live bands/artists with Volcas or Microkorgs or Boss loop pedals than anything remotely eurorack

Anyway if anything is the new guitar it’s Ableton.

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#26

Yes, very true. But there’s usually a descriptor, genre, style, something attached to it. Lee Ranaldo and Michael Hedges both play(ed) guitar, but I’d be hard pressed to classify them together.

Maybe we just haven’t reached a point with modular synthesizer where there are enough “mature” players to get into the nuance of how it’s being used or have a real diversity of styles played on it… or to have it disappear into the music rather than the tool being the focal point.

There’s also a crazy consumerism in the eurorack world that is different than guitars or pianos (where it still exists, but not to the same extent).

It feels like describing eurorack as an instrument isn’t quite right… It’s a format or platform… but the instrument is what you make on top of it. It doesn’t have sound or a design, it’s just a standard set of sizes and power connectors. In some ways it’s more like an instrument design and building tool than an instrument itself. So in that way it also becomes hard to relate “players” of modular. This is maybe less so for more homogenous systems where there is a philosophy and design built in, like Buchla and Serge. But even they allow the player to really customize… more fundamentally than a custom guitar.

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#27

I am the new guitar.

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#28

& back full circle. There is a traffic generating story in “the top 5 things that are the new guitar” for someone

:wink:

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#29

I would say there’s a big difference between being known as a guitar player vs. being known to make guitar music.

Do we? A lot of boundaries have been blurred, sure, but there’s still a lot of adherence to the general breakdown of say jazz, pop, rock, hip hop, metal, classical/repertory, etc.

Thinking a bit more about deriving genre from source materials, there’s a place for it, but I think its scope and longevity is limited. Mostly because technology isn’t that interesting in terms of what people want from art.

Consider Frippertronics. The delay/loop techniques have survived and been adapted, but that music as a style was a dead end five minutes after it was released into the world. Just look at music that identifies as Frippertronics today, very little new added to the original template set out by the Fripp/Eno experiments.

Source-specific music is good for developing new techniques, but really only carries on if those techniques are a) identifiable and b) portable to music broadly. I listen to a lot of music made with modulars, I don’t hear a lot of new technique or new language to apply to music being developed. Some good music, yes, but nothing outside of what similar artists are doing without modulars.

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#30

With the preponderance of drones of rhythmic, glitchy waveforms, it seems there may be more a lack in familiarity of genre rather than a blur.

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#31

I think this is very true

laptop + cheap software = empowers things like this + internet = I can listen to it.

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#32

The idea that “new music” is a byproduct of new or popularized technologies, or is even something explicitly recognizable at all seems extremely dubious to me.

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#33

It’s not clear to me yet whether the surge in modular popularity is at all resulting in a change an actual music production or composition. Mostly because I feel like A LOT of people buy modular stuff and never release anything (which is totally cool). I think we are a long way from this stuff creeping into the works of even semi-popular artists. It can seem a lot bigger and more popular than it is among discussion boards such as this one, but if I bring up the term “modular synth” to any regular person I interact with, even many music friends, it’s not something they’ve ever heard of.

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#34

Yeah, but try saying “DAW” or “Ableton” or “Supercollider” or “Reaktor” or whatever to a “regular person” not familiar with synthesis and see if that works any better :slight_smile:

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#35

New music might be a stretch, but certainly new sounds, techniques, approaches to music. Good examples from the last 30 years would be samplers and house/breakbeat, techno and drum machines, dsp software and glitch.

What are the new sounds, techniques, approaches that modular imparts on music? I can’t think of any.

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#36

I have noticed that I’ll listen to some Top 40 songs and pick out one or two sounds—usually ambient moments or vocal production trickery, but sometimes more melodic parts and think “oh that sounds like maybe they used Clouds” or XYZ module/technique.

But for the most part I agree. I think the way that modular will initially be incorporated into Top 40 will be really as just a source palette of weird sounds.

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#37

They may already be there! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurorack#Artists_using_Eurorack_modular_synthesizers

Edit: note especially “Lady Starlight”, who I had never heard of but apparently works with lady gaga quite a lot. Between her and Coldplay, that’s definitely a couple of extremely successful, well-known artists known to use, or at least own, specifically eurorack synths.

1 Like
#38

I’m not sure anyone is arguing that musicians themselves are “modular synthesists” in a restrictive sense.

Nathan Moody for instance: White Box was done with an OP-1. And he just released an album made with electro-acoustic instruments he built himself; it’s gorgeous and creepy, and it still kind of sounds like Nathan Moody while not being anything like his Etudes series.

I feel right at home with modular, but a DAW and VST plugins are fine – I often combine them, and the mindset for one influences how I work with the other.

I think “multi-instrumentalist” is less of a big deal with electronic music than, say, someone who can skillfully play the violin and the trombone and a drum set. It’s less about virtuosity and more about mindset.

They are not necessarily “new” historically – but modular gets one away from the limitations of MIDI (Note on/off messages with a pitch and velocity, which can be modified via CC messages) and piano rolls, and tools that don’t communicate with each other.

Personally: I have worked more with drones, algorithmic composition, and voices with compositional elements that influence other voices far more in modular than I did previously. I often write music without reference to a keyboard, not knowing or caring where on a Western, 12-TET scale my root might fall, tuning intervals by ear and hand. I’m aware of many more sound design possibilities than before; I use a lot more FM, I tie timbre (especially brightness) to dynamics, and the dynamics of one note may be influenced by previous notes. I use fewer voices per recording and almost no polyphony; I make each part speak more for itself… while also knee deep (or occasionally chin-deep) in pools of reverb and delays.

In 13 years of working with VST plugins and another 15 years of synths before that I didn’t find my voice; within about 15 months of getting into Eurorack, I did. I don’t think that’s coincidence.

I feel that Caterina Barbieri’s Patterns of Consciousness, Nathan Moody’s Etudes I: Blue Box, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s Two Orb Reel, Ann Annie’s Atmospheres, vol. 1 or Gattobus’ Trails would not have happened as they did without modular.

On the other hand, I expect Depeche Mode, Kanye, Coldplay, NIN, Surgeon, Deadmau5, Belief Defect, Venetian Snares, maybe even Richard Devine, might have made similar music with different tools other than Eurorack.

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#39

sorry to derail, but at least two or three of the pictures in this article MUST have come from lines users, right?? way too much monome and mannequins in that wikipedia page lol

edit: @Justmat i see your credit! love it

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#40

Ha ha ha yep, I picked out some favourite photos from the pictures/show off your eurorack threads and asked people if they would CC-license them. There’s a lot of monome, but I think the banner image is fairly diverse

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#41

I really liked what you’ve written, but I have to point out that there’s a real irony to this bit,

given that both of these things are broadly true of all kinds of music made on “real” (that is, acoustic) instruments.

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