Put me down as a yes. Not just instruments but utility gear too. I find the no-nonsense design of FMR stuff very pleasing to use.
I love mixing on my Tascam partly because it reminds me of the big old mixing desk in my high school sound booth (I grew up in a college town and we’d get all the old gear from the University—I’ll never be allowed near another mixer like that for as long as I live).
It’s also true for me with art supplies and notebooks. Silly maybe, but when a book looks cool, I try to take more & better notes in it.
For me Elektron boxes are as pretty (and cool as fuck!) as DeLorean DMC-12 and people who upgrade them by doing their own firmwares/extensions to these machines are Doc Browns to me!
I couldn’t get past the red on MPC One Plus and that eventually led me away from it and straight into Elektron. Also strongly disliking rainbow colored lights on pads and such.
I’ve had the red Korg ESX-1 for years and never got used to it.
Black or grey is what works for me because it keeps the visual focus on functionality. And just looks plain better.
It would be more important to me if people could see it on stage at all. My guitars must look cool as hell. My synths all just look like black rectangles to anyone that isn’t me, so I don’t care as much there.
I wish there was a cool looking keytar, but boy are we not there yet. The Axe Edge is trying at least, but boy does that thing look chunky.
It’s really nice to hold and play a Spanish or German guitar made by a master and they really work on the aesthetics. They don’t need them but it would be a waste for such fine (and much more expensive) instruments not to have an aesthetic presence at a concert. I prefer working with machinery with a solid construction feel to them, ideally keeping visual noise minimal. Industrial design may not be quite as elaborate as a classical instrument but it definitely plays a role, it tells me that the manufacturer has considered living with the thing at some point. The price is prohibitive for some but they are still within reach for many and buying a DT1 or OT1 does give you pretty much the same design for cheap.
Definitely matters to me. If I’m going to spend hours staring at and touching a piece of gear, I want it to have some personality.
Elektron’s stuff is a good example because the slightly industrial, retro look actually feels like part of the experience. I’d take that over another glossy touchscreen box any day, even if the newer screen technically looks “better.”
details make all the difference…meanwhile, design always matters…
if a design prooves to be timeless, is highly subjective and can only be prooved over long time passing…
oh and yes…i hated elektrons yellow screens and felt hyper hyper when they turned to blueish…
I think it’s cool if design reflects characteristics of the instrument. For example Opsix futuristic design, Protein’s 80’s vibe, Elektron’s rugged industrial look… But it’s not the most important factor to me. I even like some stuff, which I find kind of ugly (like Neutron’s front panel graphics and color). Looks grows on me eventually, if it’s a good piece of gear, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder anyway. As long as it doesn’l look cheap, especially if it actually isn’t.
Just don’t be offensive. I can put up with any number of ‘plain black boring’ boxes but don’t be bringing vegas mode, 1010 lemondrop or MPC One in red into the studio.
Get that fk the fk away from me.
I am affected a lot by aesthetics, although I used to think I didn’t care:
Industrial and publication design has always mattered to me, in any situation. Humans often make the world uglier, sprawling concrete, so when someone inserts beauty into reality, it’s wonderful for me; almost subversive. Of course music does that too.
I’ve admitted to myself that to some degree I hear with my eyes, even though my ear is finely tuned on its own. The tell was that in Youtubes where a module is pictured being played via a good-looking controller, the module sounds better to me.
For me at least, synth aesthetics merge with synth interface. If the knob/screen/menu arrangement clicks for me, then usually the synth looks good, whether I actually like its aesthetics or not. The Prophet 6 is probably ugly, but it’s fine with me. Even the Moog Matriarch, which is still a hideous color scheme IMO, at least is painless now because the interface is so easy to use.
I started hating on YouTubers who were/are making these perfect looking shots, so perfect and polished that crossed into “fake” territory for me, and immediate rejection even to listen to their song.
Looked more like they are selling a product then making a song
Interesting. I can understand that. “If it looks like an ad, it is an ad.”
Personally, I don’t even pay much attention to how clear the shot is or how many potted plants they have in it. It’s me, not them: If the controller is fancy, I hear the sound of the module being played as fancy too. I’m easily influenced, I guess…
Bringing it back to the topic: humans (unlike a lot of other species) are more visually than aurally influenced. A little weird that what I see might influence what I hear.
With synths I tend to be more bothered about ease of use & layout than aesthetics per se because most synths are rectangles with knobs and/or sliders on them.
Having said that I really don’t like the look of the crop of modern wooden synths (e.g. Ciat-Lonbarde, SOMA’s Terra) because they look too much like children’s toys. They might sound ace but even if I had the money it’s unlikely I’d ever buy one.
With electric guitars so far I’ve stuck to “traditional” guitars (Telecaster, ES-335) because I wanted the sounds those guitars made. If the shapes had been more adventurous I might have opted for different guitars though. It just happened to be the case that the tele & gibbo have fairly traditional guitar shapes so the consideration of aesthetics never really crossed my mind.
Perhaps if I was more into the kind of metal where you’re expected to turn up with a guitar that resembles an accident with a spirograph I might have felt more invested in the look of the things.
Quite a lot.
I find that I don’t want to use ugly gear.
…
Of course, “ugly” is subjective considering I’m thinking of getting the Arturia Keylab 61 mk3 ultra in glaring, eye-searing orange!
I think a lot of us feel like that to some degree.
What’s weird is that there’s no consensus on what’s ugly. Sometimes I’ll see people online complain loudly about the look of a synth I like as-is, and I’ll think, “No, no! Don’t change it!”
In the big picture, not overly important but i appreciate them.
If there were two pieces of gear that were identical in sound, ui, price, and every other way but just looked different i’d pick the one i preferred the look of but i wouldn’t sacrifice anything for better looks. And yes, this even applies to guitars, one of my most used guitars over the last 15 years is a bit on the ugly side, I’m not sure why i haven’t refinished it, just not that important i guess.
I often see folks gushing over the aesthetics of gear that i find dull and uninspired or sometimes downright awful. I also have a big soft spot for the charmingly ugly. Its all subjective in the end and to say otherwise is intellectually dishonest, there is no good or bad with this stuff, only what we like or don’t like.
I’m a little weary of gear that looks like they spent too much time fussing with the visual appeal. I’ve seen enough examples of “skin deep” gear that it makes me pause.
I’m looking forward to the day when we’re past this current trend of clean european minimalism. Not that its bad but its super played out at this point and so much of it sucks. Its like fake utilitarianism. There are good examples like elektron of course but then there’s stuff like teenage engineering which is like the ikea of gear. Obviously this is a subset of the gear market but the trend has grown quite a bit in recent years. Has that “my favorite flavor is plain” vibe. Uh, and the fake modesty of it just kills me.
While writing this i think i realized that i really dislike most commercial design over the last couple decades and the near total lack of good looking products in any market has made me care less about product aesthetics generally. Maybe “fuck it, its all ugly” is okay.
I used to think the ESX aesthetic, with that dayglow red-pink color, was cheesy and overly “rad” in the worst possible 90stastic way. But I have to admit it’s really grown on me. I took it out the other day and now I’m thinking it’s the coolest-looking synth I own. Sexier than the digitakt, which to me has always been sex on wheels.
Playing the digitakt feels sleek, but the heft and metal chassis of the ESX, combined with that faceplate color and Star Trek TNG fonts, make it feel like you’re playing a chunk of shining hauntology. Like having your brains smashed by a slice of Amen wrapped round a huge velvet brick.
