Running a business is not easy. Weathering a storm like this is not easy. Synth company or not, we're in difficult times. A lot of businesses will close but the people who are patient and can manage to wait it out, be flexible, and figure out new ways to innovate when the whiplash effect swings back in our direction will push forward the next generation of amazing instruments. Prices will go up, as they naturally do, and we'll have new winners and losers. No reason to get all doomsayer on it all at this point, kind of a few years late on that one.
I'm curious about the technical expertise that goes into making a good synth.
If economics force the synth-making hardware / software engineers into other industries, how long does it take to replace (or restore) their expertise once the economy recovers?
The difference is people in our industry are typically already taking a huge pay cut. People shuffle in and out but usually they end up back in the audio industry because... well... it's freaking awesome. How many other places can you work where you regularly get rockstars inviting you to hang out backstage because they love your work?
Typically we have more people willing to leave a high paying job just to work in our industry than we have people leaving but, just like any industry, losing experience and contextual knowledge always hurts.
Thanks! I understand your point about there being a ready supply of great talent.
My question was more along the lines of, how long does it take a good engineer / programmer, who hasn't developed synths in e.g. the last 5 years, to become highly productive?
It depends on the team and the way things are organized I guess. I've only worked at a small company where we are all obsessed and I couldn't imagine anyone coming onto the team without a similar level of enthusiasm and excitement, so relatively quickly. At a larger company I'd expect it would be the same as any other onboarding time.
Now to be truly great at this? Much longer answer. When I get there I'll come back and answer it properly.
My opinion is that someone who is comfortable with graduate level signal theory can reach synth mastery in one year. The physics and math are shallow and can be picked up quickly. The psychoacoustics takes more time for experimentation and reading research papers.
Whereas, audio professionals who avoid mathematics because it looks hard, like complex analysis, do not ever reach an acceptable level.
"Synth mastery" is not just mathematical or psychoacoustics... let's add some things:
Dave was routinely pushing the envelope when it came to these boundaries but many times it was too ahead of its time. The ARTISTS never really adopted the tech until decades later. Some things that I consider really obvious are still not widely adopted. The art here is to understand WHY artists don't want to use those tools and features. Whether or not YOU know math and psychoacoustics, it is more important whether your users can leverage that knowledge without the same knowledge, so being a teacher+performer+producer is very important to knowing your user base
Then you also need to be able to do market research. Asking questions to people and getting solid feedback all the time. As an ENGINEER!! Because it's the subtle differences that add up to a really amazing whole and you cannot know the difference without learning from every angle. To paraphrase you above, 'audio professionals who avoid making music because it looks hard, do not ever reach an acceptable level' and 'audio professionals who avoid talking to lots of musicians/customers because it feels hard, do not ever reach an acceptable level'
... and there are a LOT of people who never do these things
And let's add 'PERFORM music' to this list as well unless you are making a solely intellectual instrument or mixing/mastering tool. Since we're talking synthesizers, this is very, very important.
This is also why the vast majority of music instruments, including software/VSTs, are designed for producers and not performers. Having the set of skills necessary to design a successful instrument is very, very difficult. You cannot be a master of one.
Sure you can 'master' the DSP and signal portion of audio but I can tell you just by looking at the UI almost instantly how much effort was put there vs. making it an enjoyable instrument to play
I can add a lot more of skills I find very important to being successful in this industry but as an engineer, that's what I would focus on first.
At some point maybe I should update my blog with stuff like this
Recent developments are often interesting, and that means the information comes from research articles.
You don't want to read research articles; they are long, difficult, and usually misleading. Books and surveys are easier. You can evaluate the quality of a book by checking the citations: "is this book citing recent articles?" For example, I read a chapter of "An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing" and found it to be useful. I haven't seen a sufficient diversity of books to give an accurate recommendation, however. There may be better books. They'll generally look scientific and dry. For example, "This Is Your Brain on Music", a pop-sci book, will not be useful.
Surveys are where an active researcher talks about what everyone else is doing in the field, and what the important developments are perceived to be.
Experimentation: keep a global goal in mind, such as: "I want to classify all possible timbres and put them on a manifold", or "I want to understand the full mechanics of how a human turns tones into perception". Then you can try synthesizing sounds in pursuit of this goal. Right away, you will find all kinds of strange nonlinearities, and that simple models work poorly. For example, if you hold down sine tones at 400 Hz and 600 Hz, then play an 800 Hz tone, you'll note that sometimes the 800 Hz tone has an attack and sometimes doesn't; this will lead to learning about transients, place vs periodicity, FFR, ITD, and phase sensitivity of the ear. You'll also notice that there is a "click" at the beginning of each note, which will then lead you to discover gammatones, derivatives, and envelopes. This method works because whether your predictions succeed or fail, you are either learning something cool (a mistake in a model) or building something awesome (a great theory).
