9 ms·

How Japanese technology shaped dance music

97 points by tomduncalf 5y ago

nonbirithm 5y ago
I've wondered if, when Moore's Law stops applying and new technology now is less revolutionary than new technology in the past, mass revolutions in popular culture will become rarer to see along with it. It seems that a lot of earlier music was a product of the kinds of software/hardware that was available at the time (along with many other factors, of course). When there are more options to produce music than ever in the present, choosing to go back to one of the "old-school" eras becomes a conscious creative choice, instead of a result of hard limitations. It's kind of like how the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray was more significant than 4K to 8K in my mind.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  That's true for a lot more than just music, movies, and games. When technology stales, so do most things that rely on it
  - amelius 5y ago
    Software to the rescue then. Social media was technically possible in the 80s, but only a big hit now, and shaping our culture.
- pastrami_panda 5y ago
  This is already happening on a massive scale in the music industry. The Prophet synthesiser is one prominent example of that, but there's many more. Same goes for guitars and other instruments where modern versions sometimes lose sound characteristics due to material changes. The most famous is example is Stradivarius I suppose.
- hfkfmtkrkf 5y ago
  There are still new kinds of music created which reflect the contemporary music production software/hardware - look up "deconstructed club" genre as an example. It would be difficult to create this kind of music with 90s tools, since there is less regularity.
  - 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
    Or just look at what contemporary jazz is like this decade. Absolutely whole-hearted embrace of pop and hip hop production techniques, sampling, DAW-dependent live performances, thicc 808s etc. Live music performance techniques have even to some extent begun to emulate some sounds that are artifacts of digital production like sidechaining. What's really cool to me is again a lot of this stuff came from music traditions we (tech bros) tend to dismiss (pop, hip hop, even ccm lol) but have become important parts of "serious" music.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  For music, synthesis and DSP are basically solved problems. Synthesis won't get more interesting if you throw more cycles at it. Buyers have mostly rejected more complicated kinds of synthesis - including resynthesis and physical modelling - because they don't understand them. So we're stuck with expanded virtual versions of the old analog synth/wavetable/FM/sampler and studio rack processor models, but with a slightly wider range of oscillator types like granular, and somewhat content-aware processing. There are areas on the R&D edge, but they're not about the audio. Changing the subject - one reason Roland stood out was outstanding industrial design. Many of the synths and drum machines produced during the 80s peak are beautiful objects which combined a friendly, fresh, youthful look with a very clear programming model. https://happymag.tv/the-roland-jupiter-8-the-fattest-synth-in-the-solar-system/ https://happymag.tv/the-roland-jupiter-8-the-fattest-synth-i... http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/juno60.php http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/juno60.php Yamaha tried to do colour coding with the CS series, but didn't quite get it right. So they made the world's most playable and expressive analog poly (CS80) instead. They took the design hint with the DX7, but never quite hit the same design sweet spot with subsequent synths. And unlike the Roland designs, the DX7 was insanely difficult to program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_DX7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_DX7 US synth designers never quite understood colour coding, so the designs were more functional and more expensive, which made them feel more serious, more rock band, less accessible and less fun.
  - poisonarena 5y ago
    this is a good take. I think about my MC-707 Groovebox I bought last year, and it is nearly just the same as an EMU command station, but with the JV2080 rompler sounds stuffed in it, but now with a interface to record it into my computer. In some cases I have noticed grooveboxes have even worse features.. Sidenote, I always thing about Elektron and how they could make "the ultimate groovebox", but instead they make one for seperate things so you have to buy the drums, the fm synth, the analogue synth, the sampler all seperately
    - jsilence 5y ago
      Might want to look into the Deluge. Different brand, I know, but does a lot with a very efficient workflow.
- usrusr 5y ago
  I believe that there is a lot of innovation headroom left in music technology. As another poster has said, availability of more cycles has long stopped being a factor. But self-stabilizing effects in UI language (you are good at what you know/you learn more about what you are good at) have started kicking in even earlier, see synth emulations. Those self-stabilizing effects are strong and they make it very hard for new approaches to take foot. But that also means that there is still a lot of space left unexplored, or traveled by explorers who never made it back (read: dabbled with a technological approach but never brought it to musical success).
  - diydsp 5y ago
    I agree about UIs being a limiting factor. A great example is the ADSR envelope. Many sonic variations are reached through e.g. replacing the exponential curve. And of course some synths do this, but the UIs are not standard and require numerous additional controls. Perhaps the next generation will group more variations under standard names rather than offer orthogonal access to every mathematical element. To an extent this is what sound modules do versus analog modulars... but sound modules overshoot by providing very high level sounds difficult to modify...
    - usrusr 5y ago
      That's on the synthesis level. I believe that the method/skill lockin is even stronger on the notation level: there are many different ways to create note sequence, from banging keys on a keyboard at the right time, to paper notation, to piano roll editors, to the endless hex grids if trackers to step sequencer hardware that somehow, despite everything you'd expect from their simplicity, can become amazing outlets of creativity. There's endless untapped opportunity in that space, and exploration is extremely rare because the method you know is always better than the method you don't know.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I believe a lot in this. It's logarithmic. Not having a land line phone -> having one: life changing. Having 3 land lines in your house -> slightly more comfy Same goes for smartphones, and others
- boomlinde 5y ago
  In a more general sense, this idea is called technological determinism. But Moore's law is only one axis; a new technology isn't necessarily computationally more expensive or dense, and "old-school" isn't necessarily the opposite of "computationally intensive" or anything related to Moore's law. To me it's kind of like expecting cultural reversion because wheels aren't getting any bigger.
koreanguy 5y ago
