I can't get no ....satisfaction

[peripatitis]

I do not know if anybody feels this but i find it really difficult in me to like synths anymore .
I've been collecting gear enthousiastically over the years , programming , devoting my hours for just one sound , but i've reached a point were everything just doesn't satisfy me.

The last synths i bought couldn't get me interested for more than a week !
(Thank god for ebay ,because i would have lost a lot of money).

On the other hand i have kept the same 'setup' in my studio for more than 5 years but even for the tools that i used to rely on , i feel i should get rid of them.

The thing is that i do not feel i am passing an compositional crisis or something of that sort blaming my synths for this , i just get a feeling that , what synths i use has become irrelevant.

Anyone sharing the same feelings ?

[seraph]

[Uncle Krunkus]

Sometimes I feel the need to have a look at the old question; what is it that I really love about electronic music? Is it the music? or the electronics?
The fact that the evolution of such programming masterpieces as the G2 exists, shows that loving only the technical side of things will leave you forever wanting. (When something like the G2 can pick up your thoughts and automatically patch the sound you're thinking of, the current version will look old world, inherently limited, out of touch, and irrelevant too. Just as a Jupiter8 would look today, (that's not to say I wouldn't like one!)
And I s'pose that's the point.
There are lots of reasons to love a certain synth or piece of software, and lots of reasons that you might get bored with them as well.
I'm kind of going thru a compositional crisis myself and I realise that it's a different kind of stuck, but there are similarities.
"devoting my hours for just one sound" that kind of got me suspicious. It seems a bit like you might be expecting the inspiration to jump out of the synth at you if you put enough hours into it. I'm not saying this is wrong but to me it sounds a bit one sided. Ultimately the inspiration will come from you. If you had a five storey building packed with equipment and studio space it would still be silent until you walked in with an idea.
Look, I'm not exactly sure what to say, I'm just rambling on, I'd recommend grabing a microphone and just start recording some melodies. I should be saying this to myself, I probably am.
First thing, have fun.
See ya,
Andrew

[peripatitis]

The thing is that although i started from synthesizers , i found myself more and more processing intial sounds that i get from them into different 'unrecognisable' events .
Under this view the initial material seems irrelevant and in a sence 'sterile' .
Over the years i've learned to use additive , fm , wavetable synths ,e.t.c
however there is something about the trasformations done through a Hardware synth that leave me unsatisfied .
Perhaps the idea of using just envelopes , lfo's and in the best case a mod matrix to control parameters is quite limited .

I was never a real fan of 'physical instruments ', i mean i've studied for many years classical piano and from time to time i still to sit in front of one and just play , i find however 'physical sounds' , sounds that exist around us more interesting and complex than anything achievable through a traditional instrument-synthesizer.

So perhaps in some level uncle krunkus is right , perhaps i am obsessing with the complexity of sound but i find this strongly related with the musical outcome ,especially in electronic music.

In this software applications like max/msp ,csound e.t.c seem much more interesing even though if i were to compare individual qualities (e.x filters , oscillators,...) the hardaware equivelants still retain the edge.

[Uncle Krunkus]

I like a 'complex' sound as much as anyone, but I also love some of the really minimalist pure electronic music as well like early Kraftwerk etc. The purity of blending a few almost sinewaves can bring out the impression of something which isn't there. In a lot of music it's all in there and you have to work hard to find it.

[seraph]

[paul e.]

try to 'think' less and 'feel' the parts more..think about what they mean to other people...
perhaps try what seraph suggested..get more involved in the 'expression' side of it all

[Mohoyoho]

When I get burned out or lose inspiration, I take a break. Usually, I can switch to another instrument, like guitar, and start working on a totally unrelated genre of music from my synths. Sometimes it takes days or a couple of weeks. Fortunately the Muse stays with me most of the time.

[peripatitis]

Thanks guys for your replies

I think that granular synthesis is a good example to illustrate my point .

The outcome of this synthesis can vary a lot in character , however if we concentrate on soundcapes as a subcategory of sounds one can achieve, the results are more complex and more organic (closer to a 'natural' sound but not a recognisable one).

This works with a different input from the user.
Instead of dealing with how each grain would sound , you are dealing with the general form of a sound event and it's evolution in time

I am not saying of course that with granular we are covered as electronic musicians , but this is one of the many ways one can deal with sound through a software enviroment.

If we look what is happening with the new hardware synthesizers out there you either get
sample playback-samplers (still useful when you need realistic sounds) or a number of va's that in their majority offer less control to a musician than modular synths 40 years ago offered.

Now i am not sure what seraph means by the 'gestural side of electronic music' but if you are refering to instruments-controllers , then indeed it's one thing that i'd like at some point to work with .

But then again there are things like the midi protocol and the lack of tuning flexibility in a lot of synths that might be a problem in this procedure .

cheers