Is today the golden age of synthesizers?
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- Опубликовано: 7 июл 2024
- In this video I'll shortly go through the history of the synthesizer and explain why I think we're currently living in the golden age of the synth. Even though the nostalgia for the 70s and 80s is strong the synthesizer is more versatile, more available and more affordable than ever.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:38 The 60s: the Moog Modular
1:27 The 70s: Minimoog, the rise of ARP, Roland, Yamaha, Sequential and Korg
2:23 The 80s: Digital synths, MIDI and affordability
4:14 The 90s and on: Super powerful digital synths, Virtual analog and VST plugins
5:52 The Renaissance of the synthesizer
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As a young girl I remember how impossibly high the bar to entry seemed to be: An 808, 909, and 303 were all over a thousand dollars in 90s money, and ReBirth was fine but certainly didn't replace anything analog. Now, I have the Arturia suites of amazing VSTs and Behringer analog repllicas of the X0X synths of my dreams. I have hardware trackers instead of Amigas and Akai samplers, sure; but I think there's a great point to be made.
Just want cutting edge new designs? You get a laptop, Omnisphere, and Pigments, and you'll never get bored. Wanna make radio bangers? Massive and Serum will get you there. Just wanna make music from 1991? Easy peasy, no computer necessary. There's never been a better time to love making music.
Behringer are wiping the smug smile of many a face. GREAT gear!
*young boy
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol ancient shapeshifting witch*
The flip side to this is, Ive not made any music since cubase 3.5 days. This channel has got me interested again but I have no idea where to start!
@@upthebuffer1921 Oh goodness, what a wonderful problem to have!
Yes, and unlike the 80s when I was a teenager, now I can actually afford to buy them!
I think we had one thing that previous generations didn't had - cheap and powerful computer components. That makes it somewhat easy to create cheap and powerful synths.
Great job on summarising the history of synthesizers in such a succinct way. This could work well as an introduction to synthesizers for people who don't know a lot about it to get a quick overview of what's happened so far.
You can read any synth forum comments section and know that even if 100% omniscient gods and demigods were controlling the synth industry, someone, somewhere would still be whinging about not enough or too many features or bragging their latest downloaded free VST is better. In the meanwhile, my bank account can’t keep up with all the new releases like the Iridium, Summit, Hydrasynth, Cobalt 8; or analog phatness of re-releases of Prophet 5, MS-20, ARP 2600. Also hard to keep up with the new trend of pedal effects manufacturers making stereo synth level pedals that make an old synth something newly unique and different. As you mentioned, there’s almost a rack version of every synth concept possible, and DAW plugins are matching that range. The clone market and device software is making even entry market music-making widely available and affordable.
You can find people that want to gripe about something in all this, but I wouldn’t want to live with them.
There is a system at play that while I enjoy & prefer, I do not believe is above critique & reform and therefore have no problem saying we live in an era where consumption & consumerism, immediacy, and "buy, buy, buy!" mentality is very much a thing and they will "diversify" their product line ups i.e. just make & remake shitloads of things that are useful, but entirely unnecessary, to prey on this materialism so they can continue to line their pockets. Be even more careful of companies asking for your money on behalf off of any sort of cause, as they're using the notion of moral superiority to trick your mind into feeling good over supporting something by spending money on whatever it backs. This world has become "spend money = feel good"
Retrolouge, Vital and VCV-Rack are my favorite software synths. The last hardware synth I bought was the TD-3.
* When I was getting into hardware synths I would go into GC and just mess around with them knowing I wasn't close to affording them....And then the Volca series released and I could get into them finally....and then the boutique series followed.
Those series of synths are huge in getting people into synths who then go on and buy bigger and better ones. ( Peak & Rev 2) + JU-06
YES! Now let's have a look at this vid...
I think in terms of hardware we are stuck for a long time. Since the early 2000s with the releases of the Korg Triton Roland Fantom and Yamaha Motif there has been no major breakthrough and the successors have been mere updates or pretty much the same thing. Maybe soon synth keyboards will be pc with vst. in fact the korg kronos has specifications more like a computer than a musical instrument. Anyway, good topic to discuss.
