HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ kleer001

I'm pretty underwhelmed. It's a lot of fun toys, but IMHO that's borderline adolescent/masturbatory. Not even sour grapes, I swear, but I bet that massive modular analog synthesizer setup gets zero use. Conspicuous consumption plain and simple. Yuck. But that's me. I'm more impressed by some poor schlub in Echo Park with an old Roland sampler and a dozen crates of vinyl.

There must be a pithy term in German for what I'm trying to point at.

⬐ munificent

> an old Roland sampler and a dozen crates of vinyl.

That's conspicuous consumption as well, just of a different flavor.

Tracking down a working vintage sampler and a pile of rare groove records is a large investment in both money and time.

⬐ kleer001

It's not CC. The scale of value is off by several orders of magnitude. Drop me in any large city in the world and I can hunt those things down in a day for less than a $1000. Heck, I could probably do a limited run of mix tapes for that too.

The story in my head is the sampler was a thrift store find or a high school graduation gift and all the vinyl is from their dad or uncle (rare 70s grooves). Poor people can have nice things too.

⬐ munificent

Sure, that's the story in everyone's head. Maybe that's not conspicuous consumption. More like "conspicuous authenticity"?

Everyone loves the story of "Well, he just got a beat up synth from his uncle's basement and was so inspired/gifted/dedicated/whatever that he then made this awesome music in spite of not having the latest gadgetry."

But, because we all love it, we fetishize it. And then people come along and productize and monetize it. And now you've got 303s selling for several grand on eBay.

Meanwhile, if you stray off script in a way that's cheap but not in a way that fits the hipster authentic narrative, it doesn't quite work. Putting together tunes using a beat up analog sampler and a crate — it always has to be a milk crate of course, too cheap to afford real shelving! — of records is hip. Putting together tunes using, I don't know, FruityLoops, your mom's old ThinkPad, and a bunch of old MP3s doesn't have the same cachet.

⬐ handedness

Not German, but nouveau riche pretty well covers it.

⬐ anotheryou

german: neureich

⬐ edkennedy

He livestreams himself using the modular all the time...

⬐ kleer001

Thank goodness! And thanks for correcting me.

He must just dilligently clean up the wires.

⬐ rhinoceraptor

IIRC, he said (in his MasterClass series) the synth lead on Cat Thruster is an analog synth patch.

⬐ theSpaceOctopus

> There must be a pithy term in German for what I'm trying to point at.

Saure Trauben

⬐ kleer001

Not at all. I'd love to have any of that kit, it's aces.

⬐ noonespecial

It's almost as if the first creative acts that get artists like this their fame are acts of desperation, undertaken against impossible odds.

Later when fame and money comes, the artist buys more and more tools in a fruitless chase to recapture the previous glory but he can't because the fame and money prevent him from ever again having the one thing that made his first works awesome... desperation.

⬐ twiceaday

Or is it simply that public focus is limited and ever shifting. Artists cannot recapture the previous glory because it is fickle.

⬐ kleer001

If only there was a morality play somewhere we could have learned this lesson /s

⬐ handedness

The best art is often produced under great constraints, something that usually disappears after commercial success.

⬐ dajohnson89

Necessity is the mother of invention?

⬐ kleer001

Exactly. Stay hungry. Hunt outside your comfort zone. Break through your fears. Abandon that which does not serve you. Give it your all. Don't save any energy for the return trip. No bold knights can flourish in a peaceful country.

You know the song.

⬐ raverbashing

"and its tech setup" is the correct form

⬐ edraferi

Cool to see that most of the toys are actually geared to supporting the visual element of his live show. The Lan party / render farm in particular.

⬐ wf

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?

⬐ i_call_solo

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

⬐ wf

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

⬐ petercooper

This is a weak metaphor, but a digital monitor can reproduce a fine work of art, but synthesizing (or modelling) the look and behavior of real oil paints digitally is a challenge.

Likewise, getting the algorithms just right and in the right orders and quantities to replicate everything analog modular synthesizers can do is very tricky, though theoretically possible.

⬐ iblaine

Interesting to see a Microsoft Pixel screen in the wild. Those are pretty rare and expensive.

⬐ bcheung

I'm surprised he doesn't have bigger / more monitors in his studio. Working on a laptop screen as your main display seems lacking—especially compared to everything else.

⬐ jumpkickhit

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.

⬐ wbl

We know what ELP could do with that.

⬐ housemusic42

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

⬐ wbl

Emerson, Lake and Palmer. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKNOlDtZluU for some of their bigger works, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL7p86-2mPo for something more classical sounding (ok, Xenakis), and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7NAGTq_IJQ for an entire orchestra being replaced by three guys and a Moog.

