I think it’s easier to think of electronic music gear as being a mature market: the pace of technical innovation has slowed down dramatically, leading to increased competition in price, choice, and accessibility instead.
When you look back at synths in the 20th century, it seems like there were always frontiers to push against: more polyphony, patch storage, digital control, frequency modulation, more sample storage, better sample fidelity. I get the sense, as a customer, that this isn’t the case anymore: I can’t think of any ways that more RAM, more voices, or whatever would open up new sounds or techniques. So instead of doing more, the market shifted towards making synths cheaper or more accessible. This also frees up funds and attention for wackier kinds of synthesis, like modular.
I agree that it’s an amazing time (or was, until this year–we’ll see) for synthesizers, if a little sad to see the frontiers fading away. It’s hard to imagine any changes in the next few years that will blow us away and change the sound of music for decades. I’d love to be wrong, though!
My hot take is that the analogue revival of the late ‘10s and early ‘20s was actually a plateau or even regression rather than a golden age. Obsession with the “classics” of the first golden age driven by boomer tastes and the disproportionate influence of a certain blue website in the culture.
Sure, subtractive analogue got cheaper/more accessible …. but it feels like people finally getting their hands on this stuff made them realise maybe that’s not actually the pinnacle of synthesis?
Things have started to get interesting again more recently imho - improvements in modelling plus oversaturation of True Classic Analogue … Like The 70s. Lots of different approaches and paradigms that aren’t trying or pretending to be “vintage”.
Modular was where the action has been throughout that era for me, but it’s kinda hamstrung by the cost of putting together a rack plus the economic realities of tiny companies trying to stay afloat doing cool but extremely niche hardware. I feel like a lot of this energy is going to end up back in software, you can see it with Max builders - a few have been crossing over into vst/au. Wouldn’t be surprised to see more modular companies diversifying or changing tack in this direction.
It’s an embarrassment of riches. Not only for variety but also affordability. In the late nineties, early noughties it was all about sample based instruments with a few virtual analogues and even some if those were sample based. Waldorf disappeared for a while, the modular scene hadn’t exploded and analogue synths wre becoming more and more expensive.
I think Doepfer can take a bow for inventing the eurorack standard. We now get options for midi and CV - connectivity is improved and less cumbersome than back in the day. Korg deserve credit for their cheap analogue synths, Elektron for tighthly integrating sequencing with sampling and synthesis. Then we have advances in technology like the Raspberry Pi which has led to some interesting digital synths.
The other improvement is a shift away from minimal interfaces to much more user friendly interfaces.
There hasn’t been a time before now when you could buy such a range of synthesis options: analogue, VA, FM, hybrid, wavetable, sample and synthesis, wavesequencing, additive, granular, physical modelling and more.
I agree that consumerism is an important part of the big picture, and always worth keeping in mind.
One important point you might be missing in your post is that not all of us think of musical instruments only as “toys” and “hedonism” (your words). Those of us who have invested a lot of our lives, successfully or not, in studying and performing music as well as we can …. think of our instruments as tools. And it’s nice to have a choice of good electronic music tools in recent years.
I feel the synth industry did pretty well throughout and after the pandemic, but I don’t have any specific insights there, so maybe I underestimate how much companies suffered (?). Things seem to be normal again, well, the new normal, but if you go through threads when new gear is announced it’s very often that you’ll see users saying stuff like ‘Nice, but do I need it? Probably not…’
So the excitement from years ago seems kind of gone, but the current market saturation is just bonkers. Pretty much in any price range we have options, options, options it feels like a maze.
I guess ultimately any golden age has to come to an end and there’s a limit to how many people you can pull into a hobby, but if the recent years including today aren’t golden years, I don’t know what they were (and still are).
The good thing is, even if this is the end of this golden synth era, the used gear market will remain pretty saturated for a couple of years.
totally agree with all of this (and doepfer did indeed develop the eurorack format). yes, there are many choices these days for each task, and i believe the onus falls on the buyer for determining what tools are right for the task (it takes years to really sort this out as tastes and goals shift). but it’s almost too easy these days with how powerful some of these tools are. i have multiple bits of kit that i could do a whole live set or album with alone (yes, these also existed in the past but way more now), which only makes it more fun and more curious about other gear that could bring immense joy into my life.
really hope the makers of these tools can survive the next few years (and beyond), as i view them absolutely vital to the chain and flow of the electronic music process (as are vinyl cutters, producers creating the music, mastering engineers, people going out and raving, etc)
i think the golden years are going to extend much further into the future, as we’re just now kind of breaking out past the 808/909, etc mold into new territory thanks to makers like elektron, erica synths, modular makers, etc and the median skill levels of producers and djs are soaring
Agreed. As much as I love gear, so much of the hobby now is just blatant consumerism; so much so that “synthtuber music” is basically its own genre now.
I like hardware. But holy shit, the stuff available on the ipad now is insane. Ive got one, I have a few synth apps on it, but I dont really use them. The ipad is mostly for work, and I always default to hardware with knobs switches and faders, I like a tactile realm.
Hi Shig. Your post (before you deleted it) came to me as e-mail. I thought it was a good and thoughtful read. I will hold off responding since you wiped the post, but I appreciate your taking time to clarify what you were saying earlier in greater detail. I think we actually don’t disagree at all.
Going back to your original post (about the same ideas as the deleted post): the one thing I will say, speaking only about my own experience and choices, is that I’m not sure I could have learned everything I learned about making electronic music without some unwise emotional spending with credit cards in the purchase of musical instruments; I’ve stepped away from that precipice, but what’s weird is it was both a blessing and a curse. Experience is often like that, if you survive it. “Nothing is simple, sighed the fox.”
