I agree we should resist elitism or perfectionism, but we also need to recognise artistic intention. Some forms of music, or musical vision, suit ‘scrappy and crappy’, but some don’t.
If I want to make a crisp clean and lush Sakamoto-style orchestral-electronic cinematic soundtrack, then some sound sources aren’t going to make muster.
But then if I wanna make mad basement noise rock, the Sakamoto sound sources might not fit the vibe.
Some people work in an ‘anarchic’ sense, almost bricolage - use what’s there right now and make stuff with it. Other people follow a kind of vision, with a desire to make real certain sounds. Neither is more right or wrong than the other, but for the second, I would say sound sources do matter.
For the wider argument, for sound sources to truly not matter, one would have to argue that you can make the same patches and records with a S-1 as you can with a Virus. Everything sounds different, and it’s only in some cases you can truly make it sound the same, so if you want to make music that sounds a certain way, your sources will matter.
And for quality, I do think it comes through, even on a subconscious level. Low-bitrate encodes are more fatiguing to listen to. Quality-engineered recordings have more elements in them to reward focused listening. Etc.
But it’s up to you whether that matters in your music!
It’s so very subjective that that saying doesn’t mean much really. Is a very noisy recording of me kicking a bin in a busy park a turd? Maybe to me it is not and I can create all kinds of cool percussion with it by slamming it through multiple stages of saturation, compression, eqing, fx etc. It’s a turd sample many might say but it can yield interesting results nonetheless.
But in a broader sense the source is important in that once you know your processing techniques you can expect or work towards certain results with various sources. So picking the right source in that sense is definitely important.
Mjeah, context matters a LOT here.
If i want a good supersaw based sound it doesn’t matter how much processing you apply, you need a good base supersaw that you can then process further. And ’good’ is case by case subjective.
With enough processing you can turn a sine wave into nearly any sound imaginable. You can do that within an FM synth or by applying lots of FX and resampling. To me both are “synthesis”.
The sound source is just the oscillator. It helps to have a sound source that works for the sound you have in mind as it just means it’ll be far easier to get where you want to be sonically.
+1, I got mine out yesterday (it was shelved and almost sold) and was kind of flabbergasted by its depth.
One shouldn’t relate price to sound quality, there are many machines that show there’s no relation (Volca FM, Volca Drum, PO-32, to name just a few I came across)
I think the potential proverbial turd is about what you do with sounds, aka your songwriting or whatever. Sound sources or effects can both equally be applied well or bad I’d say (and then indeed there’s the whole subjective question of who decides).
For me effects can just as well be sound sources in how central or creative (or cliche) they are.
It’s very important if you want to achieve specific sound, quite irrelevant if you just fiddle with effects and sequencing until something sounds good to you.
For me, good sounding synth is a source of inspiration.
Yup, I also find that misleading. It’s a good clone of a classic synth that is known for its great base sound. Has all the magic of classic Rolands in it that are legacy for a reason. But it’s simpler and less complex than the Virus, different kind of question then. That’s why I think the comparisons of “crappy” field recordings done with a cheap mic are more appropriate.
Also agree with @tha_man, it depends on how much you need a sound for inspiration. I’m like that with my own music, I let myself be inspired by the machine I’m using and the sound it can make. But if you’re more of a classic songwriter that first lays down a great chord progression and some melodies, it might not be that important what sounds you’re using to eventually translate that idea. Except that it might, because it will give a totally different vibe. So +1 for it matters what type of sound you choose in what context.
Samplers (software and hardware) change the equation between sound source quality/variety and what you hear as the final output.
An audio clip that’s fed through multiple complex layered effects can be transformed quite radically, for sure.
An audio clip loaded into a sampler like the DT2 and then mangled, p-locked, filtered and all the rest of it to heaven and back can become utterly unrecognisable within minutes… and if the output from the DT2/whatever is then fed into a complex FX chain it all reaches a whole other level beyond that.
In a sampler context, the sound source can be pretty basic and uninspiring and you’ll still end up with something extraordinary.
The more I use my Elektron gear, the less I use other hardware. An iPad plugin synth note sampled in the DT can do so much, and so can a bit of creative sampling of household objects for percussion, speech snippets off YouTube etc.
I flagged this because Microtribe expressed an opinion and made an argument for it. Surprised to see such strong language here and from you.
I also don’t agree with Microtribe’s argument. If you think this through, it disqualifies most guitar based music as shit, because at the end of the day, electric guitars are basically just sine waves and the sound is shaped by the effects. To their credit though, it’s also shaped by how you play the guitar and what melody/rhythm you’re playing. And what instrument you’re using seems to make a difference, despite all of them more or less delivering only a very basic sound.
why would you get worked up over someone else’s opinion on fx? that’s silly, if a person manages to make good music without fx that’s impressive imo, although I love using fx I wouldn’t be angry if someone don’t
I’m not a guitar guy but why there are guitars that cost over $10k? what’s so special about their sine wave? I assume that in electric guitars sound comes from pickups, strings, and whole lot of other stuff that make their sound unique vs other ones, so if you consider guitar, as a whole, a sound source - there’s lots of room to make the source “better” or “worse” even without reaching for fx to fill out the spectrum, I could be totally wrong but that’s my perception of it.
