#48

this is correct. sorry, i shouldve made this point clearer.

i just got destroyed lmao. but in all seriousness. i definitely understand where youre coming from now.

again, sorry. i should be clear when stating things like that. i have been looking at max 7 and ableton live, but i am interested in the free tools previously mentioned and plan to familiarize myself with them before i purchase anything else.

again, when you put it like this i can understand why it’s so frustrating to you.

ive heard of both, and (like i said in a previous reply to you) im definitely interested in the korg. im assuming i should read the books you linked and understand the software before buying it though.

i have a white whale, meadowphysics, and sputnik 4 tap because i bought them on a whim. i liked what i heard on the monome website, and i figured i could use them by themselves to figure out how these things work. i dont have a grid or case because i thought i could just buy them later.

thank you for these suggestions! (thank you for every suggestion)! i’ll be sure to make use of all of these.

(also sorry if i seemed arrogant or pretentious or whatever. definitely wasnt trying to come across like that.)

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#49

i picked up vail’s book again and had forgotten that it’s really kind of more about ogling vintage synths than really explaining techniques. that’s why i edited the link. allen strange’s book is wonderful, but sadly out of print - i had no idea that my early edition was worth so much! jeez. anyways you can probably find a PDF somewhere, and it’s well worth looking.

[redacted. not my place.]

edit: sorry, i forgot you mentioned the ms-20. but yes, it’s a great little analog synth, especially for live performance / travelling. it’s semi-modular and a good way to get started with understanding patch construction without breaking the bank.

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#50

for sure! i’ll done some research and see what i can found out about the allen strange book.

just did some googling and can’t find anything on sputnik. care to explain what’s up with the company?

#51

[edited and partially redacted. this is not my soapbox.]

i don’t love clones in general - i think they have a tendency to drive out innovation in the industry, because they leapfrog the r+d effort required to make new things.

there can be a fine line between cloning and inspiration. almost everyone using old design elements are in the latter category, of course. it’s a fine thing to continue refining a design legacy, but at some point it strikes me as abusive.

but in purchasing synths, as in any other consumer action, i think as responsible citizens we should all carefully consider the design and business practices we support.

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#52

Firstly, I had no idea Don Buchla’s son was part of this community. My condolences to you and your family; this must be a hard time.

I want to commend you for the comment above. Coming at this more from a ‘pro audio’/engineering point of view, I’m sick to death of the incessant clamor for and supply of yet another U47 clone, or 1073 clone, or C12 clone or whatever–at the expense sometimes of people who are truly doing new, interesting, and sometimes–oftentimes–better things.

You said it perfectly.

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#53

i noticed that your name appeared as ezra buchla, but i didnt actually think you were related to THE buchla! woah - im honored!!

(also it seems like something terrible has happened to you and your family. i hope everything is okay!)

and i wasnt aware of this at the time of buying it. i think that ill definitely sell the sputnik module i have then. i feel pretty bad just for owning it now honestly

#54

Always Google first, even if you don’t get anywhere. Otherwise you’re saying your time is more valuable than ours (and I’m pretty sure you don’t think that!)

So you’re 21 right? I reckon you’ve got another 50 years of high musical productivity, then maybe another 20 years when things start to amble a little. Play the long game.

I’m not trying to suggest you have a ‘life plan’ or anything daft like that. In reality my 20s were all over the shop, but back then I had lots of time and energy. Now I’m in my (late) 30s I get to use all the colour and experience gathered in more fruitful ways.

But maybe try to tame (just a little) the abundance of energy you possess and focus it. You need to figure out how to do that yourself, different things work for different people. Nowadays I like to set myself short projects, e.g. try running that Volca Keys you own through some of your guitar pedals, or reading a book, or learning a skill. I have a list of them, it’s supposed to help me see the bigger picture. Sometimes this works.

(Also, I’ve always been an early adopter of technology but really you can’t beat a good old fashioned paper notebook for organising your thoughts.)

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#55

@zebra

First of all I have also just realised who you are…my deep condolences.

as you were talking about clones of your father (and others work) in the 70s…I would mention Befaco (https://www.befaco.org/en/)…their rampage is great.

@landlockedlight
I would take Ezra suggestion in great consideration (and not because he is Don Buchla’s son) because they are very thought of.

As he says, eveyone has gone the steep learning curve here and in the music production in general.
Everyone has most probably first tried the free tools and then gone through the more expensive hardware path.
There is no magic instrument and no magic tool that get your music appears amazing to you and others.

You get a lot of people (in my experience especially in the sound engineering world) that talks about gear and not about the theory around the sound processing techiniques…this is not healthy and will get you towards a downward spiral of not understanding what you are actually doing and just spending lots of money in the newest tool available (a bit like buying the new iphone every year).

Get yourself familiarise with sound techniques, I would suggest three other books as well:

Miller Pluckett book: http://msp.ucsd.edu/techniques.htm
Loadbang: http://www.pd-tutorial.com/
How to make a noise: http://noisesculpture.com/

Again my two pence
Good Luck

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#56

definitely not! im sorry if this was the impression i gave!!

thank you for explaining it like this. it helps a lot when i can see that people were like me and all that jazz.

for sure! id love to get started circuit bending, and putting the guitar pedals with my synths, etc. but it seems hard to start these kind of experiments. (granted i havent done a lot of research.) as for reading a book and learning a skill, i think i have enough material to last me a while thanks to this thread!![quote=“sam, post:54, topic:5072”]
(Also, I’ve always been an early adopter of technology but really you can’t beat a good old fashioned paper notebook for organising your thoughts.)
[/quote]

can not agree more.