nonsense every major compound has been designed in Europe of the united states. Japan during and before the world wars was a seeker of western inventions, Japan was just like China in todays sense. japan enjoyed unlimited patents from the west for years. built cheaper faster. that is the Japanese mentality . music hardware can all be traced back to European nations like Sweden, Uk, the Eastern nations that do the majority of the hardware designs even Ukraine has a bigger history in music productions than Japan. Japan has been shaped by European values and Music.
dools 5y ago
Not just dance music but hip hop too! The Akai MPC has been a dominant sampling and sequencing tool of some of the most prolific producers, even as software started to eat the electronic music world.
- pkdpic_y9k 5y ago
  Heck yeah, and don't forget about the Roland Dr. Sample line!
- fit2rule 5y ago
  It should be understood that the MPC is actually a Japanese clone of an American invention, the LinnDrum MidiStudio. Roger Linn kicked off the innovation around the sampling/sequencing revolution - Akai just made it affordable. Disclaimer: have worked in the digital musical instrument market for decades, including for Yamaha and other (German) major players in this space. This industry is incestuous in many ways - but it follows the 'musicians rule', which is 'its okay to copy each others riffs as long as it improves the groove' ..
  - yesbabyyes 5y ago
    Cool, I did not know this! I have a Linn Majik at home, and really like this amplifier, and the brand. fit2rule: you seem to have gotten yourself shadowbanned, apparently starting with this innocuous comment 43 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26697170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26697170 I think you can email the moderators to get you account restored.
  - SeanLuke 5y ago
    Points of order. 1. The LinnDrum MidiStudio was never a product. The two appear to be similar but it'd be hard to claim one was a clone of the other. They seemingly differ in polyphony, sample resolution, and a wide variety of other features. Indeed the MidiStudio has more in common with the 9000 I would think. Does this make it a "clone" of the 9000? 2. Linn developed both the LinnDrum MidiStudio and the MPC60. Just because he was working with Akai does not make this a "Japanese clone" of one of his designs.
svantana 5y ago
I think the main thing about the japanese instruments were the lower prices. There was plenty of great products from E-mu, Ensoniq, Oberheim, Linn, Moog, and Sequential in the 80's. But they were pricier, which lead to lower market share, which meant worse economy of scale - a classic death spiral. Out of desperation, quality begins to suffer and then it was pretty much over for all of them in the early to mid 90's.
hfkfmtkrkf 5y ago
While the Japanese are amazing at hardware, they seem totally incapable of building world class software. No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature (thus contain basically a soft-synth). Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram...
- goatinaboat 5y ago
  Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s Traditionally in Japan, you would, for example, simply print straight from the camera to the printer. You can see all the support for this if you look in your camera's settings. Putting a PC in the middle is more of a Western style of working. The PC software is bad because the people who write it don't use it themselves and don't really see why anyone would want to, when they could simply skip that step altogether.
  - hfkfmtkrkf 5y ago
    By camera software I actually meant the stuff running on the actual camera (firmware if you wish). Where is my upload to Instagram feature for example? Why didn't they add this if they want to avoid needing a PC?
- Kye 5y ago
  >> "No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature (thus contain basically a soft-synth)." Synth1 is well-known in electronic music. >> "Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram..." I aim the camera. I press the button. It puts the resulting readings from the sensor in a raw file on the SD card. This has worked without fail for thousands of pictures. The rare times I need to use anything I can't get to with a physical button, they're all easily accessed on a single screen by touch with the i button. What else do I need? They keep piling connectivity junk on, but airplane mode shuts it down.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
Perhaps I skimmed too fast, but the key "event" it doesn't mention is that much of the first wave of gear was not intended to for "dance music." It was intended for rock & roll. But that market shunned it. It wasn't until some "crazy kids" said "What's this stuff? What can we do with it?" that modern "dance music" was born. I suppose you can liken it to the invention of the urethane wheels for skateboarding. You want inspiration for innovation? What the "Dogtown and Z-Boys" documentary.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
  There's definitely a bit of a pattern to this in music as with nearly everything. Players within the established tradition "take it seriously" which is on one hand respect for tradition and on the other impedes full integration of new techniques and sounds. Newer less established genres are more playful/experimental, and what works for them can eventually get accepted by the older forms and rolled in. I kinda mentioned this in another comment in here but it's very visible in the relationships between jazz and hip hop right now. Contemporary jazz uses a lot of techniques and sound profiles that were developed in trap music of all things.
Kye 5y ago
Relevant video: "Breakbeat Deconstruction: From hip hop to drum & bass and beyond" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJf9Jptq7VY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJf9Jptq7VY
moomin 5y ago
This headline is the antithesis of the "That's going to be short article" joke.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Whenever I think of the beginning of Japan's rule, I think of the 1977 US$4800 (twice as much in the UK). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MC-8_Microcomposer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MC-8_Microcomposer. This is two years after the Pop Electronics article on the Altair. Ralph Dyck-inspired, [1] with an 8080A micro, starting with 4K (1100 notes) of expensive RAM (later 16K). 22 quarter-inch jacks, 30 push-buttons, LEDs.... An inch-thick manual. This wasn't just an improvement on anything that existed. It was a Kakehashi moonshot - wine and roses. Only 300 made. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110918103549/http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/mar97/rolandmc8.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110918103549/http://www.soundo... [1] https://rolandmc8.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/exclusive-interview-with-ralph-dyck-godfather-of-the-mc-8/ https://rolandmc8.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/exclusive-intervi...
musicale 5y ago
Definitely incredibly influential, but I would say that Roland, KORG, Yamaha, etc. are matched by the likes of Moog, Sequential, Oberheim, Access, and many others (from E-mu to Linn to modern Eurorack) on the hardware side, and on the software side by DAWs such as Reason, Live, FL Studio, Logic and myriad plugins. Definitely a fair amount of US and Europe as well as Japan.