⬐ grabcocque

My McMansion detector just went wild.

⬐ endorphone

Most elements have a practical purpose, and the overall design serves the interior space needs. I know it's fun to call every modern big house a McMansion, but sometimes it's just a big house, and you have to pick some style for it.

DeadMau5 lives close to me, and I hope it doesn't broach any sort of rules but you can find the sales details by searching up

twiss road campbellville invidiata

Normally it would be uncool to provide an address like this, but Deadmau5 is very, very open about where he lives.

⬐ SyneRyder

In support of your comment, here's a tweet where he posted a satellite view of his house. He also mentioned that it's a "studio complex for actual musicians", which explains why the studio might be filled with more equipment than he actually needs for himself:

https://twitter.com/deadmau5/status/536218804221927424

⬐ johnklos

* its

⬐ pier25

The studio is awesome, but that mac mansion though...

⬐ ethbro

It's McMansion... it's faux British, not faux Scottish. (Yeesh!)

⬐ howard941

It may be an allusion to McDonald's...

⬐ darkstar999

Obviously.

⬐ pier25

I've always seen it written "Mac" and not "Mc"

You are right though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMansion

⬐ kristofferR

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.

⬐ AndrewKemendo

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.

⬐ kristofferR

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

⬐ philipov

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.

⬐ okket

IMHO the audio nerd version of a huge garage filled with sports cars and old timers.

⬐ twii

Looks a bit like one of JunkyXL's setups. Fortunately for mankind there is no way you can make better music with a setup like this compared to a poor man's basic setup. Most 'poor' people are lost when they happen to become 'rich'. It's a (mouse) trap. You'll see this over and over again..

⬐ swiley

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.

⬐ strgrd

What is your point? Are you implying that people thought electronic music was otherwise difficult or expensive to produce? Did you think people didn't know you could write code to generate sound?

...Or are you just being reductive and showing off your programming knowledge?

⬐ rhinoceraptor

Analog synths are a good way to differentiate though. It would be very difficult to replicate an analog synth patch even if you knew exactly how it was set up.

⬐ None

None

⬐ rotexo

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.

⬐ edkennedy

There are two discussions that have been beaten to death many a time on any forum discussing production of electronic music:

Hardware vs Software (which I would compare to the discussion of a data center in the cloud vs hardware on premise)

and Analog vs Digital

Everyone loves to think they are controversial...

⬐ crispyambulance

In principle, you're mostly right. And its true, there are folks who do make music entirely on their laptops, successfully, and a lot of it.

There's a visceral, physical aspect to music-making, however, that begs for tactile feedback. Some people really need that out of their instruments. That's why, in the case of electronic music, the big old modulars are making a comeback.

⬐ raverbashing

True, in theory

Now create a C program that reproduces a person singing, with all the variables that a real singer can act upon

⬐ TheOtherHobbes

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, whether it's a modular or a box-of-knobs synth: it's the synthesis equivalent of writing code in BASIC.

You can do it, and it's good for certain kinds of jobs.

But even though a wall of knobs and wires looks like the last word in musical openness, it actually puts some very rigid limits on the complexity and sophistication of what you can do. And worse (IMO) it trains you to think inside those limits instead of encouraging you to explore beyond them.

⬐ raverbashing

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

⬐ dkn

Which is easily remedied by using MIDI controllers.

⬐ theSpaceOctopus

> But even though a wall of knobs and wires looks like the last word in musical openness, it actually puts some very rigid limits on the complexity and sophistication of what you can do. And worse (IMO) it trains you to think inside those limits instead of encouraging you to explore beyond them.

To me, this statement implies that you either don't understand what a modular synthesizer system is or you haven't kept up with the times. I mean, you literally build your own system by choosing your own components and patching them together however you want. You're free at any time to pull the patch cables and start over. Add one new module changes the entire system.

Other than the fact that you need to be able to plug it into something, I can't imagine anything being much further from the definitions of rigid and limiting. It would be like calling Pure Data limiting because it's a visual programming language. I don't know, it just seems silly to me.

There's a ton of small outfits in the Eurorack space doing really great stuff. To any one who is curious I'd suggest checking out some manufacturers like Make Noise, Mutable Instruments, ADDAC System, Modcan, and there's just too many to name.

⬐ kinkrtyavimoodh

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.

⬐ swiley

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.

⬐ JohnJamesRambo

George Lucased.

⬐ ehsankia

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 you've got the money, why not create something cool like this?

⬐ kristofferR

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