true, I guess most people buy stuff because they say “oh, I need that sound” or “if I have this then I can do THIS, but until I do I can’t do anything like that” which may or may not be true, but we are good at convincing ourselves of it.
I always think of this Jim O’Rourke interview in Time Out- " Yeah. I’m not saying some musicians are better, it’s just their sensibility is… I don’t like Musicians, you know what I mean? They like their instrument – I don’t understand that. I don’t understand liking your instrument, it’s just a pain-in-the-ass thing you have to use in order to do what you want to do. Having an interest in your instrument – I don’t understand it, it just makes no sense to me. Why don’t you just stay home and caress it and stuff? Why are you playing for people?"
While I feel he is being facetious here, I think there is quite some merit to this way of thinking. Wrestle and struggle with your instrument, push it to new places, develop new ways of playing with it, if it isn’t serving your purpose put it down and find something new rather than letting it dictate the art form. Not trying to intentionally speak ill of that scene or go on a total rant, but a lot of what I see in “modular scene” or whatever one wants to call it is just this- big love for the instrument itself and its supposed capabilities. But where does it get us? Piles of tutorials and (to my ears at least) lots of uninteresting stylistic exercises, clones, and incredibly unprogressive music given what said instrument COULD be capable of. Not to beat up on synths the same could be said of other instruments or artistic forms of expression, guitars probably being the most obvious other one to me.
