Oscillate !
More musical goodness came to me…
Just acquired - by means of a jolly good 2nd-hand trade - two of my favourite soft-synths: GForce’s MiniMonsta, and Native-Instruments Reaktor 5.
Both instruments couldn’t be further apart, philosophy-wise. The MiniMonsta is a great Moog Minimoog clone on steroids (read: keyboard-oriented), and Reaktor is the mother-of-all-modulars in software form (read: build your own synth, no keyboard necessary).
However puzzling this might be, it is very typical for my musical style and taste. Since my early electronic music days, I’ve always been split up in two camps: I’ve done both more commercial e-music (”Berlin School” style, film music, theatre music), and pure avant-garde music (things cats & dogs don’t like). On many occasions this has lead to heated - and in my view: pointless - discussions. Amidst the commercial camp, I’ve always been regarded somewhat as a freak, an outsider. “How can you create these ungodly noises when you normally make these beautiful melodies, sequences and harmonies ?!” Then, in the somewhat snotty avant-garde camp, I’ve never been regarded as a “real composer”, or as a “serious musician”, because “I sold my artistic soul to the devil of commercialism“.
Well, what can I say ?
I happen to be good at both (just like I happen to understand both the art-in-design and the technology-behind-the-design), and I have no particular preference for any. It doesn’t matter to me, as I don’t care to be categorized. I do what I want to do, and I do what I like to do, whatever the consequences. Maybe it is just a reflection of my split personality, but really, I don’t give a damn.
On some days I like to compose floating, mellow music, with trancing drones and hypnotic rhythms, but on the next day I’m totally absorbed by staccato syncopated rhythms, alien soundscapes and weird tonal structures. Whatever. For me it’s the same as admiring a tacky Pre-Raphaelite painting in the same museum where I stand in awe in front of a Pollock painting… I like ‘em both.
Most of my compositions are (were) dream induced. I have weird dreams, and they vary between apocalyptic nightmares and romantic stories with sexual innuendo. I literally dream my compositions together note-by-note, and I can’t help it that they vary so much. My dreams are not haunted, distracted or reduced by human classifications.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to dig (deep) into both Minimonsta and Reaktor. I’ve got plenty of ideas for both, and - to be honest - I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up using both of these synths for the wrong meanings-to-an-end. Ha!
In other incredible related news, it just popped up on the Analog Heaven mailing list that Sound Transform Systems - the maintainers of the Serge Synthesizer legacy are coming out with new, almost-affordable panels for the Serge. After years of drawing blanks when you wanted to have a new Serge synth (who doesn’t?), and stopping production of the pre-made Serge panels in June 2007, STS suddenly comes out of nowhere presenting us with the amazing M-Class Modules, which are in fact half-sized panels with dedicated functionality (sound sources, gate/trigger modules, etc.). Amazing, and now I need another $5K or so. Damn.
Yeah. Hurray and all that…
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