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Poll Question: Which has had a bigger impact on music overall?
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Disparate Times View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Bigger Impact on Music 2
    Posted: March 27 2016 at 07:52
Two instruments that changed music forever
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 08:00
Up to fairly recently the guitar. Synths are far more popular today than guitars.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 08:10
the keytar
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 08:12
Originally posted by Icarium Icarium wrote:

the keytar


Haha
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 08:47
I'll go out on a limb and say synthesizer. The guitar changed music no more than the saxophone or french horn..

Vivaldi was the rock stock of his generation and he could rock a violin as hard as Hendrix could rock a strat..

synths though brought something new to music. The merging of music that had remained the same for hundreds of years regardless of the instruments or styles.. with technology.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 09:04
I went with the synth as well but no body ever played a French horn as a teenage boy and actually impressed a girl. The guitar is still and may always be the "sexiest" instrument. But you're right the synth actually changed the process in which music is now made.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 09:30
Guitar. From the 1950s onward, no single instrument was more important culturally and musically. When you think of rock, you think of the guitar.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 09:33
^Exactly. Rock can do without synth but not without guitar, more or less...
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 12:58
A vital question with no easy answer. I can provide none myself, only two guides by which an answer may be reached by someone a little more decisive than I:

The argument for synth goes that, as Mick noted, it had a revolutionary impact on how music was made. The whole line of synths, especially as the time passed and keyboards were used less and less as the interface by which they were used, was fundamentally different from standard musicianship, and so opened many new doors. This is seen most profusely in EDM - a radically different kind of music than almost all before it, and couldn't exist without synths - but it has also led to industrial, hip hop, and changes in avant garde orchestral and even a lot of rock. Look beyond the rather old school use of synths in prog and '70's rock - another point for them anyways - and things get unprecedented.

The argument for guitar doesn't lie in rock so much as the number of genres guitar touched and how those genres prefigured others, including what was otherwise the realm of synth. Guitar has always been vital for blues, rock, funk, a lot of folk, and the whole line of Jamaican music: mento, ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub, dancehall. Now, where things get really important is influence: blues led to jazz, the intersection of funk and dub led to hip hop, and dub on its own was vital to EDM as early as Larry Levan. Then for the kicker add the unique uses for guitar in some industrial and electronic and the importance of the prefiguring genres on their own, and guitar remains a strong contender.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 13:11
yeah man... the question wasn't about rock. It was about music in general. Don't tell me classical wasn't popular.. that somehow rock (thus the guitar) made music popular or that Vivaldi didn't get pussy for his mad skills. LOL

Wasn't the question was about what what had the most important impact on music overall. Rock was just a phase of music. Synths have helped revolutionize music IMO.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 13:50
Originally posted by Icarium Icarium wrote:

the keytar
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 20:13
Guitar
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 20:34
Originally posted by micky micky wrote:

I'll go out on a limb and say synthesizer. The guitar changed music no more than the saxophone or french horn..

Vivaldi was the rock stock of his generation and he could rock a violin as hard as Hendrix could rock a strat..

synths though brought something new to music. The merging of music that had remained the same for hundreds of years regardless of the instruments or styles.. with technology.

Good observations.  I'd tend to agree, and I'm a guitarist.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 20:45
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 27 2016 at 22:45
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 28 2016 at 06:53
It pains me to say it, but it's the guitar by a considerable margin.

The introduction of any new music-technology will create a profound effect on how music is produced. The introduction of the electric guitar was more dramatic than the Synth because the electric guitar arrived more-or-less fully-formed in the 1930s whereas electronic instruments (of which the Synth is but a later incarnation) has slowly evolved over the same time span. The Synth hasn't resulted in anything like the same impact as the electric guitar (or the pianoforte come to that).

When musicians got their hands on the 'new' electric guitar and used it in ways that the original 'inventors' (Rickenbacker, Les Paul, etc.) never intended rock music was born. They have had 70 years since then to develop music and means of playing it using this essentially unchanging instrument that the Synth cannot compare to. 

Of course the development of the Synth saw musicians using the instrument in ways that clever buggers like Bob Moog never envisioned but each stage in the evolution had brick-wall limitations beyond which the musician could not pass until the instrument makers created new technology to keep-up with the pace with what the musicians wanted. Every new development in Synth technology was an attempt to overcome a limitation that the Synth had compared to other instruments, and in that respect each new development was an emulation of some feature that another instrument inherently possessed. 

The introduction of each new feature spurned a small step-change in the music that could be produced, and while this sometimes resulted in a new form of music, it generally consigned the preceding generation of electronic music to an evolutionary backwater (or even extinction). In that regard electronic music evolves from the change in technology and not through 'organic' development of the music produced before.

There are differences between the guitar and the Synth that at present gives the guitar the upper-hand. The guitar can get down and dirty in ways that the Synth cannot, and it's that raw-arse (or should I say dirty-assed) grit that puts the guitar at the forefront of rock music and without which rock simply wouldn't exist. 

Compare the guitar to the violin: As Mickey points out, virtuoso violinists can give virtuoso guitarists a run for their money on speed and emotion but there are two overriding differences in the guitar that wipes the floor with the violin - tone and polyphony. 

I'll not dwell on tone as I think that the variety of sounds that a guitar can produce compared to a violin are pretty evident - no matter how well played, a violin invariably sounds like a violin (even an electric violin) even when it tries to get dirty. 

Having four strings the violin is capable of polyphony but it is limited in ways that the guitar is not. Playing more than two strings simultaneously on a violin is not easy (not impossible but not easy), polyphony is generally limited to two strings as the bow can only vibrate adjacent strings simultaneously. So violinists break the chord up into a run of notes played in quick succession (arpeggio) or into two harmonic pairs played successively -  for example to play a four-note chord the violinist will do a short bowing of the bottom two strings followed by a longer bowing of the top two so the four tones blur into each other- the Vivaldiesque mm-daa

The guitar does not suffer this limitation, to the extent where chords become the bedrock of guitar playing from which practically everything else develops. Whatever the violinist can do the guitarist can do in spades and then some. A violin may have been able to 'rock-out' but the guitar made rock and roll. [if anyone who has heard Nigel Kennedy's attempt at 'Purple Haze' wants to claim that a violin can rival a guitar in a rock setting then be my guest]. 

The development of both those instruments (and the piano) stopped decades ago (all are basically planks of wood with some strings attached and those basic design have not changed), yet to the discerning ear the tone of each guitar, violin and piano is different and noticeable.

Conversely, the Synth is an evolving instrument that is forever playing catch-up. {and every Korg RK100 sounds exactly the same as every other Korg RRK100}.

The current state of Synth technology is akin to the harpsichord when compared to the pianoforte back in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Both had a profound effect on the music of the day but the piano brought expression and emotive playing to the keyboard that the harpsichord could not deliver. Early Synths (ie those of the 60s and 70s) were more limited than even the harpsichord in that respect as not only were they incapable of expression and emotion, they were also monophonic. Therefore early use of the Synth in pop and rock music was either as gimmicky sound effects or to mimic (i.e. synthesise) an orchestral backing because it wasn't much use for anything else in a group-setting (i.e. on stage). Its emergence as a lead instrument in the 70s was constrained by those same limitations so was used to augment the keyboardists arsenal of keyboard instruments rather than replace them. 

As technology advanced polyphony and sensitivity (touch, velocity, etc.,) were added to the Synth but still it lacked expression in the sense of expression as the change from one emotion to another (rather than the inaccurately named 'expression' wheel or pedal) so that it approached that of the piano' but not quite achieving it, and still couldn't match that of the guitar by quite some distance. Therefore the Synth music that emerged in the 70s and 80s was on one emotional plane, and that was often described as 'cold', 'teutonic', 'austere' and 'soulless' because it lacked that expressive nature that acoustic instruments could produce (and here I lump the electrified guitar into that acoustic camp). This is in part due to the physical disconnection between the players fingers and the means of creating the noise that doesn't exist for any other instrument; with a piano (or organ) striking a key produces the sound, whereas on a Synth the keyboard is a switch that triggers a whole bunch of electronics that interpret how the key was pressed and uses that information to mimic a similar (piano-keyboard-like) effect. The player is in control only to the extent in how he presets that mimicry. 

Now (going out on a limb) I would go as far as to say that in the 21st century the Synth as we know it doesn't actually exist any more as a definable instrument in the same way it did in the later half of the previous century. It may all be housed in one box (or more likely several boxes and a computer) but the keyboard itself is merely the input device that triggers the sound reproduction. This has seen a huge impact on how music is produced but (IMO) hasn't changed the music itself. 

Now how the sounds are synthesised is somewhat immaterial, the key (unintentional pun) is in the keyboard itself and how that connection between player and sound generation is re-established. One recent (2013) development in that front is the ROLI Seaboard:


Though whether that has any marked effect on Synth music, or even music in general, remains to be seen (it hasn't yet). But even that has someway to go before it can approach the guitar (for example in the use of player controlled feedback).




Edited by Dean - March 28 2016 at 07:12
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 29 2016 at 06:55
^ I disagree that the synth is incapable of expression and emotion, I think that is completely dependent of the individual that is playing it(even the early monophonic ones) the songwriting that went along with early synths is what lacks expression. I think the fact that it was named a synthesizer is what caused the whole 'catch up' aspect, the instrument isn't actually synthesizing anything, but like most instruments it does have some ability to do so, but when you hear synthesizer you automatically think synthetic.
   I also wonder if it really pains you to say all that you did. That said you have made a valid point that guitar still has a much richer history, and perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions a little early.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 29 2016 at 08:28
Originally posted by Disparate Times Disparate Times wrote:

^ I disagree that the synth is incapable of expression and emotion, I think that is completely dependent of the individual that is playing it(even the early monophonic ones) the songwriting that went along with early synths is what lacks expression.
Hmm... not really. It could be preset to create one emotion, (happy or sad, warm or cold, etc.), if you wanted two emotions or wanted to transition from one emotion to another (i.e. 'expression') then the keyboardist would use two or more Synths (i.e. like Rick Wakeman) and/or employ overdubbing because early instruments lacked the ability to change emotion dynamically in more than one dimension. The lack of expression in song-writing was a reflection of the limited capability of the instrument and not the player/composer inability to play it. To further clarify what I mean by this: if you patched an early Synth to produce a particular (emotive) sound and then asked a keyboardist to solo using that patching the resulting solo would remain on that fundamental emotive setting for the duration of the solo - he could play faster or slower, and by twiddly knobs while he played he could change the timbre or volume of the sound (a la Keith Emerson) but he couldn't do that on each note played simply by how he pressed each key. Therefore multi-dimensional emotive and expressive electronic music of that era (if it actually exists....) would be the result of studio production and arrangement, not performance. 

Touch sensitivity (velocity and after-touch) in the keyboard electronics was developed for Synthesisers and Electronic keyboards in the late 70s but wasn't widely available until the 80s. This improved the playability of the instrument yet this still fell a long way short of what could be 'expressed' on a piano or electro-mechanical organ. However, the main innovation of that time was polyphony.

[Did you listen to the Seaboard clip? More importantly did you watch the player's fingers as he modulated and bent each note? That's 'expression' in the sense of changing or creating emotion by the fingers alone.]

Originally posted by Disparate Times Disparate Times wrote:

I think the fact that it was named a synthesizer is what caused the whole 'catch up' aspect, the instrument isn't actually synthesizing anything, but like most instruments it does have some ability to do so, but when you hear synthesizer you automatically think synthetic.
Actually, the name 'synthesiser' describes very precisely how the instrument generates the sound. Synthesis is a technical term that means "a combination of components or elements to form a connected whole"; a Synthesiser is an apparatus that uses synthesis to produce something from (simpler) elements or components; and in that context Synthetic simply means something that is 'put together'. Your automatic think is using the colloquial meaning of synthetic in a disparaging way when the technical (esoteric) meaning is merely a neutral descriptive term. Waveform synthesis in electronics predates the Synthesiser by many decades and in mathematics by several centuries (Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, etc.).

Therefore 'synthesis' describes how waveforms are constructed within the synthesiser and is not derived from the aim of the instrument to synthesise (i.e. mimic or replicate) existing sounds or instruments. In fact early forms of electronic [i.e. analogue] synthesis (additive, subtractive, modulation, etc,) was pretty poor method of replicating natural sounds. The ability to synthesise natural sounds wouldn't happen until the advent of digital synthesis (sampling, wavetable, modelling, etc.) which occurred much later when microprocessors were powerful enough to perform the necessary DSP (digital signal processing) calculations. However by that innovation the synthesiser cannot be regarded as an instrument for creating a unique form of music (e.g., electronic music), but as an instrument for replacing existing acoustic instruments in all forms of music. Somehow I don't see the ability of a band to incorporate an oboe or 'cello sound in their music using a keyboard rather than hiring an oboist or cellist as having a dramatic impact on music per se. Of course it broadens the horizons of what an artist can create (and my back-catalogue of music is an amateurish example of that) but it doesn't (and hasn't) sparked anything new or innovative in music.


So in every respect, and in very exact and precise technical terms, the synthesiser is synthesising everything you hear because that is what it is designed to do. If it didn't use synthesis to create the waveforms it would be called an electronic organ.Geek

Originally posted by Disparate Times Disparate Times wrote:


I also wonder if it really pains you to say all that you did.
It pains me to say it because I'm not a guitarist... Wink
Originally posted by Disparate Times Disparate Times wrote:

That said you have made a valid point that guitar still has a much richer history, and perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions a little early.
Perhaps.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 29 2016 at 08:50
Very informative posts Dean - even to a layman like myself. 

I am rather perplexed to see so many votes for the synth actually. My thoughts also went the historic route, but it was cool to read about the synthesiser in the above manner. I tend to read old interviews and such by Froese, Schulze, Fricke and similar German dudes - who to me have a way of mystifying the synth that really connects with me. It's a method of looking at any instrument really - without looking at the actual blueprint, and while that in itself retains a human warmth and charm to it, it also very cleverly evades the inner mechanics of the things that actually produce the music.

As for the actual difference in expression between the two instruments, I think it is far easier to convey personality through an axe. That's why I instantly recognise Jimi, Django, Gilmour, Zappa, May and Göttsching. Sure I can easily spot the TD/Schulze flavour from a mile away, but it is very rarely because of one single synth being played. It is the combination of organs and synths and most likely the piano. I know Froese's piano style the second I hear it. 




Edited by Guldbamsen - March 29 2016 at 08:52
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 29 2016 at 08:52
^ ...and Froese wasn't shy of reaching for his Strat when he needed it. Wink
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