Quote:
Originally posted by Bluezplayer:
Oh yes.. the East West stuff I've heard is very good. I find in general a lot of the soft sounds I either have or have tried to be sonically better than what is on the best workstations and arrangers. That isn't a huge surprise, when one software instrument can contain more sample memory than my entire workstation has for every sound in it.

Using it all in a live setup is another story. It's very hard to do as a one man band, not quite so hard when working with a full band. When I do use soft sounds live, I generally have FL studio setup so that I can instantly recall saved setups and synths. Tobybear's minihost has also been useful when simplicity is called for.


I know this from experience. I can do it all live if I had to, but often it really isn't worth it to me, except for when I need a true "signature" analog sound that my Motif ES or PA80 can't do, or maybe a good acoustic guitar sound if I'm playing it out of a mix ( solo ), like Dasample's Electroacoustic. Granted, the piano on the Motif isn't what I want to use in the studio, but it's fine for live play and so much easier to use. Most if any of my audience isn't really going to notice.

I tend to disagree with that at least in part. Having done this for a while now, I think I'm kinda coming full circle all of it. I still love using soft synths / effects / hosts because they give me sounds and features I can't get or afford to get in hardware. That said, there is a tradeoff vs using hardware too, and most of it has to do with time needed to setup various modules / software and the cold feel of using a mouse as opposed to playing and working the controls of a real instrument. These for me can be creativity killers, but I'm glad for having the soft stuff and being able to use it when I need it.

A generic controller with sliders and knobs is great, but understand that for each soft synth you use, configurations will be different. That's why I reconfigure in FL and save the setups. It's a lot of work btw.

I will not, however, ever abandon hardware completely. I really identify with a post on this that I recently read at Harmony Central. Pro, I bet you've seen it. I think that there will always be those who like to work in the middle ground ( me for instance ), and others still that will shun software entirely. I truly understand why too.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 03-12-2005).]


Interesting thoughts! I can understand that for live playing it is a little uncomfortable working with many different software synths on a gig. I do think though that it will be easier in the future when software synths become more of a standard.

I really think hardware synths will be like analog synths are today in the future, but as you pointed out the power behind software synths will make them popular. Korg has made the OASYS software based and they see a future building on this kind of a platform. I am glad this starts happening now because it is nice to have intelligent keyboards in a network connectable environment. I hope that we will have a new audio format soon. I miss the possibility of extracting sounds from records, something that would be possible with an audio format made of markup. Being able to take out your favorite sounds from your favorite records is something I wish I would be able to do!