Mike,
Interesting observations by both you and your daughter. Here's what somewhat surprises me though from you daughter. Her generation is basically the one that invented the guy standing behind a couple of people and what he is doing is punching buttons on a box containing samples, I'm not sure how "real" that is, or what level of musicianship (depending on how you are defining it in your post)that is either.
That's not to say its good or bad, because on that we can agree...it's purely subjective.
The other thing one should consider about real vs fake.....what instrument does a synth sound emulate in the real world? None. It is an invented bunch of oscillators and FX and envelopes etc. There is nothing "real" about that sound except the emulation of itself. Does that make it a real instrument....define your terms of real.If one is willing to accept that sound as real, then logically one would have to accept any sound that comes off a synth as being real, as it is only emulating that which it is...a synth sound, it may happen to sound like a flute or whatever, but it's not. a synth may sound like a piano, but it's not a piano, it only emulates one with sound generators and the like, so is it real or fake?
I think a lot of us here judging by the posts can remember pre synth days, when the first strange hi tech thing to hit the market was the Fender Rhodes and were it not for the likes of Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock who introduced them respectfully into a new type of jazz, those babies might have gone the wayside. Or when the first DX7 hit the streets.
I once long ago read a definition of Musicianship: "The constant striving to improve ones abilities and the their creative process."
If we can accept that defintion then the rest of this debate in this thread is just rhetoric.
Terry