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Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

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Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#41
post #12

I'll be honest - he seems to be a prime example of someone focusing too much on the tools rather than the creative process. All his best, legendary, stuff came way before he got this awesome setup, his recent stuff hasn't been very well received. You don't need a ton of expensive equipment to create excellent electronic music.

The modern musical instrument is a diaphragm controlled by a stream of real valued position samples. There's absolutely no need for anything complex to play it, you can write simple C programs to generate all kinds of bizarre and beautiful effects.

It is true that simple software can generate interesting audio effects. However, I think the parent comment underestimates the appeal of modular synthesizers.

I really believe that there are sounds that are achievable most easily with a modular system. One example that springs to mind: the west-coast school of additive analog synthesis often uses circuits classified as low-pass gates (more or less combining the low-pass filters and voltage-controlled amplifiers of east-coast subtractive synthesis). SuperCollider is one of the most actively-developed systems for experimental audio synthesis, and the only plugin emulating low-pass gates I’ve found is in one of the SuperCollider developers’ personal sandbox repo. A google search indicates that apparently someone has written a PureData low-pass gate emulator, but I can’t speak to its quality. My point is, not everyone who wants to try to make music in one of these systems is going to want to write their own C++ or FAUST plugins, or compile a buggy early version of a plugin. So it seems to me that if you want to just make the sound, a eurorack modular system might be the most accessible way to do so.

And I also think the music people make using modular systems is ideally consumed in a manner very different from, say, EDM tracks on soundcloud or spotify. If you are in the bay area, I highly recommend attending Robotspeak’s regular Church of the Super-Serge concerts to get a sense of this (one performance I enjoyed a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Xn6IbItT8). Members of the eurorack synthesizers group on facebook are also constantly posting little snippets of modular music. This stuff isn’t for anyone, but it is certainly interesting. Patches people create on modular systems are ephemeral and meditative, so they're often described as sand mandalas. The user explores the capability of their collection of modules, they find an appealing or interesting sound, and develop some minimal accompaniment around that sound. The graph of possible connections in an even medium-sized eurorack system is quite large, and there are many manual controls on each module (at minimum 3-4). “Saving” a patch involves painstakingly recording each knob setting and patch connection. Re-creating a patch exactly is therefore quite challenging. So people leave their system patched, come to the show, and perform a single 10-20 minute long composition. That’s the set. Very idiosyncratic, hit-or-miss, but usually interesting, at least. I hope this conveys some of the unique appeal of putting together a large modular systems.

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a useful comparison. Because if you try the same on a big analog modular you won't get very far at all - less far than you can get with code, given that very basic singing synthesis was already a solved problem back in the 1960s, and systems like Vocaloid have been commercial products for more than a decade now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDsJCJ02184 ...Which is the core problem with analog synthesis…

Moving a knob with your hands as you mix it with other sounds gives better control than just configuring parameters in a program

Which is easily remedied by using MIDI controllers.

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#43
post #39

Cool setup. I'd really wonder what Aphex Twin would do with an analog wall like that. Would be awesome if they ever worked together on something.

We know what ELP could do with that.

who is ELP? only decent analog stuff i know is from junkie xl and baseck

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#44
Can someone explain the analog to digital thing he's talking about? Can digital software not reproduce any sounds his boards can make? If not doesn't he just lose all those sounds when he converts the sounds to a digital format, making it a mostly pointless exercise?

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#45
post #44

Can someone explain the analog to digital thing he's talking about? Can digital software not reproduce any sounds his boards can make? If not doesn't he just lose all those sounds when he converts the sounds to a digital format, making it a mostly pointless exercise?

Digital software is able to reproduce the sounds, the challenge is in the synthesis of it.

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#46

I'll be honest - he seems to be a prime example of someone focusing too much on the tools rather than the creative process. All his best, legendary, stuff came way before he got this awesome setup, his recent stuff hasn't been very well received. You don't need a ton of expensive equipment to create excellent electronic music.

As a former amateur audio engineer I really liked seeing all the analog modulators, and putting them all in one area is crazy. I see it as the equivalent of a shoe closet for sneakerheads. He can finally afford all the cool super tech audio engineering stuff he's always wanted but makes little impact on the output and popular success.

My point was actually that it seems to have a negative impact on his output.

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#47
post #44

Can someone explain the analog to digital thing he's talking about? Can digital software not reproduce any sounds his boards can make? If not doesn't he just lose all those sounds when he converts the sounds to a digital format, making it a mostly pointless exercise?

Digital software is able to reproduce the sounds, the challenge is in the synthesis of it.

What does "the challenge is in the synthesis of it" mean?

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#48

I'll be honest - he seems to be a prime example of someone focusing too much on the tools rather than the creative process. All his best, legendary, stuff came way before he got this awesome setup, his recent stuff hasn't been very well received. You don't need a ton of expensive equipment to create excellent electronic music.

That's entirely true, and I don't think he's doing all this "to make better music". But as a true audio geek, that's something that's extremely fun and cool to do if you can afford it. It's like people building insane gaming stations with lots of lights and crazy decoration. It won't make them better gamers, but it's a great hobby. As mentioned in the video, you can emulate all of these in the computer anyway, but if…

The video actually claims at 05:10 that they can create sounds that can't be created digitally.

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former amateur audio engineer I really liked seeing all the analog modulators, and putting them all in one area is crazy. I see it as the equivalent of a shoe closet for sneakerheads. He can finally afford all the cool super tech audio engineering stuff he's always wanted but makes little impact on the output and popular success.

My point was actually that it seems to have a negative impact on his output.

Correlation is not causation. Maybe he's just not interested in what other people think anymore and wants to play with cool toys rather than express some artistic vision. That actually is somewhat explicitly his style. He disdains criticism and doesn't have to prove himself to anyone. He's a gamer and personality more than an artist.

Re: Deadmau5's mansion and its tech setup [video]

#50
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern musical instrument is a diaphragm controlled by a stream of real valued position samples. There's absolutely no need for anything complex to play it, you can write simple C programs to generate all kinds of bizarre and beautiful effects.

And all of visual arts is thousands of colored pixels which can be arranged at will with something as simple as MS Paint. Your comment comes across as reductive grandstanding.

When was the last time you went somewhere (other than a concert) and saw a live musician? When was the last time you saw a hung up original painting or drawing. I see drawings and paintings far more often than musicians, especially with electronic music.

I think what I've said is fairly accurate, some people just use ready made software like garage band and feed it samples from "real" instruments, sometimes they don't, but it doesn't change my point much.

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