> am kind of still confused why the industry links „keyboard controllers“ with „synths" there should be just good keyboard controllers that can plug into good synths (like Eurorack). What am I missing?
There are good keyboard controllers that you can plug into a Eurorack if you're a Eurorack player. Many synths haverack mount versions. You're missing nothing in that sense.
Your question isn't about the industry. It's about musicians. You're asking why musicians other than you still want complete instruments.
The answer is simple. People who play other instruments need other instruments. Of which the keyboard can be an integral part.
You might as well ask why people still buy hardware synths when perfectly good software synthesizers exist.
The answer is the same: they play differently (that applies both to the machines and the performers).
Here are some reasons why synths come with built-in keyboards.
The most important reason:
— Keyboards are mechanical instruments with particular response curves. The patches the synth comes with can be optimized to play and sound good on the keyboard the synth ships with.
This guarantees quality out-of-the-box, consistency, and makes it so that your presets would feel the same when your play them on another device.
Yamaha DX-7 played with an 88 weighted keys keyboard is a different, and a worse instrument. As is a Clavinova played when DX-7 as a controller.
— Ergonomics matter. Each synthesizer is unique in the way it builds its sounds, which is why many come with dedicated controls (buttons, knobs, sliders, screens).
Where these controls are in relation to the keyboard matters.
I can play drum pads while playing the keys on my Akai Mini Play 3, for example, but not on my larger Yamahas. I can tweak the patches on the Reface DX live, but not if I used the MX-88 as a controller.
— Physical layout matters. Performers to look the audience, not the knobs; the audience wants the performer to look at them.
Memorizing the layout by touch isn't possible when the layout isn't fixed.
For gigging musicians, the following are important:
— portability
— physical robustness
— time to set up on stage
— space on stage
— physical setup
— ability to move while performing
Having more cables to connect isn't something gigging musicians want when you have 5 minutes to set up for a 30 minute set at a dimly lit bar.
And then there's the setup. You put a stand on a stage, there goes your controller. Where does the synth go? Oh, you need another table or stand for the synth.
Now to tweak a patch. Your controller may not have all the knobs your synth engine uses. The sound module has them, but it's on the table over there, while you're playing facing the audience over here. Bummer.
Finally, I have straps for some of my keyboards, so I can move around the stage during the show.
1/4" cables are long, and made to withstand abuse; USB plugs agent, and MIDI cables, while better, aren't made for that either.
There are also marketing reasons:
— A synth that people can try in a store is more appealing than one they can't. Rackmount synths don't make for good displays.
If people have inconsistent experience trying the instrument, it doesn't bode well for the brand.
— When someone plays a Nord keyboard, you know it, because it has a distinctive look. Musicians take note of other musicians' gear.
— An instrument that can't make any sound on its own is not an instrument, it's a module.
It's a different product.
And then we get to psychological reasons:
— Performers are deeply attached to their instruments.
A sound module without a keyboard isn't an instrument. A controller isn't an instrument. Together, they form a system made up of components; it doesn't feel as an instrument the same way a guitar does.
— Looks matter. Performers want to look good on stage. And a generic controller simply doesn't look as good as a complete instrument, with a dedicated interface.
— Feels matter. The feedback one gets from touching and playing the instrument affects the performance.
And that's before we get into things like:
— busking
— jamming with other people
— playing outdoors (I played my Reface DX in the mountains and at campfires, in the streets and on the road)
The TL;DR, though, is that if you want a controller for your Eurorack, you've got it.
Saying that's how everyone should make music, though, is quite a reach.
They also didn't get why FM synthesis was so appealing, in spite of being difficult to understand for the common musician.
It's in the tone.
Acoustic instruments respond in a complex way to the variation in strength of input: when you strike the key in the piano faster, pluck a string harder, or blow air info the saxophone stronger, you don't merely get a louder sound: the harmonic content, the timbre of the sound changes as well.
Analogue synthesis struggled accomplishing this. The classic analog synth would have an envelope generator ("ADSR") controlling the loudness of the tone, and another, most commonly, controlling the filter (the thing that makes the synth do a wowowow sound on the same note), but responsive fading and evolution of the harmonics wasn't readily available.
On the Yamaha DX7, it was built into the core idea of FM synthesis.
You don't know it when you hear it, you know it when you play it: the way the keyboard responded to the touch was alive, magical.
You didn't need to rely on the modulation wheels and joysticks and knobs to vary the timbre as you play. You could simply play the keyboard.
On my Yamaha Reface DX (which overcomes the drawbacks of FM user interface), I can easily make a tone whose character (not loudness! - or not just loudness) changes when I simply play harder. It's like having several instruments at once at your disposal, blending between them on the fly.
It's that playability that makes FM make sense — and it was what other digital synthesis technologies went for, too. Roland's "linear arithmetic", vector synthesis, and M1's multisampling all explored that area — but they came after DX7.
What makes FM synthesis unique is the heavily non-linear response of the tone to the dynamics. At worst, it's unpredictable, but once you figure out where the sweet spots are in the parameter space, you get a tone like nothing else. A bell that's also a string orchestra. A guitar with a soul of the saxophone, but not mistaken for either; an identity all of its own.
