I've wondered if, when Moore's Law stops applying and new technology now is less revolutionary than new technology in the past, mass revolutions in popular culture will become rarer to see along with it. It seems that a lot of earlier music was a product of the kinds of software/hardware that was available at the time (along with many other factors, of course). When there are more options to produce music than ever in the present, choosing to go back to one of the "old-school" eras becomes a conscious creative choice, instead of a result of hard limitations.
It's kind of like how the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray was more significant than 4K to 8K in my mind.
For music, synthesis and DSP are basically solved problems. Synthesis won't get more interesting if you throw more cycles at it.
Buyers have mostly rejected more complicated kinds of synthesis - including resynthesis and physical modelling - because they don't understand them.
So we're stuck with expanded virtual versions of the old analog synth/wavetable/FM/sampler and studio rack processor models, but with a slightly wider range of oscillator types like granular, and somewhat content-aware processing.
There are areas on the R&D edge, but they're not about the audio.
Changing the subject - one reason Roland stood out was outstanding industrial design. Many of the synths and drum machines produced during the 80s peak are beautiful objects which combined a friendly, fresh, youthful look with a very clear programming model.
Yamaha tried to do colour coding with the CS series, but didn't quite get it right. So they made the world's most playable and expressive analog poly (CS80) instead.
They took the design hint with the DX7, but never quite hit the same design sweet spot with subsequent synths. And unlike the Roland designs, the DX7 was insanely difficult to program.
US synth designers never quite understood colour coding, so the designs were more functional and more expensive, which made them feel more serious, more rock band, less accessible and less fun.
In a more general sense, this idea is called technological determinism. But Moore's law is only one axis; a new technology isn't necessarily computationally more expensive or dense, and "old-school" isn't necessarily the opposite of "computationally intensive" or anything related to Moore's law. To me it's kind of like expecting cultural reversion because wheels aren't getting any bigger.
There are still new kinds of music created which reflect the contemporary music production software/hardware - look up "deconstructed club" genre as an example. It would be difficult to create this kind of music with 90s tools, since there is less regularity.
I believe that there is a lot of innovation headroom left in music technology. As another poster has said, availability of more cycles has long stopped being a factor. But self-stabilizing effects in UI language (you are good at what you know/you learn more about what you are good at) have started kicking in even earlier, see synth emulations. Those self-stabilizing effects are strong and they make it very hard for new approaches to take foot. But that also means that there is still a lot of space left unexplored, or traveled by explorers who never made it back (read: dabbled with a technological approach but never brought it to musical success).
This is already happening on a massive scale in the music industry. The Prophet synthesiser is one prominent example of that, but there's many more. Same goes for guitars and other instruments where modern versions sometimes lose sound characteristics due to material changes.
The most famous is example is Stradivarius I suppose.
Not just dance music but hip hop too! The Akai MPC has been a dominant sampling and sequencing tool of some of the most prolific producers, even as software started to eat the electronic music world.
It should be understood that the MPC is actually a Japanese clone of an American invention, the LinnDrum MidiStudio.
Roger Linn kicked off the innovation around the sampling/sequencing revolution - Akai just made it affordable.
Disclaimer: have worked in the digital musical instrument market for decades, including for Yamaha and other (German) major players in this space. This industry is incestuous in many ways - but it follows the 'musicians rule', which is 'its okay to copy each others riffs as long as it improves the groove' ..
I think the main thing about the japanese instruments were the lower prices. There was plenty of great products from E-mu, Ensoniq, Oberheim, Linn, Moog, and Sequential in the 80's. But they were pricier, which lead to lower market share, which meant worse economy of scale - a classic death spiral. Out of desperation, quality begins to suffer and then it was pretty much over for all of them in the early to mid 90's.
Perhaps I skimmed too fast, but the key "event" it doesn't mention is that much of the first wave of gear was not intended to for "dance music." It was intended for rock & roll. But that market shunned it.
It wasn't until some "crazy kids" said "What's this stuff? What can we do with it?" that modern "dance music" was born.
I suppose you can liken it to the invention of the urethane wheels for skateboarding. You want inspiration for innovation? What the "Dogtown and Z-Boys" documentary.
There's definitely a bit of a pattern to this in music as with nearly everything.
Players within the established tradition "take it seriously" which is on one hand respect for tradition and on the other impedes full integration of new techniques and sounds.
Newer less established genres are more playful/experimental, and what works for them can eventually get accepted by the older forms and rolled in.
I kinda mentioned this in another comment in here but it's very visible in the relationships between jazz and hip hop right now. Contemporary jazz uses a lot of techniques and sound profiles that were developed in trap music of all things.
Whenever I think of the beginning of Japan's rule, I think of the 1977 US$4800 (twice as much in the UK). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MC-8_Microcomposer. This is two years after the Pop Electronics article on the Altair.
Ralph Dyck-inspired, [1] with an 8080A micro, starting with 4K (1100 notes) of expensive RAM (later 16K). 22 quarter-inch jacks, 30 push-buttons, LEDs.... An inch-thick manual. This wasn't just an improvement on anything that existed. It was a Kakehashi moonshot - wine and roses. Only 300 made.