The modern Akai line and Maschine+ fall into the “essentially a PC” category, too. I’m wondering if NI is cooking up a Komplete Kontrol+ even… I think we’ll see more things like this as CPUs get smaller, cheaper, faster, and lower power for thermals.
Yes this is definitely the golden age of synths. It is so hard to chose just one of the many new units available today. My mind is spinning trying to decide which synth will be the next addition to my rig.
I give Arturia credit for putting out the Minibrute
Arturia has some really cool stuff. I know many people will scoff at this. but for hardware, I have had some fun with Behringer stuff too. I love the 2600. I mostly use it for envelope follower as a guitar effect.
I am in love with my Microfreak.
Great Video again. Thank you. Synthesizer effects nowadays doesn’t have the surprising effect anymore, compared to 90 80 music.
Jonas, I'd like to thank you! To me, this was the best time of music (around 2000). That was also the time I start to DJ with vinyl and it was far away for me understand who those tunes have been created. Today, you bring me back in time over and over again and disclose this mysteries ;)
Spot on!
We're definitely in a new golden age of cheap/affordable analog synths, imo. I'd like to see more digital synths that don't cost an arm and a leg XD If I had the space I would absolutely have a PolyBrute and a Prophet 5 or 10, though. As it stands, my Minibrute 2S and Soundforce SFC-5/Prophet V will have to do :D
Well done, a brief but excellent snapshot of this wonderful technology. Classic and traditional music has benefited along with the evolution of new music genres.
Great video with nice explanation of the eras and synthesizers from that period. Goed bezig, Jonas 👍🏻
I subscribed to channel because of the intro sound. And yes is the correct answer. Great videos, dude!
Great video again, nice 😀
really great video👍
Absolutely they are. I had a best friend who got a Korg M1, and while I was blown away by the sounds he had, I noticed he didn’t bother creating his own. He explained it was something he wasn’t familiar with on the M1’s features, and Korg had made plenty of digital sounds of acoustic instruments, but I didn’t hear much of those big beefy analog synths in my Depeche Mode CDs in the M1. But at the time, the market had embraced digital, and sampling still wasn’t cheap.
10 years later and my listening tastes were hearing all these classic synths and drum machines. But they were impossible to find or afford. But then analog slowly came back, but in the groovebox market. I bought a MC505, SP808, and a JP8000. I thought surely I’d be making rave classics in no time. Buuuuuut, I didn’t really sit down with them enough, and sold them all.
DAWS were making some gear obsolete and yet the prices weren’t dropping. But any classic gear was still hard to find or afford, but the major companies like Korg are making smaller synths. Yamaha has kinda faded from view, and Roland doesn’t seem to be the only game in town. Now Behringer is cloning old hard to find for cheap, AND it’s real analog! But they can be part of a DAW as well.
I own various cheap synths, pedals, samplers, and drum machines now, but I’m going to slowly step into modular synthesis. I basically feel I know enough on Oscillators, Envelopes, Filters, LFOs, and some things I’m trying to learn more about. Gates, Clock divisions, etc. I probably could never create the sounds of my friends M1, but why would I want to? Instead I look forward to exploring my own creations. But it’s great that anyone can begin with a cheap synth or drum machine and then slowly grow their studio. Or might prefer to just do everything on their iPhone or iPad. Or prefer their DAW. There’s tons of options and you don’t need tons of money and dreams of old gear you’d need to sell your car to buy. Now it’s for everyone and I can’t wait to see & hear what it will do for music.
Great video!!
It is indeed a golden age. Money is no longer a blocker to creativity. Long may this love affair with synths continue
Nice short documentary 👍👍👍😎
Definitely! Synths are very accessible and insanely powerful now. There's no way I could have afforded any synths if I had been an adult in the 70s or 80s. It's a great era to be a synth nerd for sure! 🎹
I agree that we are living in the golden age of synths. I noticed in this video you have pigments. I absolutely love that synth.
Such a thorough walkthrough but we non-native speakers definitely need English subtitles. Don't know why it's default to Nederlands and can't be changed.