I’m not sure it stopped yet… Behringer is yet to re-release their SP1200, MPC60 and so many others… Before we get the vintage inspired drum/rack samplers, we havent really exhausted all the options
I think it’s hard to argue with the thread title if it is about gear available to all kinds of people with different income. I haven’t lived through this myself, but even if you read older threads on Elektronauts or articles on Amazona, it’s apparent how little choices there were even ten years ago compared to now. We’ve already touched that conversation a little bit in the Trigon thread, where we were wondering if the Prophet 6 / OB 6 would still be such a big deal today now that we have an abundance of analog synths.
What I’m wondering though is how big the impact is on the music being produced and the shows we see. One might argue that the algorithms of Spotify or Tiktok had way more influence on music than this new wave of hardware synths.
I have yet to go to a concert or set where I can see someone playing an Elektron or a lot of other stuff live. Overwhelmingly, it’s still either Prophets, Junos or Minilogues on stages and DJ equipment or a laptop for sets. Maybe I go to the wrong shows, but I can’t shake the feeling that most of the gear and things we’re talking about here is still an extremely niche thing and mostly something that hobbyists are into, while most people gigging are relying on the stuff that was available decades ago or the first wave of newer gear released in the early to mid 2010s.
Now things might be a bit different when it comes to studio production. I don’t know any professional producers, but judging from Youtube tours and more workflow oriented interviews, most producers seem to have at least a few hardware synths or drum machines. And they use them along with their DAW. This might not have been to different twenty years ago, but might be more widespread now and also be true for producers without a lot of money. There’s still no escaping the DAW and plugins, which might still be what is being used most overall.
Now does that change the music being made? I’m not sure I have an answer, but my gut feeling is that electronic elements have become so natural to all kinds of modern music that the benchmark overall might be a lot higher than it was say twenty years ago. More people will have some experience with soft- or hardware and thus there are probably a lot more people overall who are really good and doing exceptional stuff. With modern soft- and hardware making a lot of things easier and accessible, we might also hear more varied electronic sounds overall. Not even speaking of sampling and the worlds opening there (thinking of fred again for example, who shows us what an Iphone, a clear vision and sampling skills can do).
For the future, I think gear is becoming too expensive again and there’s lots of used stuff available for beginners for cheap. So I expect a lot of companies to disappear and releases slowing down again. I also expect more people to go back in the box. Hopefully, we will see a golden age of MIDI controllers as a result, which might be the best of both worlds after all. I can see a future where people will mention Roto Control in the same way looking back at the beginning of this trend that people on this thread spoke about Mininova or Minilogue.
I think Ableton Move is eventually going to be recognized as this industry’s iPhone moment. It was such a brilliant business move and I think now having a complete ecosystem with entry level and premium hardware and a best in class daw along with a cheap but functional iOS app is going to be hugely appealing to almost every buying segment in Gen Z and beyond and pretty much wipe out the sub $500, if not sub $1000 hardware market, except for a few niche players.
Maybe Roland SP 404 line survives. Not so sure about MPCs. Elektron has a very interesting decision to make with how “connected” their next line of devices will be, but they are still at a disadvantage not owning an entire ecosystem. Overbridge is like an app, but Ableton is the App Store.
Definitely not stopped, and maybe it’s just the spots I go to, but I get the feeling that things have thankfully moved on from the era of “you can only make valid music with The Classics” and people suspending disbelief that “clones” are actually the same thing but cheap. Will always be a market for that but it doesn’t seem to be as overbearing as it was 5-10 years ago and it seems to me there’s a lot of more interesting / adventurous stuff now than there was in 2015.
Didn’t realise that B********r were “teasing” MPC/SP1200 “clones”. Sounds like a nightmare to me tbh, no idea why anyone would go for that over all the other pretty affordable options that are out there that can do more and sound great on their own terms and/or capture that vibe into the bargain. Maybe after another few years of “teasers” we can find out.
But yeah, that was what I was getting at, personally I feel that whole thing was/is toxic on any given level. Aside from suspending disbelief that “clones” are genuinely the same thing as “The Classics”, it also involved suspending disbelief that 70s/80s tech is somehow innately superior. I think the main positive that came out of it was that B*******r colonised that space so comprehensively that basically everyone else has moved on, hence there’s a lot of more interesting stuff coming out now.
Or idk, maybe I just think that era is pretty much played out because I systematically block/mute B********r boosterism wherever I see it and avoid spaces where their guerilla marketing machine is so embedded that this isn’t possible.
This is a fair point… perhaps some technically proficient folks could weigh in on this… but i think there’s a certain degree of complexity adding this functionality when it’s an analog source… ? Not that that applies to hydrasynth though.
My buddy makes his own modules (will link if anyone’s curious) and described to me the complexities that necessitate additional elements required in order to add certain functionality - though worth noting he was speaking of CV control, not digital.
I’m loving all the banter and thoughts here… just wanted to reflect on how increased accessibility has affected the secondhand market… and complain (to no one in particular) cos i live in Vietnam where there is an embargo on importing used electronics.
I agree in parts, but am skeptical that Move will be such a big game changer. The whole appeal of what you’re describing is that it’s an “ecosystem”. If you only have one of the products because, for example, you can’t afford more than a Move and Ableton Lite, something like a Digitakt or Digitone (or an MPC, you name it) might look more appealing. To make full use of the Ableton ecosystem, you have to buy Suite, a decent laptop, Push and Move, probably a simple interface and a MIDI keyboard. At that point, you’ve spent around 3-5000€, you could get a lot of hardware for that.