While the Japanese are amazing at hardware, they seem totally incapable of building world class software.
No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature (thus contain basically a soft-synth).
Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram...
While establishing a "cause & effect" here seems very hard, from my personal experience working in software field in Japan, I think the winning concept here is actually the combination of removing middleman and paying good salaries.
Japan is very very behind in IT/digitalization compared to most western countries. This doesn't just mean it's behind in product portfolio and quality, but that perception of software engineer & managers and still quite behind. The respect that a lot of software engineers enjoys in US/EU is not quite there yet in Japan(and salary often reflect this).
The C-suite usually doesn't have a firm understanding of software/IT world, and instead ends-up hiring a lot of "Scrum-experts/Agile coaches" and hires software engineers from consultancy or recruitment companies for cheap. There's ofc companies that doesn't fall in this category, but for middle-sized companies in Japan (which is the bulk of the economy), this is the true state of things. Middle-men in Japan have therefore been way more encroaching on this, and they have the incentive to not improve the respect/social standing the software engineers have.
"Removing managers" in this article does not mean the same thing as it would in US/EU, conditions are different.
>> "No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature (thus contain basically a soft-synth)."
Synth1 is well-known in electronic music.
>> "Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram..."
I aim the camera. I press the button. It puts the resulting readings from the sensor in a raw file on the SD card. This has worked without fail for thousands of pictures. The rare times I need to use anything I can't get to with a physical button, they're all easily accessed on a single screen by touch with the i button. What else do I need? They keep piling connectivity junk on, but airplane mode shuts it down.
Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s
Traditionally in Japan, you would, for example, simply print straight from the camera to the printer. You can see all the support for this if you look in your camera's settings. Putting a PC in the middle is more of a Western style of working. The PC software is bad because the people who write it don't use it themselves and don't really see why anyone would want to, when they could simply skip that step altogether.
> No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature
Have you tried KORG Gadget? It's incredible and a solid DAW/virtual studio in its own right. Basically a killer app for the iPad, and it's also available for macOS.
All of KORG's music apps are fantastic, and basically reason enough to buy an iPad: Gadget, Module, ODYSSEi, iWavestation, iPolySix, iMS-20, iMono/Poly, iElectribe (and its Wave and Gorillaz variants), iKaossilator and iM1.
In addition to PC/Mac/iOS, KORG also has even ported several of its music apps to the Nintendo Switch and 3DS/DS. Definitely fun to make music on a gaming handheld.
KORG is one of my favorite music software/virtual instrument/plugin developers, hands down. And they've been on fire in terms of hardware synths over the past few years as well, both with new/affordable analog as well as classic reissues.
You're listing hardware companies though, we'd have to look at Japanese software companies to see. Now I agree Sony and others struggled to absorb software and considering they were very high grade hardware device manufacturers the delta was damning. It's a different approach I guess
Definitely incredibly influential, but I would say that Roland, KORG, Yamaha, etc. are matched by the likes of Moog, Sequential, Oberheim, Access, and many others (from E-mu to Linn to modern Eurorack) on the hardware side, and on the software side by DAWs such as Reason, Live, FL Studio, Logic and myriad plugins. Definitely a fair amount of US and Europe as well as Japan.
[+] [-] nonbirithm|4 years ago|reply
It's kind of like how the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray was more significant than 4K to 8K in my mind.
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|4 years ago|reply
Buyers have mostly rejected more complicated kinds of synthesis - including resynthesis and physical modelling - because they don't understand them.
So we're stuck with expanded virtual versions of the old analog synth/wavetable/FM/sampler and studio rack processor models, but with a slightly wider range of oscillator types like granular, and somewhat content-aware processing.
There are areas on the R&D edge, but they're not about the audio.
Changing the subject - one reason Roland stood out was outstanding industrial design. Many of the synths and drum machines produced during the 80s peak are beautiful objects which combined a friendly, fresh, youthful look with a very clear programming model.
https://happymag.tv/the-roland-jupiter-8-the-fattest-synth-i...
http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/juno60.php
Yamaha tried to do colour coding with the CS series, but didn't quite get it right. So they made the world's most playable and expressive analog poly (CS80) instead.
They took the design hint with the DX7, but never quite hit the same design sweet spot with subsequent synths. And unlike the Roland designs, the DX7 was insanely difficult to program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_DX7
US synth designers never quite understood colour coding, so the designs were more functional and more expensive, which made them feel more serious, more rock band, less accessible and less fun.
[+] [-] boomlinde|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hfkfmtkrkf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usrusr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beebeepka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pastrami_panda|4 years ago|reply
The most famous is example is Stradivarius I suppose.
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
Not having a land line phone -> having one: life changing.
Having 3 land lines in your house -> slightly more comfy
Same goes for smartphones, and others
[+] [-] dools|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkdpic_y9k|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|4 years ago|reply
Roger Linn kicked off the innovation around the sampling/sequencing revolution - Akai just made it affordable.