Yamaha DX7 heavily leaned into this aspect in instrument's design, via providing additional parameters that controlled the sensitivity of operators to velocity depending on where on the keyboard you are, so that the lower tones would have a different character from higher ones.
The "diminished brilliance" the author writes about was likely that — i.e., the author not figuring out how FM sound design works, which they openly admitted. It was matter of taste of whoever made the presets; without programming those curves in, the higher notes can easily sound screeching.
The point, again, was that the instrument wasn't merely responsive in a way that analogue synths couldn't dream of, but that the way in which it was responsive, tone-wise, was programmable, and varied not just from patch to patch, but across the scale and velocity range.
Again, think about how plucking different strings on a guitar harder produces a different variation in tonal response. Each string has its own character.
This is the soul of the mathematical idea of FM synthesis: that the tone evolution should not merely be controlled by time passing (as it is on most analogue synths, via envelope generators and LFO's), and not by knob twiddling (modulation wheels, knobs, sliders, joysticks,...) — but by playing the instrument itself.
And on a keyboard, what you really play with is where on the keyboard you strike a key, and how fast.
Yamaha DX7 allowed the player to vary the timbre by playing the instrument, with both hands, by having all tone generators depend on these two variables in a programmable, non-linear, interesting way.
FM synthesis of Yamaha DX7 therefore can't be separated from the physical keyboard it shipped with. The way the tones felt as you played them were determined by the response curves which simply don't map in the same way to a different keyboard.
The fact that the DX7 was a digital synth obscured the fact that it was a very analog instrument in that way; that to get a truly good FM preset, you need to tune it to the keyboard response (i.e. velocity curves), and that involves the analog components.
It's also for this reason that DX7 only has membrane buttons, and no knobs or sliders. It didn't need them. The 60 keys were your knobs and sliders, the means to control the tone.
That's why the ePiano on the DX-7 was on 60% of the new releases. It didn't merely emulate the Rhodes (which, by all means, wasn't a rare instrument).
What it did was it gave keyboard players a way to play with the tone of their instrument while playing the instrument, something the Rhodes would have a more limited range for, as the variation in tone response was constrained by how similar the actual metallic forks that made the sound were to each other, and how similar the hammers are across the octaves — and the digital DX7 didn't have that limitation.
It also gave the people used to playing the synth with one hand (to be able to tweak the sound with the other) the freedom to play truly polyphonically, and use the keyboard itself to control the tone dynamics.
Playing it was a liberating experience, and it still is, because while intricate multi-sampling can also give you that effect (at no less difficulty, mind you, even if you have the samples!), FM does it differently.
The musicians didn't need to be mindful of all that; the absolute majority (Brian Eno expected) were outright oblivious to why and what made DX7 the instrument that you had to have.
You just felt it.
And yes, new FM synthesizers keep coming. Because emulating acoustic instruments is not just easy with sampling these days, it also isn't enough. You can just hire someone to play the real instrument, after all.
You need a bit more than that to craft a distinctive sound — especially a new one.
Liven XFM, Korg Opsix, Arturia Minifreak all go boldly where manmade sound didn't go before, and these are just three novel FM synthesizers from this decade.
Reface DX came out less than 10 years ago; and its FM engine is different from DX7 (as is the UX — you can finally change the tone while playing it with live controls).
And for all the talk of how FM is old, I've yet to see someone not be captivated by the ePiano patch that comes stock on the Reface DX when I let them play it when I bring the instrument around with me on trips (which I often do).
Current developments in the controllers (like what ROLI is doing) will allow all the existing sound generation techniques to shine in new ways, including FM.
But I think it's the physical package of the keyboard, the algorithm, and the presets tuned to the combination of the two is what made the DX7 such a success.
A new FM instrument could easily be a hit with these factors, particularly if they don't skimp on including built-in speakers and making the presets sound great on them. FM truly shines when all the pieces are aligned in a performer's instrument.
Reface DX comes close to that point, but the presets it ships with are more of an engine demo than sounds to make music with, the speakers are not loud, and the mini-keys (which I love!) were a turn-off for many people — because in the Internet age, people would judge a machine without actually playing it, and that's the only way to understand what's so damn special about FM synthesis.
>Well, let's be clear: the speakers are just for noodling.
Just for noodling. And trying it in a store. And playing with friends (you don't need much to play along an acoustic guitar). Or playing and singing in a room, or next to a campfire.
All of these applications don't require big cabinets; beefing up the speakers to 5W (and adding a bit more bass response) would do a lot for the reface DX.
>Nobody who performs would use the built-in speakers of such a keyboard, not even street performers.
Well, that's exactly my point (though I've yet to see a street performer with a Reface DX, other than myself, that is).
The portable amps I do use with the DX can be easily built into the body (I have the keytar strap, and even duck taping a micro amp to the keyboard gives enough firepower for street performances).
The built-in speakers on 1980s keyboards were much louder.
>- the only exception is the big-ass speakers in digital home pianos, and still those are only for home use.
This is not quite true.
Check out the small amps coming out these days, that make Roland Cube Street look huge in comparison.