97 points by tomduncalf 5y ago

I've wondered if, when Moore's Law stops applying and new technology now is less revolutionary than new technology in the past, mass revolutions in popular culture will become rarer to see along with it. It seems that a lot of earlier music was a product of the kinds of software/hardware that was available at the time (along with many other factors, of course). When there are more options to produce music than ever in the present, choosing to go back to one of the "old-school" eras becomes a conscious creative choice, instead of a result of hard limitations. It's kind of like how the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray was more significant than 4K to 8K in my mind.

beebeepka 5y ago
That's true for a lot more than just music, movies, and games. When technology stales, so do most things that rely on it
- amelius 5y ago
  Software to the rescue then. Social media was technically possible in the 80s, but only a big hit now, and shaping our culture.
pastrami_panda 5y ago
This is already happening on a massive scale in the music industry. The Prophet synthesiser is one prominent example of that, but there's many more. Same goes for guitars and other instruments where modern versions sometimes lose sound characteristics due to material changes. The most famous is example is Stradivarius I suppose.
hfkfmtkrkf 5y ago
There are still new kinds of music created which reflect the contemporary music production software/hardware - look up "deconstructed club" genre as an example. It would be difficult to create this kind of music with 90s tools, since there is less regularity.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
  Or just look at what contemporary jazz is like this decade. Absolutely whole-hearted embrace of pop and hip hop production techniques, sampling, DAW-dependent live performances, thicc 808s etc. Live music performance techniques have even to some extent begun to emulate some sounds that are artifacts of digital production like sidechaining. What's really cool to me is again a lot of this stuff came from music traditions we (tech bros) tend to dismiss (pop, hip hop, even ccm lol) but have become important parts of "serious" music.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
For music, synthesis and DSP are basically solved problems. Synthesis won't get more interesting if you throw more cycles at it. Buyers have mostly rejected more complicated kinds of synthesis - including resynthesis and physical modelling - because they don't understand them. So we're stuck with expanded virtual versions of the old analog synth/wavetable/FM/sampler and studio rack processor models, but with a slightly wider range of oscillator types like granular, and somewhat content-aware processing. There are areas on the R&D edge, but they're not about the audio. Changing the subject - one reason Roland stood out was outstanding industrial design. Many of the synths and drum machines produced during the 80s peak are beautiful objects which combined a friendly, fresh, youthful look with a very clear programming model. https://happymag.tv/the-roland-jupiter-8-the-fattest-synth-in-the-solar-system/ https://happymag.tv/the-roland-jupiter-8-the-fattest-synth-i... http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/juno60.php http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/juno60.php Yamaha tried to do colour coding with the CS series, but didn't quite get it right. So they made the world's most playable and expressive analog poly (CS80) instead. They took the design hint with the DX7, but never quite hit the same design sweet spot with subsequent synths. And unlike the Roland designs, the DX7 was insanely difficult to program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_DX7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_DX7 US synth designers never quite understood colour coding, so the designs were more functional and more expensive, which made them feel more serious, more rock band, less accessible and less fun.
- poisonarena 5y ago
  this is a good take. I think about my MC-707 Groovebox I bought last year, and it is nearly just the same as an EMU command station, but with the JV2080 rompler sounds stuffed in it, but now with a interface to record it into my computer. In some cases I have noticed grooveboxes have even worse features.. Sidenote, I always thing about Elektron and how they could make "the ultimate groovebox", but instead they make one for seperate things so you have to buy the drums, the fm synth, the analogue synth, the sampler all seperately
  - jsilence 5y ago
    Might want to look into the Deluge. Different brand, I know, but does a lot with a very efficient workflow.
usrusr 5y ago