Hmm. Strange. Will look into that
I believe so! Strange you didnt mention Behringer because (despite their reputation) they made vintage synthesizers avialiable for even teenagers, starting with the sweet behringer crave at 150€ (and It sounds really good). Ofcourse, vstis like vcv rack, phaseplant, serum, falcon etc etc have a major incluence on the music we hear because almost every modern producer uses vstis. Also, Eurorack and semi-modular is booming right now because of all the new modules that arrived especially from companys like Makenoise, Instruo, Intelligel, dreadbox.. just to name very very few.
Also, thanks to the internet and the large amount of people using it, synth DIY is becoming more accesable and easy, since hardware still has its price.
Me personally i have the Arturia minibrute 2s, the behringer crave and Eurorack modules from behringer, dreadbox, doepfer and some DIY modules i made. And ofcourse the big big library of vst plugins.
So yes, i totally agree, right now is a golden age for synthesizers!
I still am a sucker for hardware synths, it could be my imagination or stubbornness but nothing sounds as good as real hardware.
I don’t think it’s the sound necessarily, but the experience of operating the thing that’s physically making the sound. But that’s just me.
Absolutely!! Old school synths rule! Out of time!
VSTs seem too ephemeral, easy-come, easy-go, but a hardware synth is a more real, physical thing that exists in its own right.
As always, great video! I grew up during the 80/90´s and I saw the analog synths being rejected because of the digital modern versions. Moogs were super cheap at that time because nobody wanted an analog synth anymore. Temperamental machines, easily to get out of tune, waiting time to heat up all the analog circuitry.... Digital synths were amazing and a huge step in innovation and sound possibilities, but it is true that working on sound design was painful and boring without real physical controls. The VST were amazing when they came out. I remember buying a SounBlaster Live to use soundfonts, and by the end of the 90's I got my Emax II and the Kawai Q0ex (still I have both at my mother's house). But analog synths were gone, the CPU power wasn't enough to emulate a lot of synths and the DAW were pretty limited. People from our generation truly appreciate being alive in this moment, when you can have all the synths you ever wanted in a computer, including a mixer, effects and many more things, plus, there's hardware, and a lot of hardware to choose, from analog to digital, from clones to original machines, and everything is affordable. When I moved to Canada I didn't get my gear because I have a lot of synth but not a lot of space here, so with the arrival of the Volcas, and later the Boutiques, it was a dream come true for me. In just a desk I could have all the legendary synths in my laptop, plus a bunch of small size analog and digital synths and drum machines, and I'm having a lot of fun. Not as creative as when I had limitations in the 90's probably, and more time to play because I was a teenager occupied only by High School, but I love this era and how easy it is to have access to pretty much any synth. From the Emax II, Kawai Q80ex, Yamaha DX27, Korg M1, Roland TR-707... to the Roland Boutiques, Korg Volcas, the Arturia and Korg Collection, Roland Cloud and finally the Jupiter X, decades have passed but finally I got all the sounds I ever wanted. Truly, we are living in a golden age synth :)
never heard of a supernova or an andromoda ive learnt some new stuff ....love the vid
The filters on the new softsynths from cherry audio and softube in the last couple years sound so good, the softube 72 can sound almost as analog as my moog little phatty
I'm quite happy with current situation. Thanks to powerful computers and DAWs, you can run a lot of instances of VSTs realtime, so each Patch sound like in Patch/ Voice mode with all effects, and still you can use/ buy some vintage HW synth (especially these digitals from 90's/00's are very cheap nowadays, off course vintage analogue are quite pricey).
You can combine old with new tech, like some vintage synth, with new effects from VSTs, so this is giving amazing possibilities, and inspiration. Nostalgia is fine, but it is double edged, in 70's, 80's you also had to have expensive external effects, to make synths sounds interesting, because many of them didn't have any effects build in, so they sounds dry, and only few best of the best artists could afford, such as good equite studio (Vangelis, Jarre, Jackson, Peter Gabriel, etc...). So thanks to modern technologies nowadays, even normal person have access to sounds, which will cost somebody in 80's literally fortune.
Yea, we live in the best age now.
