>> "you'd think someone would manage to make a system thatI've had a few long conversations about the lack of
>> decidedly outdoes Serge in a bunch of ways".
imagination with a friend who manufactures modular
synths. Lot's of interesting ideas and new features
come up, but the problem can be summed up with the
old joke:
Q. "How many folk/country musicians does it take to change
a lightbulb?"
A. "Five, one to change it and four to sing about how good
the old one was!"
If you're going to manufacture a synth module, you want to
sell it, so you're going to build what everyone thinks they
want to buy. You can now buy modules or kits for between
five and ten variations on:
TB303
Moog lowpass filter
MS20 filter
etc.
Why? Because people buy them. 1000 lemmings can't be
wrong. Everyone wants to sound like everyone they like...
The only safe way for a manufacturer to make something new
is to stick his new "hoofly dong wobulator" feature on the output
of a Moog VCF etc, and even then "purists" will grumble that it's
"not like the old ones".
Serge users may be more enlightened than the average synth
user, but are there enough to support another synth manufacturer
in the same area? I'm not brave (or foolish) enough to risk it.
Yours controversially
Steve Ridley
(banging his head against the wall and wondering if it would
sound better with a piezo transducer attached to the wall...)