I believe that there is a lot of innovation headroom left in music technology. As another poster has said, availability of more cycles has long stopped being a factor. But self-stabilizing effects in UI language (you are good at what you know/you learn more about what you are good at) have started kicking in even earlier, see synth emulations. Those self-stabilizing effects are strong and they make it very hard for new approaches to take foot. But that also means that there is still a lot of space left unexplored, or traveled by explorers who never made it back (read: dabbled with a technological approach but never brought it to musical success).
- diydsp 5y ago
  I agree about UIs being a limiting factor. A great example is the ADSR envelope. Many sonic variations are reached through e.g. replacing the exponential curve. And of course some synths do this, but the UIs are not standard and require numerous additional controls. Perhaps the next generation will group more variations under standard names rather than offer orthogonal access to every mathematical element. To an extent this is what sound modules do versus analog modulars... but sound modules overshoot by providing very high level sounds difficult to modify...
  - usrusr 5y ago
    That's on the synthesis level. I believe that the method/skill lockin is even stronger on the notation level: there are many different ways to create note sequence, from banging keys on a keyboard at the right time, to paper notation, to piano roll editors, to the endless hex grids if trackers to step sequencer hardware that somehow, despite everything you'd expect from their simplicity, can become amazing outlets of creativity. There's endless untapped opportunity in that space, and exploration is extremely rare because the method you know is always better than the method you don't know.
agumonkey 5y ago
I believe a lot in this. It's logarithmic. Not having a land line phone -> having one: life changing. Having 3 land lines in your house -> slightly more comfy Same goes for smartphones, and others
boomlinde 5y ago
In a more general sense, this idea is called technological determinism. But Moore's law is only one axis; a new technology isn't necessarily computationally more expensive or dense, and "old-school" isn't necessarily the opposite of "computationally intensive" or anything related to Moore's law. To me it's kind of like expecting cultural reversion because wheels aren't getting any bigger.

koreanguy 5y ago

nonsense every major compound has been designed in Europe of the united states. Japan during and before the world wars was a seeker of western inventions, Japan was just like China in todays sense. japan enjoyed unlimited patents from the west for years. built cheaper faster. that is the Japanese mentality . music hardware can all be traced back to European nations like Sweden, Uk, the Eastern nations that do the majority of the hardware designs even Ukraine has a bigger history in music productions than Japan. Japan has been shaped by European values and Music.

dools 5y ago

Not just dance music but hip hop too! The Akai MPC has been a dominant sampling and sequencing tool of some of the most prolific producers, even as software started to eat the electronic music world.

pkdpic_y9k 5y ago
Heck yeah, and don't forget about the Roland Dr. Sample line!
fit2rule 5y ago
It should be understood that the MPC is actually a Japanese clone of an American invention, the LinnDrum MidiStudio. Roger Linn kicked off the innovation around the sampling/sequencing revolution - Akai just made it affordable. Disclaimer: have worked in the digital musical instrument market for decades, including for Yamaha and other (German) major players in this space. This industry is incestuous in many ways - but it follows the 'musicians rule', which is 'its okay to copy each others riffs as long as it improves the groove' ..
- yesbabyyes 5y ago
  Cool, I did not know this! I have a Linn Majik at home, and really like this amplifier, and the brand. fit2rule: you seem to have gotten yourself shadowbanned, apparently starting with this innocuous comment 43 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26697170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26697170 I think you can email the moderators to get you account restored.
- SeanLuke 5y ago
  Points of order. 1. The LinnDrum MidiStudio was never a product. The two appear to be similar but it'd be hard to claim one was a clone of the other. They seemingly differ in polyphony, sample resolution, and a wide variety of other features. Indeed the MidiStudio has more in common with the 9000 I would think. Does this make it a "clone" of the 9000? 2. Linn developed both the LinnDrum MidiStudio and the MPC60. Just because he was working with Akai does not make this a "Japanese clone" of one of his designs.