First of all: our computers are really powerful. It doesn't matter if it's laptop, desktop, if it has Intel CPU or Apple M1 or Ryzen - all of current computers are really powerful.
Second: VST are created for, I guess, more than 20 years now. They started to be competive (against hardware) like 10-15 years ago. I don't know, Sylenth (released in 2007) or NI FM8 for example. You can even buy some "second hand" soft synths for ridiculous money like 20 $, or 40 $. They don't use much CPU because .... in last 15 years, cpu power sky-rocketed. On the other hand, if you need something new, top notch - the latests vst synths are totally amazing, sophisticated. (phase plant, rapid, serum, falcon etc.)
Current soft synths are great, some amazing ones are even free (ie. Vital).
Thanks to sampling I have Arturia Lab V and IK Multimedia Syntronik, bought second handed for like 30-40 $ each. With hundreds of presets. Yea, they won't replace the hardware, but the cost is like an equivalent of dinner with 1-2 glasses of wine :)
And still if you want to, you can buy hardware, classic, old one, or brand new. Literally, we now have access to everything that was invented in last hmm 40 years :)
the access to the sounds (we could only dream about in the 90's) is unprecedented, but this "access" also created overload of synth and people are totally lost I think, sometimes less is better, but what do I know :)
For a beginner I'm sure the options must be overwhelming indeed.
behringer make good classic analog clones for super friendly prices
Hey Jonas! 👋
It's a Golden Age in terms of accessibility for sure. Functionally, we have been able to make basically any conceivable sound with a laundry list of synths/VSTs for a while now.
I'm not knocking the new hardware and the cool experimental stuff because that's probably where we'll find the "next big thing," but the cold hard truth is that it's mostly a gimmick. People either collect them or just sample them and then sell it.
Encore une vidéo d'une excellente qualité Jonas !
I always remain on my hunger, because it is so well done that I always want more...
My first "real" synthesizer (I had the Psr 18 and the Psr 6700 of Yamaha)
was the QS 300 always from Yamaha... It was a good little machine, which I still have but which is really tired by dint of having used it more than 15 years ...😅
Thanks :)
And the QS300 seems to be a predecessor of the AN1x and CS1x. Interesting
Yes, exactly.
But, we are very far from the philosophy of Cs1x and An1x...
These days I think we are spoilt for choice...
Of course we are! It's not like we're in the golden age of trumpets. As far as instruments go the synthesizer is the youngest and most exciting.
Is there anything that is newer than the synthesizer actually? As an instrument?
Great Video again! :)
i agree. i really want to get Jupitar-Xm now.
However, im disappointed with the fact that recent micro SMD (Surface-Mounted) boards are not fixable or not easily fixable.. especially the small ones..
on the other hand, vintage synth and semi-vintage synth are fixable and i like that style ;)
though some says recent synth are made with high quality components that most will last more than 40yrs+ :)
Its off course also the smd boards that make it possible to keep the costs under control.
I also worry about repairabilty though...Time will tell.
👍
We're living in the age of A.I making its own music. Perhaps in the future, synths will be accessed through virtual reality Tron like worlds.
There are already VR experiences like that actually. The future is now.
The years fly the older you get, there are vintage VST Instruments these days lol I think Steinberg Neon was the first but they we're others way before that not in VST format. Propellerhead's Rebirth came out in the mid 90's, that was well cool for it's day 😁
Rebirth was quite great at the time indeed.
Even before having seen the video my answer is already a resounding YES! The only problem is that the music made on all these new tools is, on average, hardly up to scratch. There simply is no market for originality since everybody expects music to be free of cost anyway. Furthermore there is the background noise created by uninspired stuff. Don't believe me? Check RUclips itself! Those are the real problems.
There is so much music being released everyday that the average is indeed not that great. Music itself basically is treated as a commodity that 'streams' out of the virtual tap. Quantity above quality.
Still I regulary find great new music. Its still out there.
It is the same thing that happend with photogrpaphy when digital cameras became available for everyone. A lot more of very mediocare stuff floating around.