#57

these links are really excellent resources. honestly i think PD is at least as useful as MSP, and has become a de facto standard in academia, for good reason. it doesn’t have all the UI bells and whistles, and it doesn’t have Jitter, but on the other hand it has Gem and other neat stuff. i’ve seen people complain about the documentation but have never personally found it lacking (at least in the last decade.)

pd also has serious benefits in software production - it’s an excellent tooling environment for prototyping DSP algorithms in C/C++, and patches can be embedded in other applications using libpd - now even in things like Android or Unity. the power of open source… for me this extreme portability is much more useful than integration with Ableton.

i’ve looked at the befacto stuff, haven’t played with it but it seems like a solid lineup of essentials, and i really like that there are kits.

i’m going to edit my posts above… it’s not my place to call out people by name, or tell anyone what to buy or not buy, and i don’t mean to turn this thread into a soapbox.

and thanks everyone for your condolences, i really appreciate it. (for anyone who’s not aware, don buchla is indeed my dad, and he passed away last month after a long illness.)

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#58

(great, this thread turns out to be an excellent resource for the electronic musician)
i’d like to recommend the serge gold book here
some parts are serge focused – which is interesting btw–, and one part is sound related. anyway essential knowledge for any (electronic) musician i guess.

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#59

it makes a lot of sense when you explain it like this. thank you!

will do! thank you very much for these reccomendations - theyve been added to my list of things i need to check out! :slight_smile:

#60

ill be sure to check it out (its been added to the huge list of things i need to check out now) - thank you! it certainly sounds interesting.

#61

I agree. Maybe this thread can become “sticky”, similar to this one on muffs: https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44345

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#62

And I add Musimathics to the reading list :slight_smile: very readable and highly informative

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#63

I’ve been impressed / intimidated by the level of programming skills people have on this forum. There seems to be a mix of programmers that are musicians as well as musicians that have learned programming as an extension of their musical training. I’ve thought until recently that programming is completely beyond my skill set because I never studied it formally. I now own teletype and have used the Internet to teach me unorganized basics, but it is still so intimidating and I want to focus on musicality, so concise training is key. There are some wonderful links and advice above that I will dig into, but I would like to ask a more focused question regarding this: Do you have advice for a musician interested in programming? Where to start? What information to avoid (timewasters/rabbit holes)?

@landlockedlight I’m glad you started this thread! Lots of interesting perspectives and insights. As an aside, I feel a little guilty selling you those modules now, but I am certainly glad it has led to this! I was a little worried that it seemed you didn’t have a case or a grid yet! If it helps at all, they should all be easy to sell again :wink:

And @zebra, I find your insights very inspiring. Thank you for putting energy into expressing your thoughts here. I find it very refreshing amid the constant feeling of needing more stuff.

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#64

there is this thread (which i started ;)) but it’s from 6 years ago, so not really up to date
http://archive.monome.org/community/discussion/9727/learning-an-audio-programming-language/p1
edit: in my case i discovered i’m not good enough at programming to make the things i want to make. i tried to learn supercollider, learning it is really fun. but in the end too complicated for me to make useful musical things

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#65

I feel Sonic Pi is an excellent environment to start learning musical programming.
http://sonic-pi.net/

The code is in Ruby and everything you need to get started is at the link above.

I also highly recommend the Grid Studies for learning how to work with the monome grid.
http://monome.org/docs/grid-studies/
I’d focus on Max, Processing, and Pure Data as a beginner.

If Sonic Pi really sticks with you, and you start thinking you might want to learn Ruby in a more in-depth way, _why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby is the most entertaining way (if not the most straightforward way) to take a deeper dive.
http://poignant.guide/
The poignant guide also has a soundtrack made by _why himself.

Heading back in a more musical direction, the Supercollider tutorials are great.
http://supercollider.github.io/tutorials/

So, I just recommended you try 5 different programming languages. That might seem overwhelming. Does a beginner really need to know 5 different programming languages? No, not at all. You can probably choose one programming language and that choice is likely going to be valid for 95% of what you’re going to want to do for the rest of your musical life. The reason you want to try lots of languages as a beginner is so that you can see which one fits your peculiar brain the best. It’s also helpful when starting out to look at how multiple languages do various things so that you can start to see what they have in common and what they do differently, which things are going to be the way they are no matter what language you choose, and which things are essentially arbitrary/taste/style and vary greatly from language to language. Only you can do the hard work of figuring out your preferences in these latter areas. And it matters a great deal to your ongoing productivity and success as a programmer.

How long does it take to learn programming? You’ll be making sounds with Sonic Pi within minutes. You’ll be learning and growing and achieving greater mastery over the crafts of programming and music for the rest of your life. I started programming at the age of 9. I’m 41. I still feel like a complete beginner.

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#66

thank you for the reading recommendation and the programming info! i’m pretty sure that was the last question i had that ‘needed’ answering, so thank you!

#67

there is a MOOC about Chuck going on right now. I like that language and i think it can make sense for a beginner, even if objet-oriented programming can be a bit strange to apprehend for the first time.

1 Like