From: metlay@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu (metlay)
Newsgroups: rec.music.synth
Subject: Re: Gear Lust
Summary: Wasted potential
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:44:43 GMT
Organization: Atomic City

In article <1992Apr13.004912.4717@sbcs.sunysb.edu> estasic@engws10.ic.sunysb.edu (Edward Stasic) writes:
>Looking around at all that could be had, if you don't have any equipment, it
>would very easy to become paralyzed by the thought that something better will
>be in the market this coming (...fill in the blank...).

Metlay's Law: If you can't go down to your local store, try it out, pay for
it, and take it home under your arm, it's vaporware and you shouldn't waste
time thinking about it.

Rothwell's Law: If it exists now and serves your purposes now and you have a
use for it now, the immediate benefit to your music from using it now is rarely
outweighed by chewing your fingernails and waiting for the Next Step to come
along in the hopes that the Next Step will do more for you....

>As someone who doesn't have anything (yet?), I'm very curious about one thing:
>Is it true that a lot of what's out there is never used to its fullest
>potential?

Anyone who says otherwise is living in a dream world. 

I used to pride myself on knowing my gear backwards and forwards and
upside down-- the last time I had that kind of rapport with my rig was
when it consisted of one Xpander controlled by an MC-202 duophonic
synth/CV sequencer and an Xk keyboard whose arpeggiator, like the
MC-202, was synced to a TR-707 drum machine with either trigger pulses
or dumb FSK. All this into a KM802 mixer with an old MIDIverb and a
Korg SDD-2000 echo machine, running to a Fostex X-15 cassette
fourtrack. That was five years ago, and I haven't been REALLY
comfortable in my studio since then.

I did a whole album on that rig, with nary a twitch about how to use
my gear, and the temptation to go back to it every now and again (I
still have everything but the mixer) gets pretty strong, when the
Amiga won't talk to the U-50 and the VS's patch naming format screws
up the librarian software and the EX-8000 has a weird handshake with
the data dumps that I can't grok and I can't remember if I'm running
Send 6 to the Lexicons or the SPX-90 and....

>Simultaneously, I hear about the amazing abilities of some of the synths on
>the market and the inability or unwillingness of the users to go beyond
>using the factory presets and create custom sounds.
>Is it that these machines are overrated or are most users just plain lazy?

Whoa! There's a pretty big gap between those two extremes, and I don't
think it's entirely fair to jump all the way to one side or the other.
It's tempting to say that "most users are just plain lazy," until one
thinks of the many reasons why people DON'T go beyond the presets....

Some people could be lazy, sure enough. Others could simply prefer to
devote the majority of their time to playing something that's not
quite perfect rather than climbing the learning curve to the point
where the not-quite-perfect can be tweaked to perfection. (That was
the whole point of a recent thread here!) Others have more pressing
interests in learning other parts of their rig, and still others have
barely got the time to breathe, much less learn all the new gear they
buy (kneejerk gottahaveit syndrome...a crippling disease...please give
generously, it COULD happen to YOU). 

As for the machines being overrated, that's an even tougher call. I
think a lot of them could be designed to be more user-friendly, but
what's the point in sinking $$ into UI design when nobody tweaks
anyway? (Do I detect a vicious circle here?) I think that the vast
majority of machines out there are NOT used to their fullest by their
owners, for a combination of all of those reasons. In fact, the number
of people out there with small rigs who really know them well is 
probably quite small, and those with BIG rigs who know them well is much
smaller than even that. 

Of all the people with large rigs that I know, the only one whom I'd
say has a good handle on every item he owns is...no, scratch that. I
don't know ANYONE I'd say that about, because a lot of the people I
know with big rigs are toy collectors, finding new and unusual gear
for the joy of the diversity of Creation rather than as a means to an
end. Me included, to some extent. (If I had a big salary and a big
house and could afford furntiure movers, I WOULD own a Quadra and a
Polymoog and a CS-80 and a double manual Mellotron and an Oberheim
Eight-Voice and a Moog 55 and a Syntar and all the other beautiful
instruments I've known and loved....) And the rest are unfortunately
victims of the disease. Me included, to some extent. (When I get a
real job and to hell with the house and I can move it myself, I'm
gonna get an S5 and a Wave and a Wavestation A/D and a VS Rack
and....) |-P

Now, the people with SMALL rigs that I know tend to produce a lot of
music per unit time and are very happy to do so; Joe McMahon, Dan
Barrett, Dean Swan and Paul DeFrain spring to mind immediately. But
which is the cause and which is the effect?  Do they have less gear
and hence enjoy playing with what they have, or do they enjoy playing
with what they have and hence need less gear?  Only THEY can answer
that; all I know is that I admire them for it. I told Paul not to
expand his rig if he didn't have to, I said the only thing Joe needed
to do was upgrade his VFXsd to an SD-1/32 to clean up the noise, and
the only recoomendation I EVER made to Dan was that if he liked
playing digital piano, maybe he should just shut up and BUY one to
replace the one that's dying in his two-keyboard (!) rig. |->
--
metlay@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu  ||               "Oh, JOY!"