@@Estuera Of course there (still) is a lot of good music (Ever heard mine? brassee.com/music.html :-) ) but the irony is s that the major labels used to filter out a lot of the crap in the past. So while we where all blaming them it still was and is the taste of the majority that keeps good music down. So you can spend a whole live perfecting your skills as a composer while at the same time still drifting further and further away from the mainstream. Luckily that can never happen to house and rave fans like you. Or am I now being a music style racist? Again! :-)
@@Melanholix Yeah, for years I thought about dipping my toes into video production skills as well but why bother at all in an era where everybody with a phone thinks he or she is a director?! :-)
Yeah, that's a whole other issue. Probably the same has been said in the 60s, 70s and 80s though and I know for sure it was being said in the 90s.
In the end you should create the music you want to create yourself.The rest is marketing :P
Love this, You are dutch right? Do you offer producer lessons?
Belgian actually (but half dutch).
Currently I do not really offer any lessons no. It has been asked before but I'm a bit too short on time to properly get arround to it.
Ok, duidelijk. In ieder geval bedankt voor je reactie. Ik kijk uit naar nieuwe video’s.
Today the problem is that of curse of plenty. We have too many hardware synths to choose from, far too many soft synths to choose from, so many presets it would take a lifetime to audition them, likewise for samples, and not enough of the old attitude of making music with what was there. We are smothered by choice.
Option paralysis is a real risk nowadays indeed
Today a synth can play itself, no need to be a practiced musician anymore, there are music genre's that it is better if you are not a musician. Perfectly timed robot music with blips and beeps by programing instead of performing. This type of music has led to the BIG synth market today....and I am thankful. The choices are many, and digital is beginning to come alive, finally, and take on the complexity of modulation and control analog cannot. There is even a market for us poor musicians, where affording a synth was out of the question before, now we can choose from many. I am that old school practiced musician from the 1960s, maybe next year I will buy my first Moog, a purchase never even thought of before in my life.
"there are music genre's that it is better if you are not a musician"... yea... but, no... that is just pure bullshit, what genre would that be ?
I disagree. One can tell the difference between some diatonic piece of crap and what a real musician does with their instrument. If I have to look at one more add for the midi chord pack I am going to scream. If you can't write a simple chord progression you are not writing a song. Maybe I do agree. But these untalented fledging players are no different than the bad guitar players found in local punk bands.
@@mimikova390 LOL, yea I hear you. For me if I hear the word "plug-in" I click away. Commercials on RUclips with samples or MIDI packs are also a big click away from it before I puke. I have a sampler but make my own samples from analog synths, acoustic guitar strumming, vocals, and piano...or just sample my own drumming measures. I like to make my own drums too from objects hit and synths or layering synths, acoustic drums and objects struck. But you know... folks just hate my music and seem to love that perfectly synced EDM; that's why I have begun thinking maybe better if I was not a musician, and never practiced those 10, 000's of hours over the last half century.
I think in terms it will be more suitable:
60/70's Golden Age
80/90 Silver Age
00/10 Bronze Age
Nowadays = Modern Age / best Age to get a hardware synth
You forgot to include the access virus with the digital analog synths.
I didn't forget. I just didn't mention it. There are many VA's so I simply highlighted a few of the early examples.
I love the esq1 for digital analog. Their primitive wavetable was brought to life by that Curtis filter. Once deploy all three OSC through that warm true analog filter you something awesome.
For me it started with the Roland Juno 106 and Steinberg Pro 24 :-). In Haarlem. And you? Today I mainly work with the Korg Triton and the Roland D70. More you dont need. O and Ableton of course...
I started with cubase 3.0 and a Roland MC-303 😬
My wife wishes I had your gear-coveting restraint. I started with a Juno 106 the year they came out, then a DW8000, then an Emu Emax, and so on, until my life became nothing but George Carlin’s “Bigger Place For Your Stuff” routine.
Restraint ;)
Nowadays the studio is filled to the brim :D The only reason I didn't have much stuff in the 90s was because I had no money :D
Where we are right now is the beginning of a new golden age... Thanks to myriad low priced high quality analog synths, real musicians (they're the ones without much cash) are starting to pick them up out of curiosity...great music is on its way (and already here to some extent... Bon Iver, etc. are creating beautiful songs)...but MUCH more to come, in every genre from punk to jazz to....country? Ok not sure bout that last one.
