I hate the fact that people using technology to make music these days have simultaneously more creative and transformative power and fewer well-designed physical instrument interfaces at our fingertips than ever before. This is due to a number of factors, chiefly money. It costs considerably less to make any software than hardware, so now we have this design philosophy permeating the industry of "Fuck 'em, we'll put every possible feature we can into the software- Let THEM make the interface they want!" So we've ended up with a world of cheap, plastic MIDI controllers with tons of assignable knobs, pads, buttons and sliders, but very few actual self-contained, well-thought-out hardware musical instruments that are physically satisfying to play and don't force the musician to design their own interface.
I resent this.
While it is a valid approach on one hand (since most professional music software has many more possible onscreen controls than any single piece of hardware could feasibly be equipped with), it falls apart with things like softsynths and samplers, where you really benefit from being able to simply grab one parameter knob with one hand and another control with the other and see what happens if you twist them in opposite directions while the sound is being played.
Fuck these people and their lack of commitment to inspiring creativity (you remember "musicians", don't you? The people who actually have to use your products, ultimately?) Don't force me to be an interface designer. If you really want to make inspiring instruments that are fun to play, do the work, think it through, build the hardware and make it simple, seductive and easy to use, like the venerable, fantastic Sequential Prophet T8 pictured above.
Fortunately, some modern designers do occasionally get it right:
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment