Dear Heather Cox,

Hi! I recently tried to introduce my long-time neighbour and friend, who is a barrister near retirement, to music created by Technics instruments. He trashed both the music and instruments as mere toys and cheap imitations of the real things.

A day later, I spent nearly an hour making some of the songs from Technicsforall.com available to him for his listening. Randomly chosen were 23 pieces, about 80 minutes of music for his private consumption in his own time and place. Still, he was decidedly unimpressed and commented that the music from TechnicsForAll.com is worse or no better than the kind of music that anyone can buy at a discount store.

His narrow musical taste and repertoire have remained the same for decades. He always likes Andrew Lloyd Weber's music the most, especially Phantom of the Opera. He has a good set of HiFi dedicated to playing again and again only those music that has caught his favour. He also owns a very old and out-of-tune player piano. All in all, he is very content with himself and his kind of music, and readily lashes out on anyone or any musical genre for which he has no admiration or affinity.

Obviously, he refuses to cut people some slack and to appreaciate all the hardwork that has gone into the development of digital instruments and also the music available for free at websites such as TechnicsForAll.com.

Hence, I agree with what you wrote at the Synth Zone as follows:

Quote:

posted 11-12-2003 12:16 PM
Hi All,

What's that they say about a gift horse! I recall just a week or so ago people were talking about having to buy styles. Here we have a bunch of free ones and people are complaining! If you don't like them don't use them but why knock them.

I seldom play a real song using a Techno Style for example but I will push the button, pull up a great sounding set synth sounds and just start playing.

What comes out may not be something I'd want any of you to hear but it sure feels good to play it at the time.

And since I'm not blessed with an SD card what would really be great is if we could load the styles we like into memory as built ins in the first place. With the addition of a USB port we should be able to connect any SD reader to the keyboard. Download the styles we want and disgard the ones we don't. Of course we can't.

Finally, of course the "old standards" sound better to someone who grew up with them. I like them because my father played them on the piano in the bars.

But to me many of the songs Alec mentioned are standards or will be 30 years from now.

Having been a mobile DJ the reason I quit is because people have developed such narrow listen habbits. If we played 2 country songs in a row the big band people would grown. Play 2 rock songs and the country people would grown. Play two Rap songs in a row and everyone growned except the kids.

Remember back in the old days when they only made two keyboards the piano and the pump organ. If you've been to the Steven Foster Museum you know that even that is not true. They had a piano with 5 sets of keys.

We all have diferent tastes so let's cut eachother some slack and appreaciate the hard work that's gone into the new FREE site.

Thanks Alec and Chris!

"And pay the man behind the curtain no mind!"

Heather

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Khai