Here's my take on the decades.
60s/70s: golden age of "rock band instruments" (electric guitars, drum kits)
80s: golden age of analogue synths
90s: golden age of samplers
00s: age of digital synths, golden age of trance music
10s: dark ages
20s: synths are everywhere. let's see where things will go...
Interesting, wondering why you call 10s Dark Age though. Would you mind explaining a bit?
@@owlmega-101 well, do you see any light? 😉 For me the 10s mean uninspired EDM crap, even less inspired pop music, horrible vocoders in hip hop, trap in general, and rock music wasn't exactly at its peak, either.
It's a revolutionary decade in many ways. Software took over in music production, streaming took over in music distribution, social media took over music marketing. I feel like all this turmoil led to people in the industry mainly playing it safe. Tough times for creativity to break through.
Anyway, that's just me ranting. What's your take on the 10s?
For as much shit people give "EDM," namely Big Room in context to the 2010s, I actually think the genre had potential. It's just that no one ever explored that potential. They just kept making cheesy festival bro bangers for the most part.
Big Room is just an easy target for people to feel like their tastes are higher class or some shit. Honestly, Big Room is pretty much the 2010's version of EuroDance from the 2000s.
@@urphakeandgey6308 Fair enough. I was obviously thinking of big room, Avicii, Garrix, Guetta, Jaehn, and so on. Or as you put it: cheesy festival bro bangers. 😂
I'm actually not sure what else there is to the genre. I never felt the need to dig any deeper. Do you have any recommendations? Honest question. I'm really only half as ignorant as I seem. 😉
It's not only the golden Age of Synthesizers, it's also the golden Age of Plugins, which can sometimes be pretty frustrating....
I count vsti's as synths as well off course.
Besides that its indeed also the golden age of plugin effects.
Today is a golden time to buy legendary old school synths by reasonable prices. And opportunity to use vst if you don't have money. Not bad)
lol what, have you seen the market at all? literally the past year alone most vintage synths and modules that still buck today have nearly 2x'ed in price. Ensoniq samplers, E-mu stuff, old Waldorf and Access have all gone through the roof the past few years. 2010-2017 were the golden years where you could pick up shit for under 100 euros or dollars that now cost 1000 or more because nobody wanted them back then.
@@Niele160 You're right. But in the past for example Roland Jx8p cost much more money. And those money were not today's money. 2000$ in the 1985 like 8000$ today..
@@J._Campbell Oh yes, in that regard you are absolutely right. Price wise, music production is way more accessible now. We were thinking about different eras!
Today is the golden age of mimicry.
Not many new and risky concepts being developed.
Emphasis now is on DAW features, Add ons, interfaces and sometimes auxiliary equipment like mics, speakers, cables and headphones etc.
The Komputer is King today.
Powerful and yet restrictive at the same time
I basically agree. Emulating the past is however the main goal of most of todays musicians. This means that the computer is not to blame but the overall conservative mindset of musicians / composers and music consumers alike. The industry simply supplies what sells. It always will.
@@marcbrasse747 ....and programmers
@@PetraKann Yeah , sort of, but mighty new tools are actually out there as well, either in hard- or software form. Even I started to use software beside my hardware (especially THE GRID modular synth in Bitwig studio 3). You are however right that the background noise is equally loud in htis respect. My method to seperate the good stuff from the bad is to think about what I want / need before I allow myself to be overly wowed by "the next big thing". If it can't do more then my existing equipment in the direction into which I want to develop myself in I don't need it. I am for instance very much into granular sampling, as a more practical alternative to total resynthesis, and acoustical modeling. In those fields recent developments are however truly stunning.
@@marcbrasse747 creativity and thinking outside the box can go a long way in developing new sounds and patterns.
Early to middle Pink Floyd are a good example of this approach.
The start of “Shine on you crazy diamond” on the Wish You Were Here album uses a wine glass organ playing a Gm chord.
