Pretentious use of punctuation/case in product names

The Lounge General Discussion
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An amusing diversion waste of everyone’s time for a Tuesday afternoon.

Not limited to synths and music gear, of course. Please do feel free to add to the list.

Col:ons: the acceptable face of marketing misappropriating punctuation

  • Korg Nu:Tekt
  • Roland Go:Keys
  • Elektron Model:Cycles/Samples

The slash (???)

  • Roland N/Vision (Roland marketing pitch: “You see? It’s “envision”, but spelt pointlessly wrong and with a slash suggesting you can have either N or vision. But we give people BOTH.” (mic drop)
  • Roland N/Zyme
  • Korg multi/poly

Crazy case

  • Korg nanoKONTROL
  • Korg microKORG
  • cyma forma ALT (a company that styles itself in lowercase, then releases a synth in all caps, naturally)

Random foreign characters

  • Sonicware Liven Ambient Ø (Sonicware marketing pitch: "It functions as a zero. Yet it’s a Norwegian character, and Norway is… a pretty… ambient place? Will this do?")
  • Instruō Øchd (bonus points for having either no, or unguessable, pronunciation)

Disappointingly I couldn’t find any products whose names end with a period, so beloved of logo designers.

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How about folks that excessively use exclamation points! Annoying!

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I think brands should be forced to name their products as literal descriptions of what they are.

So instead of a Moog One, you can have a Moog Big fuck off expensive polysynth.

Or pick from Akai’s lineup of convoluted Ableton in a box .

Or any of the elektron range of Perfect except for that one feature you’ve just decided is essential to making music.

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Roland 404MKII = Roland 404 button combos!

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I’m all for this. This, of course, is how it once was. A look back at marketing of even 30-40 years shows an endearing, even touching simplicity and honesty. Go back even further and you get no-nonsense, belt-and-braces names such as “Braddock’s Super Hair Wax” or “Mrs Bumbleton’s Bicarbonate of Soda”. Now, because we’re sold to like we’re inattentive school boys, we must suffer the “Gillette Mach 3 Turbo Stealth” and part of you dies to remember that the people who come up with this are the same species as you.

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Hey now, don’t talk bad of my Mach 3! It’s older than my adult, still living at home, kids!

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Let’s not forget the use of the lowercase “i” prefix. Looking at you iLoud.

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“The Bloochooch device is connected” fake Apple vibes. Incredibly stupid for an otherwise good product.

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In a mall near my last Waterloo apartment there was a takeout place called iShawarma. I know it’s not music gear, but it’s just so ridiculous…!

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Is it ALL CAPS ? – KORG, Midicake UNA

or all lowercase ? – lyra-8, 0-coast

Plus then Make Noise pronounce 0-coast as “no coast” ?

Really though i don’t care. Brands gotta have some fun.

Maybe i’m the pretentious one, in posts i try to put brand names in bold.

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This is dreadful in a way I’m struggling to put into words.

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Not quite punctuation/case … but high pretension points for giving new products names that are similar to the names of old products that sound completely different.

All time winner: Roland SH-201.

And yes, bolding for emphasis all the time in posts is probably pretentious too.

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I’m a grammar/punctuation nazi and I’m judging all of you all the time :eyes::triumph:. I’m happy to report the standards are generally high.

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I guess “ma ma ma MyShawarma” was taken?

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There’s a Chinese takeaway by me and the sign out front says DRAGONFlY.

It brings me joy.

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I’d eat that

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(post deleted by author)

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There is also a certain company that goes for nondescript names like :

Drums, Synth, Anywhere, Loop, Seq, Step, Mess, Play, Poly …

Behringer has two very different products. They call one Wave, and the other Waves.

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There’s one near me called Hoo Tak, which sounds like a really angry way to answer a phone in some language or other.

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Yeah names are hard, especially nowadays when everything good is taken.

I generally don’t mind series + number -naming i.e Juno-60 & CS-60 which makes me think of a printer or an electric razor.