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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

by 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.

by usrusr 5y ago

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.