> The Sequential where you work for today is not the same business entity that made the famous synths of yesteryear.
The first synth I ever played was a "vintage" Prophet 5 in the 90s, now I have a reissue Prophet 10 from this "not the same business entity", as you very much are correct to call them. Even if they are not the same business entity, I know a lot of the people involved in making my Prophet 10 are (or where) the same people making the famous synths of yesteryear. When you play the Prophet 10 you can also tell.
I am really sad I can't say the same thing about my Moogs.
And I am sure that long experience goes deeper into Sequential’s talent pool.
Having veteran leadership who hat been through it all before might be why the new Prophet won’t follow the old.
The current Sequential is also an established company, so it is better positioned to launch new products, negotiate with suppliers and customers and to sell gear at higher prices even if not at higher margins meaning it needs fewer sales to survive.
Oh mine can sound as vintage ones alright if it's working and if one of the very weird MIDI implementation idiosyncrasies or deeply hidden global parameters is not getting in the way, and then my 30 minutes of practice include 15 of diving in the manual. The later happens so often that I'm seriously thinking about flipping my Matriarch for a Pro 3, and the Matriarch is one of the things that gave me the most fun in my life up there with my ski gear.
My Matriarch is also my second unit, the first one broke. Some uC decided it was not working anymore and the delay and some of the other buttons would randomly switch state. It did that after I had had it for three months while I was playing live for a small group of people, it was the first time it was on for more than an hour or so but besides that nothing had happened to it. I didn't even moved it and I'm religious with dust covers and all that.
I had a Moog One for a few weeks! I figured it was so backordered that I could buy it and try it an flip it, which I did after three weeks of utter frustration.
Unless you just use it as something like a poly memorymoog, it's rough. I can see how a really virtuoso synth player with the right programming can probably play the score for Blade Runner on it or something without any other instrument, but the programming is a PITA. I think it's kind of like a engineer-designed instrument. For the semi-modulars you can tell they had input from really good players for most of the features and ergonomics, but the One is just "let's do everything we can on a single instrument" and it just doesn't fit.
It also really does everything. There's a guy on Reddit that has like just a One and a laptop and that's his studio in a tiny apartment. If you are working in the box but want to record analog sounds and have an ADC that will do the Moog low end justice, I guess it's great. I can't justify that money on something that doesn't give me utter joy when I'm playing it like the Prophet 10 does, the One feels more like I'm playing with an Elektron box, which I do enjoy but when I want to play synth I want to play synth.
Damn, yeah that's unfortunate. Yeah, I was going to say, if you were looking for sound, a rev 4 or an OB-X8 can't be beat... But if you're looking for a synth with deep functions but not a One, the Polybrute is growing on me. At first, the SP filter seemed too harsh for me, but their ladder actually does a pretty good Memorymoog sound. Arturia also hired the guy (sorry I forgot his name) that built mod matrix tables to make synths sound more analog, and it really can nail it.
As someone eagerly waiting for his Prophet5 Rev4 to arrive by mail by the end of the week, this reassures me :) Been playing on software versions of the Prophet5 for years and I finally made the jump and bought "the real thing".
After I got mine I had like four months where the only thing I wanted to to was sit down and play it, it just feels great. I had like an impasse with it but the mere fact that it exists in my room inspires me to try new musical things every once in a while. I suppose you saw the J3PO videos? If you have the money and the skills for it I really recommend you take lessons with him: https://www.julianpollack.com/lessons
It's a REALLY hard business. Roger Linn repeatedly tells people that the easiest way to lose money is to build a synthesizer and he's certainly right. Then again, I ignored that advice. I think we're all just a bit crazy and hopeful that it will all work out in the end.
If you make synths, at least you don’t have to sell to enterprise.
Making synths seems to be more the life of an artist than many other possible pursuits.
The standard formula is the best way to make a small fortune is start with a large fortune and do X.
In the first version I heard X was build a golf course. It was from people involved in building golf courses. The money was in the lots along the fairways.
It isn't easy carrying the torch of a legend but standing on the shoulders of giants is how we move things forward as a species. I'm confident I can speak for the company when I say we are doing our best to keep his legacy going.
Well if it helps: I was a sys admin before I quit in a huff and decided to never work again unless I was in the audio industry.
Doing that was the single defining moment of my life and the one I am most proud of. Took a MASSIVE pay cut in financial terms but a MASSIVE improvement in my overall well-being and life satisfaction.
Running a business is not easy. Weathering a storm like this is not easy. Synth company or not, we're in difficult times. A lot of businesses will close but the people who are patient and can manage to wait it out, be flexible, and figure out new ways to innovate when the whiplash effect swings back in our direction will push forward the next generation of amazing instruments. Prices will go up, as they naturally do, and we'll have new winners and losers. No reason to get all doomsayer on it all at this point, kind of a few years late on that one.