In this day in age software now dominates the music production world. Rooms full of gear are now simply a laptop and a midi controller. Cheap and free production tools have provided artists with limitless opportunities to create and develop a sound palette. Not even ten years ago artists still lived and died by their gear. To be a producer and own more then a few hardware synths was considered impressive. Artists of their day learned how to make the most out of the tools that they had, and really dug deep into the inner workings of the tools of their craft. They knew inside and out (literally) exactly what functions did what, and how each section of a synth shaped a sound. How many of you now can say the same thing about your synths? You have a synth probably sitting in your VSTi folder right now, but do you know anything about the characteristics of its oscillators or filters beyond the GUI in front of you? Ask yourself now, how many software synths do you have sitting on your computer? 10.....50.....100....Maybe even 1000. The prevalence of limitless tools and limitless synths I believe has made artists lazy. So many have turned into pre-set whores, that they now base the usability of a synth on the presets that come with it. If a synth in their library doesn't have the preset they are looking for they simply move on to another synth in their folder that has a preset that matches. The sounds that we hear coming out of the electronic scene now are less creative then they were years ago because the same generic sounds are continually regurgitated. Too many artists are coming onto messageboards, forums and chat rooms asking how they can re-create "This sound..." on their softsynth rather then learning it themselves. The innovators of sound were once the creative minds of hip-hop and bedroom artists hooking up their simple mpc60 sampler with 15 seconds of sample time and creating a twisted beat. A single mono-synth and a sampler years ago was all we had to work with and great music was created from that era. If you are one of those artists, and I suppose you probably are, who has never used a hardware sampler I would bet that you could not even fathom 15 secs of sampling time. I think we as artists in the coming decades should take a step back from the overwhelming development of new software and focus more on learning the instruments that we call tools. A synth or a sampler is more than a disposable tool, but rather the lifeblood of what we do. I ask that you try to challenge yourself, and really learn the inner workings of the synths that you use. Do you really need those 15 one osc tb-303 sounding vsti's in your folder? Do you really need the 12 Fm synths, 40 subtractive synths, the synth that does trance pads only, the synth that only makes sound effects, or 40 gigs of samples? If you really took the time to learn the tools you use, you will find that most often one good subtractive synth can do all of these things and much more. Good music does not come from what tools you use, but rather the way you use them. Be that tool $400 or free, it is resourcefulness that spurs creativity, not the latest gadget.
