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Your comment is hilarious, but as I deal with UIs a lot, the sheer complexity of all those knobs kind of astounds me that he can deal with it all, and in real

Your comment is hilarious, but as I deal with UIs a lot, the sheer complexity of all those knobs kind of astounds me that he can deal with it all, and in real time to make music. Wow. I've loved his music since the late 70's, it's great to hear it again.

detaro 10y ago
Everything in direct access, and everything at a fixed place. Synthesizer interfaces are really interesting: a digital (or even hybrid) one quickly gets to a level of complexity where "one knob per function" really is impossible or too expensive, but good UIs retain as much of that as possible. A display and a few buttons is cheap to make, but impossible to tweak on-the-fly. The interface has a large impact on how a synth feels to play and which of its abilities are used.
- chris_st 10y ago
  Good points, thanks!
dfox 10y ago
Loads of physical knobs is the most intuitive UI for this kind of thing. You can find the control you want to tweak by combination of it's position and touch very fast and in many cases without purposefully looking at the thing. When we tried to build touch based mixing/lighting console (large capacitive touch panels were significantly cheaper than loads of physical knobs and motorized faders even ~5 years ago) we found this out very fast and scrapped the whole project. For synthesizer control, people probably aren't that dependent on using it without looking, but the part of quickly finding what you want to tweak still stands.
- chris_st 10y ago
  > You can find the control you want to tweak by combination of it's position and touch very fast and in many cases without purposefully looking at the thing. I really wish car makers would rediscover this fact.
a3n 10y ago
Total guess, I've never seen one of these things in person, but: guessing that the knobs have some logical relationship to each other, like knobs in one row share a subject, and moving to a knob left or right changes the same thing, but more in one way than another way. Also, one reason I still like physical books is that when I'm looking for something that I've read before, I know it's on a left or right page, and whether it's top, middle or bottom. There's probably a mind theory that explains that, and knob location is probably related. Guess. Maybe this also has something to do with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception But to me it's all just knobs.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  It is all just knobs. There are different standard types of modules - oscillators to make a sound, filters to shape the colour, envelope generators and low frequency modulation sources to control how it changes over time - and once you learn the main types you're good to go on most modulars. (Except for some of the weird new ones that have unusual modules you probably haven't used before.) Is it a good interface? No. It's a terrible interface. Ironically it severely limits what you can do, because your arms are only long enough to reach a few feet - unless you wear roller skates. If you need a module you don't have you can't complete a patch. You can only get more modules by buying them, and then they take up space whether you use them or not. They're priced somewhere between sort-of cheap and unbelievably insanely expensive. When you make a patch, It's impossible to reproduce it with perfect accuracy. It takes a long time and copious notes to reproduce complex patches with imperfect accuracy, and any half-way complicated patch disappears into a mess of wires that's very hard to disentangle - conceptually, and literally. I'm half a fan. I like some of the sounds, especially from the Major Name brands played by people who know what they're doing. But I also wish we could move on and start making software more interesting, more controllable, and better sounding.
  - golergka 10y ago
    The things you mention are artistic limitations - tbey are features, not bugs.
Udik 10y ago
I don't know for certain, but I have very strong doubts that whatever JMJ is doing with those knobs has anything to do with the music. Usually musicians play, and sound engineers deal with the knobs. JMJ doesn't play, so somebody else is playing in his place (if the music isn't simply recorded). The knobs might do something, or JMJ is just pulling a show of how technological his music is. EDIT: read elsewhere in the thread that those are modular synths, so I guess he might be in charge of making the nice whirling sound. Still, it's not like he's someone playing on a keyboard - where every single key is an option. Most of the knobs will be preconfigured to produce exactly that sound (it's the same as in the record) and the ones he's turning are probably doing a few definite things.
jacquesm 10y ago
I far prefer this setup compared to memorizing some 5 level deep menu structure accessible through a scroll wheel and two or three selector buttons. Humans are pretty good at remembering spatial arrangements.

detaro 10y ago

Everything in direct access, and everything at a fixed place. Synthesizer interfaces are really interesting: a digital (or even hybrid) one quickly gets to a level of complexity where "one knob per function" really is impossible or too expensive, but good UIs retain as much of that as possible. A display and a few buttons is cheap to make, but impossible to tweak on-the-fly. The interface has a large impact on how a synth feels to play and which of its abilities are used.

chris_st 10y ago
Good points, thanks!

dfox 10y ago

Loads of physical knobs is the most intuitive UI for this kind of thing. You can find the control you want to tweak by combination of it's position and touch very fast and in many cases without purposefully looking at the thing. When we tried to build touch based mixing/lighting console (large capacitive touch panels were significantly cheaper than loads of physical knobs and motorized faders even ~5 years ago) we found this out very fast and scrapped the whole project. For synthesizer control, people probably aren't that dependent on using it without looking, but the part of quickly finding what you want to tweak still stands.

chris_st 10y ago
> You can find the control you want to tweak by combination of it's position and touch very fast and in many cases without purposefully looking at the thing. I really wish car makers would rediscover this fact.

a3n 10y ago

Total guess, I've never seen one of these things in person, but: guessing that the knobs have some logical relationship to each other, like knobs in one row share a subject, and moving to a knob left or right changes the same thing, but more in one way than another way. Also, one reason I still like physical books is that when I'm looking for something that I've read before, I know it's on a left or right page, and whether it's top, middle or bottom. There's probably a mind theory that explains that, and knob location is probably related. Guess. Maybe this also has something to do with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception But to me it's all just knobs.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
It is all just knobs. There are different standard types of modules - oscillators to make a sound, filters to shape the colour, envelope generators and low frequency modulation sources to control how it changes over time - and once you learn the main types you're good to go on most modulars. (Except for some of the weird new ones that have unusual modules you probably haven't used before.) Is it a good interface? No. It's a terrible interface. Ironically it severely limits what you can do, because your arms are only long enough to reach a few feet - unless you wear roller skates. If you need a module you don't have you can't complete a patch. You can only get more modules by buying them, and then they take up space whether you use them or not. They're priced somewhere between sort-of cheap and unbelievably insanely expensive. When you make a patch, It's impossible to reproduce it with perfect accuracy. It takes a long time and copious notes to reproduce complex patches with imperfect accuracy, and any half-way complicated patch disappears into a mess of wires that's very hard to disentangle - conceptually, and literally. I'm half a fan. I like some of the sounds, especially from the Major Name brands played by people who know what they're doing. But I also wish we could move on and start making software more interesting, more controllable, and better sounding.
- golergka 10y ago
  The things you mention are artistic limitations - tbey are features, not bugs.

Udik 10y ago

I don't know for certain, but I have very strong doubts that whatever JMJ is doing with those knobs has anything to do with the music. Usually musicians play, and sound engineers deal with the knobs. JMJ doesn't play, so somebody else is playing in his place (if the music isn't simply recorded). The knobs might do something, or JMJ is just pulling a show of how technological his music is. EDIT: read elsewhere in the thread that those are modular synths, so I guess he might be in charge of making the nice whirling sound. Still, it's not like he's someone playing on a keyboard - where every single key is an option. Most of the knobs will be preconfigured to produce exactly that sound (it's the same as in the record) and the ones he's turning are probably doing a few definite things.

jacquesm 10y ago

I far prefer this setup compared to memorizing some 5 level deep menu structure accessible through a scroll wheel and two or three selector buttons. Humans are pretty good at remembering spatial arrangements.