Blackstar Fly is a respectable example; there are many others.
There is no good reason why something like that can't come built into the keyboard.
>Just for noodling. And trying it in a store. And playing with friends (you don't need much to play along an acoustic guitar). Or playing and singing in a room, or next to a campfire.
Who plays an FM synth on a campfire? Not even Kraftwerk! And I don't think it's for jamming with friends with acoustic guitars either. It's more for electronic musicians and keyboardists wanting something portable to noodle at home, or indie musicians for when playing live.
It’s a very portable synth, the small factor, the included speakers and 6xAA battery operation give it playability on the go. I for one use it at home due to limited available space, I use the power adapter and ignore the built in speaker.
The DX-7 is one of the era-defining music instruments like the CS-80 and the TR808 among others. Here you you can hear some tracks that feature it (complete with weird hair too)
Well, samplers are also musical instruments in their own right.
Nobody said samplers are confined to playing emulations of acoustic instruments. There are tons of creative users to make patches, and after the initial sample is added (which could be anything), most samplers have a full blown set of filtering, envelope, modulation, fx, audio manipulation etc options.
Could you recommend a patch set for the reface? I bought mine off someone who had some great presets and I loved it, but one day I accidentally factory reset it and there's only a few factory defaults that are really musical as you say.
There's a guy who is a genius at creating Reface DX patches, and he uploads them all for free on SoundMondo.
I recommend everyone checking this video to see how wonderful Reface DX can sound. After discovering those patches I've sold my Reface CP because I've liked the DX simulated Rhodes just as much.
I gave away my Reface DX after I figured out that the non-tactile capacitative touch buttons would trigger randomly when exposed to sunlight while I played it in the park.
>I gave away my Reface DX after I figured out that the non-tactile capacitative touch buttons would trigger randomly when exposed to sunlight while I played it in the park.
You might have had a defective one.
I played mine in every possible setting (walking the streets, in the forest, on a mountain top, in the desert, indoors, outdoors, at night, during the day, etc), and never had that issue. (FWIW I applied all firmware updates when they came out).
I did have other issues though:
— once in a blue moon, it'd factory reset itself on startup while running on batteries (a gentle reminder to back up your patches). I didn't have that issue after switching to powering off a power bank with a USB-to-12v adapter (with USB-C supporting 12V natively, that's just a cable).
— sometimes, F and Bflat would stop responding in all octaves. A gentle whack would fix that. Taking it apart and making sure all the connections are tight seems to have fixed it for good.
What I'm getting at is that there absolutely were some QC issues with an otherwise nearly indestructible instrument (between all the drops and two Burning Man trips, boy did that thing take a beating).
Might be worth giving it another go if that's the only problem.
I remember that some keys would randomly stop responding on mine as well. That was frustrating. I do not view having to take apart a modern Yamaha digital synthesizer to make it work as acceptable.
Attempt to summarize one part (the “playability”): You are suggesting the velocity curves and their interaction with the algorithms gave the DX7 a lot of its nuance?
Fine tuning with curves and offsets is what made DX programming an
art.
Think of a patch as a vector in the parameter space. For analogue
(subtractive/linear model) synthesisers almost all of the space makes
some kind of sense. You get a usable sound even if it's weird. With FM
(non-linear) synthesis a lot of the parameter space is completely
unusable and the great sounds are clustered in little islands around
which tiny changes in any parameters has wild effects - especially for
patches that use a feedback operator with high settings.
A good DX patch is a finely balanced creation. IIRC the sample rate is
60KHz and the oscillator control resolution is 14 bits, That doesn't
give you as much control as with digital virtual synths today. Setting
up fine control of key-tracking and velocity is absolutely essential
to making the DX preformative.
Now one of the lovely things is how you can download literally tens of
thousands of DX7 patches, all the Yamaha cartridges and compilations
of peoples personal patch collections from the past 40 years. But
because of the extreme sensitivity of the programming not all of them
work perfectly with the various emulator plugins and so they need
manual tweaking.
Interesting! I share a keen interest in synthesizers.
If you play these patches on the DX7 itself, how good is the reproducibility? I would assume the digital settings to match perfectly. Is there anything else going on that might make patches feel different on different DX7s?
For example, I could imagine some oscillators having subtle differences, perhaps with variation with temperature? If the signal path is all downstream of the same clock, at least until the final analog conversion, I’d expect negligible variation.
As far as I know the engineering standards within Yamaha are excellent
and consistent. From what I've heard DX9 patches sound perfect from
DX7 but without velocity, and TX7, TX816 and other modules sound
identical. Also DX7 patches import perfectly into later Yamaha FM
products.
About variance; I'm talking about the design of emulators. There's
quite a lot of VSTs and other plugins (that all sound amazing) but the
same patch doesn't necessarily sound identical on each. Two classic
voices to test from the original ROM presets are Tuberise and
GrandPNO2.
BTW these are digital oscillators so temperatures and component
tolerances are not a factor.
It makes FM programming enjoyable.
I never figured Dexed or FM-7 out, even though the soft synths and the screen real estate would seem like an ideal match for FM synthesis.
But no, I feel like I only started to grok FM with Reface DX.
reply