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In the 60s/70s, composing on a computer wasn't the same experience as today. Incidentally, today it's still pretty frustrating. The creative advantage is in be

In the 60s/70s, composing on a computer wasn't the same experience as today. Incidentally, today it's still pretty frustrating. The creative advantage is in being able to express pitch, (and presumably generic control voltages) intuitively as continuous lines, which is a natural fit for analog synthesizers. The alternative is sending discrete events, which is how midi works, something not invented until later. There is a school of thought that to limit synthesizers to the discrete world of "notes," with quantised durations and pitch values as a hangover from our ideas of keyboard instruments, is to waste their potential. Ribbon controllers were popular in that period for expressing continuous pitch, and I suspect the Oramics was designed as a way of recording these sorts of expressions, like a kind of analog punch card. Also consider that the main compositional method of the radiophonic workshop at that time was splicing magnetic tape with razor blades and sellotape.

fhood 10y ago
Thanks, to me the article wasn't clear on whether the machine was built for historical reasons, or whether it had modern uses. I agree that it seems restrictive to limit synths to discrete notes (like playing guitar without bends) although I probably wouldn't use the word mellifluous to describe the sounds made in the video.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  I agree. It did say that local artists were given "a few days" to play with the thing, which sounds frustrating. Like all primitive synthesizer music, with a generous helping of tape delay and spring reverb it will probably sound wicked.
- mrob 10y ago
  I agree that quantized pitches are a great waste of a synth's potential. William Sethares did some very interesting research on consonance perception, which can be used to construct microtonal tuning systems without the dissonance usually associated with them. Here's an good demonstration of what you can do with arbitrary pitches: http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html "As each new note sounds, its pitch (and that of all currently sounding notes) is adjusted microtonally (based on its spectrum) to maximize consonance. The adaptation causes interesting glides and microtonal pitch adjustments in a perceptually sensible fashion. "
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    Wow, that makes me feel seasick. Looking forward to playing it at the tail end of parties.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  There are ideas where the concept was far ahead of the available technology. This is definitely one of those. It's pretty trivial to do this kind of thing with automation curves in modern sequencers now. In fact you can draw tens of curves in parallel. The sound you get depends on which softsynths you use and how flexible their modulation routing is. Most people think of sequencers as discrete notes + modulation, not as curves or functions. So the good thing about this idea is that it can break people out of that way of working - even though there's no real need to make this device as a commercial product now. But generally "drawing" music doesn't work all that well. The information in music needs much finer control - either with conventional sequencing, or (more interestingly now) with generative code.
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    Those automation curves actually get sent to the synth as discrete events, with the rate depending on the output buffer length: there may be tens of milliseconds between updates. Plugins have to implement their own smoothing functions to get natural sounding results. This is one good reason to run your DAW at a high sample rate. The difference here to the analog domain, where you can continuously modulate any parameter at audio rate or higher with zero latency, is obvious. Of course softsynths own inbuilt modulation sources will be oversampled these days along with everything else they do, which is why they sound pretty good now. The Oramic is presumably using some kind of filtering on the output of those photodiodes or whatever it has, for similar reasons, but the point remains.

fhood 10y ago

Thanks, to me the article wasn't clear on whether the machine was built for historical reasons, or whether it had modern uses. I agree that it seems restrictive to limit synths to discrete notes (like playing guitar without bends) although I probably wouldn't use the word mellifluous to describe the sounds made in the video.

JonnieCache 10y ago
I agree. It did say that local artists were given "a few days" to play with the thing, which sounds frustrating. Like all primitive synthesizer music, with a generous helping of tape delay and spring reverb it will probably sound wicked.
mrob 10y ago
I agree that quantized pitches are a great waste of a synth's potential. William Sethares did some very interesting research on consonance perception, which can be used to construct microtonal tuning systems without the dissonance usually associated with them. Here's an good demonstration of what you can do with arbitrary pitches: http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html "As each new note sounds, its pitch (and that of all currently sounding notes) is adjusted microtonally (based on its spectrum) to maximize consonance. The adaptation causes interesting glides and microtonal pitch adjustments in a perceptually sensible fashion. "
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  Wow, that makes me feel seasick. Looking forward to playing it at the tail end of parties.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
There are ideas where the concept was far ahead of the available technology. This is definitely one of those. It's pretty trivial to do this kind of thing with automation curves in modern sequencers now. In fact you can draw tens of curves in parallel. The sound you get depends on which softsynths you use and how flexible their modulation routing is. Most people think of sequencers as discrete notes + modulation, not as curves or functions. So the good thing about this idea is that it can break people out of that way of working - even though there's no real need to make this device as a commercial product now. But generally "drawing" music doesn't work all that well. The information in music needs much finer control - either with conventional sequencing, or (more interestingly now) with generative code.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  Those automation curves actually get sent to the synth as discrete events, with the rate depending on the output buffer length: there may be tens of milliseconds between updates. Plugins have to implement their own smoothing functions to get natural sounding results. This is one good reason to run your DAW at a high sample rate. The difference here to the analog domain, where you can continuously modulate any parameter at audio rate or higher with zero latency, is obvious. Of course softsynths own inbuilt modulation sources will be oversampled these days along with everything else they do, which is why they sound pretty good now. The Oramic is presumably using some kind of filtering on the output of those photodiodes or whatever it has, for similar reasons, but the point remains.