svantana 5y ago

I think the main thing about the japanese instruments were the lower prices. There was plenty of great products from E-mu, Ensoniq, Oberheim, Linn, Moog, and Sequential in the 80's. But they were pricier, which lead to lower market share, which meant worse economy of scale - a classic death spiral. Out of desperation, quality begins to suffer and then it was pretty much over for all of them in the early to mid 90's.

hfkfmtkrkf 5y ago

While the Japanese are amazing at hardware, they seem totally incapable of building world class software. No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature (thus contain basically a soft-synth). Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram...

goatinaboat 5y ago
Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s Traditionally in Japan, you would, for example, simply print straight from the camera to the printer. You can see all the support for this if you look in your camera's settings. Putting a PC in the middle is more of a Western style of working. The PC software is bad because the people who write it don't use it themselves and don't really see why anyone would want to, when they could simply skip that step altogether.
- hfkfmtkrkf 5y ago
  By camera software I actually meant the stuff running on the actual camera (firmware if you wish). Where is my upload to Instagram feature for example? Why didn't they add this if they want to avoid needing a PC?
Kye 5y ago
>> "No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature (thus contain basically a soft-synth)." Synth1 is well-known in electronic music. >> "Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram..." I aim the camera. I press the button. It puts the resulting readings from the sensor in a raw file on the SD card. This has worked without fail for thousands of pictures. The rare times I need to use anything I can't get to with a physical button, they're all easily accessed on a single screen by touch with the i button. What else do I need? They keep piling connectivity junk on, but airplane mode shuts it down.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

Perhaps I skimmed too fast, but the key "event" it doesn't mention is that much of the first wave of gear was not intended to for "dance music." It was intended for rock & roll. But that market shunned it. It wasn't until some "crazy kids" said "What's this stuff? What can we do with it?" that modern "dance music" was born. I suppose you can liken it to the invention of the urethane wheels for skateboarding. You want inspiration for innovation? What the "Dogtown and Z-Boys" documentary.

8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
There's definitely a bit of a pattern to this in music as with nearly everything. Players within the established tradition "take it seriously" which is on one hand respect for tradition and on the other impedes full integration of new techniques and sounds. Newer less established genres are more playful/experimental, and what works for them can eventually get accepted by the older forms and rolled in. I kinda mentioned this in another comment in here but it's very visible in the relationships between jazz and hip hop right now. Contemporary jazz uses a lot of techniques and sound profiles that were developed in trap music of all things.

Kye 5y ago

Relevant video: "Breakbeat Deconstruction: From hip hop to drum & bass and beyond" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJf9Jptq7VY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJf9Jptq7VY

moomin 5y ago

This headline is the antithesis of the "That's going to be short article" joke.

8bitsrule 5y ago

Whenever I think of the beginning of Japan's rule, I think of the 1977 US$4800 (twice as much in the UK). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MC-8_Microcomposer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MC-8_Microcomposer. This is two years after the Pop Electronics article on the Altair. Ralph Dyck-inspired, [1] with an 8080A micro, starting with 4K (1100 notes) of expensive RAM (later 16K). 22 quarter-inch jacks, 30 push-buttons, LEDs.... An inch-thick manual. This wasn't just an improvement on anything that existed. It was a Kakehashi moonshot - wine and roses. Only 300 made. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110918103549/http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/mar97/rolandmc8.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110918103549/http://www.soundo... [1] https://rolandmc8.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/exclusive-interview-with-ralph-dyck-godfather-of-the-mc-8/ https://rolandmc8.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/exclusive-intervi...

musicale 5y ago

Definitely incredibly influential, but I would say that Roland, KORG, Yamaha, etc. are matched by the likes of Moog, Sequential, Oberheim, Access, and many others (from E-mu to Linn to modern Eurorack) on the hardware side, and on the software side by DAWs such as Reason, Live, FL Studio, Logic and myriad plugins. Definitely a fair amount of US and Europe as well as Japan.