Several wine glasses filled with different amounts of water resonated at different frequencies when the glass rim was rubbed with the finger. The different notes were recorded on different tracks. The faders on the mixing desk were then used to form chords.
So easy to digitally. synthesise sounds today, but it can also be a trap and creative hinderance
@@PetraKann A great example. I do however not think that the fact that such an instrument / approach was used makes the music more interesting as such. The approach is interesting because of it's out of the box thinking but not so much because of the, supposedly purer, means that where used. Wish You Where here is actually full of synths and the most advanced equipment then avialable. Let me know if you wnat me to describe it. So it is just as dangerous to colour your mind against computers as it is to become a slave to them. They are simply another tool. Claiming things where better in the past is most often an expression of inherent conservatism. The digital trap only exists if true creativity does NOT exist. We might however agree on the fact that the democratisation of music technology has increased the intensity of the background noise one has to wade through to find good music. Talking of which: Please try my latest music: brassee.com/electronicmusic.html. It might actually surprise you! :-)
I think you missed a point on the modern age that makes synths so great is not just the sounds available to us but the application of them. The availability and affordability of certain DAWs, how easy it is to make samples and how fast someone with skill can do it, how many midi utility plugins there are and how midi controllers are becoming easier to map.
The problem with synths has always been that lack of plug and play, you can see they overcame this in the first golden age with presets, but then software added a bunch of other constraints. Even if you have a very low spec PC now, you can just sample one synth track into a whole arrangement using only presets you downloaded. The only limit is your creativity and artistry and not your budget or engineering knowledge.
All these ancillary tools that aren't synths themselves but help empower the musician to compose with synths have enabled us to access a range of sounds that make guitarists cry at night.
Yes, the power available to anyone with a computer certainly is a big part of it as well. You can even have unobtainable synths like the cs80 or synths that are impossible to manufacture as hardware and use them with audio engineering possibilities that put the most advanced studios of the 80s and 90s to shame.
@@Estuera yeah I was actually having this discussion about routing in Reaper and how dumb we collectively feel as engineers that we didn't do routing like this the minute audio became digital because so often it just emulates the analogue mixing desk signal flow. Even something as simple as setting up a track with a routing plugin to function as your patchbay, switching out patch settings with a program change... You can do formerly cutting edge studio techniques live now.
Can someone remind me of the 1st independent vst synth ? I vaguely remember something like tb303 emulation.
Are you thinking about Propellerheads' Rebirth ?
In those times, when neon vst was just out, read about the 1st freeware vst synth (non steinberg) in a uk music magazine. Do u remember the 1st non steinberg freeware vst synth ???
hmm. No. Will need to research that
Golden age yes somewhat true. Though even some new stuff like the clones or remakes of classics may sound close ....the age.availability of components ,and difference in manufacturing keeps them sounding different . Made in Japan synthesizers then always sound different then made in China synthesizers now.
Synths are the miracles of life. I want so many of them. So many possibilities.
By the way teacher. Does your Skill share have How to classes?
There's quite a lot of stuff on music production and synths. I have only skimmed it myself so obviously: try before you buy
Yes, there are lots of choices nowadays in terms of hardware and software synths, which is really a great thing, but affordability or practicality doesn't make it a golden age. With all respect, I think that the 80's and early 90's were the most productive and creative decades, cause everyone started using them. And it sparked lots of subgenres of genres as well.
Still in the 80s or 90s there still were a lot of things that we're impossible or out of reach. And I think a lot of interesting things are being done right now. Maybe we need to look back on this period in 2040 to really know.
The golden age is coming, it's not quite here yet - in terms of analog polysynth options. You either have Behringer Deepmind or you have Sequential (with Prophet 6 and OB-6 having 4 octave keyboards which makes no sense at their price point) or you have Moog (but getting One makes no sense if you are not a star musician already) with a few strugglers in between like MFB, Korg and Arturia offering a single poly each (and MFB's option is module only).
Compare that to '80s which had literally everyone doing all kinds of weird polysynths and often different flavours of the same thing - like multiple versions of Juno, JX, Akai AX, OB-X series (OB-X, Xa, 8) etc - and today we are still stuck in this monosynth desktop module trend.
There are many really great sounding digital options though (Hardware and software). So only looking at analog polys is maybe a bit too narrow. And its a small miracle that new analog polysynths exist at all. In the 90s nobody would have believed that would ever happen again.
@@Estuera it's just that's where the prime shortage of options exist. You aren't as free to select the sound and features you want with modern analog poly offerings, as you are with digital synths or VSTs.
True, but compared to basically _no_ new analog poly options in the 90s its an an amazing time now. They are a bit of a niche product though. Still hoping that Roland and Yamaha will add a new analog poly to their line u.
There might have been options in the 80s, but unless you were super-rich, most of them were off-limits. For example, the OB-Xa cost over $5,000 in 1980. Doesn't sound too bad, until you consider that $5,000 in 1980 would have been over $16k today. Remember Behringer are coming out with a clone that might be under $1,500...
Jupiter-8, Prophet-5 etc. were priced similarly. It wasn't until the later half of the 80s that digital technology like DCO's, software envelopes etc. brought prices down (Juno, JX series etc. would have been around $3k-$4k today).
@@Estuera yeah, but at the same time '90s were a different beast and made analog synths get rediscovered when everybody could get hands on them for very cheap - which is the core reason they are made today (and, ironically, Clavia exists).
It's debatable as to whether we really are in the next golden age of synthesizers, yes there is an increasing number of synthesizers emerging ( both software and hardware) but flexibility and the ability to create your own sounds from scratch seems increasingly to be an afterthought rather than being an integral part of the synthesizer. one feature I am seeing a lot more of lately is the so called randomizer which basically fills the parameter slots with random data, poorly programmed randomizers have a tendency to produce poor quality patches/presents, often not being truly random at all but tending towards a particular sound type( trance, house, etc). quantity is replacing quality.
I'm not sure which synths you had in mind but if you take a synth like the Polybrute or Hydrasynth creating sounds from scratch is an absolute joy. And do not forget eurorack which is all about the 'from scratch' concept.
@@Estuera point noted about eurorack( and its software equivalates).
When I get my Behringer 2600 I can say yes lol
Dont think its golden age now, but 90-th and early 00 were. People couldn’t afford much, so extracted max from they had. I dont understand people who have 100+ VSTs using presets only and still dont reach “the sound”. Maybe buy another one? You really need a little to make music. You can build an album with just an idea and 1 synth. Im still using FL7 with Albino, FM7, DX10, TS404 and happy with that.
That's true but in that case you use a different definition of golden age. I'm really talking about the availability and technological possibilities here. If today is a golden age in a creative point of view is indeed debatable.
RIP vangelis.
All that being said, we are NOT in a golden age of composition, so this golden age of synths sadly feel like a waste.
amen, and you know why? because people lost poetry and their imaginary shrinked dramatically, everything that isn't hard, dark or rude is judged automatically as cheesy, bye bye possibilities...
@@TheTrancemaster90 now hold on just because these big studios and artist dont have the imagination of the artists back then doesnt mean everybody else is on the same level. Theres a huge love for old and new hardware that can give birth to amazing creative individuals. You just have to look for them, and like Jonas, i found alot of great producers that carry those creative wills of the old.
came back from the dead- ouch that comment hasn’t aged well !
VA without Access Virus.... Tststs
Can't show all of them 😉 And virus wasn't in the first wave of VA
When the Yamaha 7 came out it was all over. Horrible harsh sounds, not kitchy and fun like Casio, but cold..and all the pop songs used 'em. Gone were the rich and lush Jupiter and Juno sounds. Horrible. I went back to Velvet Underground guitar minimalism at that stage. Unfortunately, started to lose my hair, so I got 'cancelled' from that universe.
Yeah, but the music sucks big time now. Partly trolling, partly true. Back in the day we had musicians using synths, now we have a lot of people like me who want to be musicians. Big difference.
My opinion on this is that there basically is an overload of music. So quantity, not quality. Still gems to be found though.
@@Estuera Exactly. That's why I think music curators (djs, youtubers) will be more and more important.
I will cosign this.
Today, almost all music productions are one big shit! These great devices do not replace the creativity of the musician.