Disclaimer: have worked in the digital musical instrument market for decades, including for Yamaha and other (German) major players in this space. This industry is incestuous in many ways - but it follows the 'musicians rule', which is 'its okay to copy each others riffs as long as it improves the groove' ..
[+] [-] svantana|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|4 years ago|reply
It wasn't until some "crazy kids" said "What's this stuff? What can we do with it?" that modern "dance music" was born.
I suppose you can liken it to the invention of the urethane wheels for skateboarding. You want inspiration for innovation? What the "Dogtown and Z-Boys" documentary.
[+] [-] 8fGTBjZxBcHq|4 years ago|reply
Players within the established tradition "take it seriously" which is on one hand respect for tradition and on the other impedes full integration of new techniques and sounds.
Newer less established genres are more playful/experimental, and what works for them can eventually get accepted by the older forms and rolled in.
I kinda mentioned this in another comment in here but it's very visible in the relationships between jazz and hip hop right now. Contemporary jazz uses a lot of techniques and sound profiles that were developed in trap music of all things.
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|4 years ago|reply
Ralph Dyck-inspired, [1] with an 8080A micro, starting with 4K (1100 notes) of expensive RAM (later 16K). 22 quarter-inch jacks, 30 push-buttons, LEDs.... An inch-thick manual. This wasn't just an improvement on anything that existed. It was a Kakehashi moonshot - wine and roses. Only 300 made.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110918103549/http://www.soundo...
[1] https://rolandmc8.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/exclusive-intervi...
[+] [-] hfkfmtkrkf|4 years ago|reply
No notable audio production software or soft synth plugins is Japanese, which is weird, considering that many of their synths are digital in nature (thus contain basically a soft-synth).
Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram...
[+] [-] mlacks|4 years ago|reply
While establishing a "cause & effect" here seems very hard, from my personal experience working in software field in Japan, I think the winning concept here is actually the combination of removing middleman and paying good salaries. Japan is very very behind in IT/digitalization compared to most western countries. This doesn't just mean it's behind in product portfolio and quality, but that perception of software engineer & managers and still quite behind. The respect that a lot of software engineers enjoys in US/EU is not quite there yet in Japan(and salary often reflect this).
The C-suite usually doesn't have a firm understanding of software/IT world, and instead ends-up hiring a lot of "Scrum-experts/Agile coaches" and hires software engineers from consultancy or recruitment companies for cheap. There's ofc companies that doesn't fall in this category, but for middle-sized companies in Japan (which is the bulk of the economy), this is the true state of things. Middle-men in Japan have therefore been way more encroaching on this, and they have the incentive to not improve the respect/social standing the software engineers have.
"Removing managers" in this article does not mean the same thing as it would in US/EU, conditions are different.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27178486
[+] [-] Kye|4 years ago|reply
Synth1 is well-known in electronic music.
>> "Same thing in cameras, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony built amazing camera yet the camera software is basically stuck in the 90s, not to mention stuff like Instagram..."
I aim the camera. I press the button. It puts the resulting readings from the sensor in a raw file on the SD card. This has worked without fail for thousands of pictures. The rare times I need to use anything I can't get to with a physical button, they're all easily accessed on a single screen by touch with the i button. What else do I need? They keep piling connectivity junk on, but airplane mode shuts it down.
[+] [-] goatinaboat|4 years ago|reply
Traditionally in Japan, you would, for example, simply print straight from the camera to the printer. You can see all the support for this if you look in your camera's settings. Putting a PC in the middle is more of a Western style of working. The PC software is bad because the people who write it don't use it themselves and don't really see why anyone would want to, when they could simply skip that step altogether.
[+] [-] martial_cc|4 years ago|reply
While I'm not sure what country they develop their software in, the company is Japanese.
[+] [-] musicale|4 years ago|reply
Have you tried KORG Gadget? It's incredible and a solid DAW/virtual studio in its own right. Basically a killer app for the iPad, and it's also available for macOS.
All of KORG's music apps are fantastic, and basically reason enough to buy an iPad: Gadget, Module, ODYSSEi, iWavestation, iPolySix, iMS-20, iMono/Poly, iElectribe (and its Wave and Gorillaz variants), iKaossilator and iM1.
In addition to PC/Mac/iOS, KORG also has even ported several of its music apps to the Nintendo Switch and 3DS/DS. Definitely fun to make music on a gaming handheld.
KORG is one of my favorite music software/virtual instrument/plugin developers, hands down. And they've been on fire in terms of hardware synths over the past few years as well, both with new/affordable analog as well as classic reissues.
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
You're listing hardware companies though, we'd have to look at Japanese software companies to see. Now I agree Sony and others struggled to absorb software and considering they were very high grade hardware device manufacturers the delta was damning. It's a different approach I guess
[+] [-] scarecrowbob|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nunja|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cronix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moomin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kye|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJf9Jptq7VY
[+] [-] koreanguy|4 years ago|reply
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