Over the years I tend to download a ton of third party plugins for my musical endeavours which I then never use, fully intending to maybe one day check 'em out if I feel the need to. Now it's gotten to a point where I'm back in the musical groove, I'm absolutely overwhelmed with things which, once opened, are all incredible.
One collection I have is a whole bundle of awesome replicas of old musical synth hardware. To say this developers were dedicated is an understatement. Some of you older folk might even recognise this one, for example:
The collection is literally insane. I never knew what a mellotron actually was outside of 'Mellotron Scratch', a song by Porcupine Tree. Turns out it's an awesome thing from days gone by:
This next one I can tell is going to become one of my favourite tools of all time. Just look at the detail here. Every button and dial does something. Yes, including the organ pedals, the sustain pedal, the delay pedal, even the amplifier on the right.
That's not all. My favourite part is along the top. With a click of the mouse, a little animation opens up the top and reveals these old dials. Each one can pitch shift every chromatic note on the keyboard individually. Of course, we can automate this so any given note can drift slightly in and out of tune to create incredible sounds.
If you're really old school and enjoy getting perpetually confused to the point of insanity, you can even replicate wiring into your game:
This next one even has the old wallpaper many people of the day might be familiar with:
You can of course keep things simple with a stage-ready, classic electric piano or even a Wurli - All pedals functional!:
All the above are just one handful of one collection of third party stuff out there. Each one has their own unique character and capabilities and it just makes me wonder... how much joy it must have been to make electronic music in the 70's and 80's. The sense of adventure, the sound of things never-before-heard.
You can hear it in groups such as Tangerine Dream. They're clearly just exploring, experimenting every moment. Turning a dial here, shifting a slider there.
Tom Holkenborg, also known as Junkie XL, is a big movie composer (Mad Max, 300, Batman vs Superman...) who would put youtube videos up about his processes, his set up, and tour his home, or office or whatever.
wall to ceiling synths, Some of them ancient. He appears to live in a mansion of a sort and yet even the hallways are covered in synths. Just imagine the privilege of having such a collection that you actually get to make a living with.
As much as I'm currently enjoying this exploratory journey myself, I must be nowhere near the olden joys. All I have are basically images on a screen. I don't get to physically feel the machines, lament when they break, learn the wiring, modify them in bizarre ways for my own creative ambitions.
I just have virtual plugins. It's all I'll ever have, and it's all any music producers or electronic musicians have these days, even the major celebrities. All the gear is just... virtual plugins, old and new. It's sad. I feel like there's no more passion for developing musical sound.
Of course, now AI is going to take over all the boring, predictable musicians, we're at a crossroads. We either fail and all musicians just give up, realising it's impossible to compete with something that can churn out 8,000 versions of their songs per minute...
OR...
People get bored of the infinite generation of 'normie' music, predictable AI bullshit fed a diet of predictable human bullshit, and we start paying attention to those few truly innovative musicians, those who go back to the roots of creativity: Queen, David Bowie, Daft Punk - People who weren't afraid to blast through the boundaries to some other realm of sound.
It's too expensive, I suppose, to physically start modelling synths again, but we still have our imagination!