On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Alkin KORKMAZ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dear friends, do you have any idea or recommendation to me about the > evolution of electric, electronic or digital musical keyboards? I have FAR too much to say on this subject, but I will try to keep it brief. First off, I want to expand on your evolutionary tree: Mechanical > Electro-mechanical > analog > digital > virtual analog > hardware controlled software Where to even begin... I think for the sake of being on-topic, I'm going to ignore the mechanical and electro-mechanical stages for now. Analog synthesizers, at first, had more in common with the analog computers they evolved from. Physical controls, dedicated hardware components, etc. To my knowledge, there wasn't much thought put into the interaction design of these early instruments. Later on, with the big analog beasts like Yamaha's CS-80 and GX-1, there was a lot more focus on making the instruments more expressive. One of the difficult things with these instruments was that things like multiple voices and the ability to quickly switch between different timbres required duplicate circuitry, which was (and remains) very expensive. Digital synthesizers aimed to fix that problem, as well as to reproduce more faithfully non-electronic instruments by playing back recorded waveforms. On these systems, physical controls were not needed to adjust the sound like they were on an analog system. They cost more, so they were phased out. Again, there was not much thought about the IxD of these early digital instruments. Later efforts focused on making menus easier to use, but still stayed away from physical controls. And then the 90s happened. A few dudes from Detroit tinkered around with some "old" drum machines & synths from Roland, and the techno/rave scene was ignited. The sound of this scene was based on the "old" tech, and the musicians who came after began to appreciate it not only for its sound but the ease with which you could modify the sounds. Real-time modification of timbre became one of the hallmarks of electronic dance music. All of a sudden, the value of these old machines skyrocketed because everyone wanted them again (after basically throwing them out in the mid 80s). What happened next was VERY interesting... Someone came up with this concept of "physical modeling," possibly Yamaha. They released a synth called the VL-1 that was neither digital nor analog. It created sound based on a software representation (model) of the acoustic characteristics of various instruments. So its sound was not as dead as that of a digital synth. Clavia and Korg then released physical modeling synths that modeled the chips that gave the old analog synths their sound. And they put knobs on these new synths. Physical controls returned with a vengeance. I am only sure of one instrument company employing IxDs, but at least as a craft (as opposed to a role), IxD has become VERY important to the desirability and playability of these devices. What's happening now is that electronic music is moving more and more away from dedicated instruments and into the computer. That is creating the digital problem all over again. So there are now all sorts of dedicated controllers. There are some that are VERY interesting, in that the adapt to (or can be adapted to) whatever they are controlling. Examples include the Novation ReMote SL and the JazzMutant Lemur. Also, through software like Reaktor and MAX/MSP, electronic musicians are frequently designing dedicated interfaces for custom-created instruments. The interfaces they design are key to the performance and composition of their songs. So we've gone from no design at all to making musicians into designers. Hmm. So much for brevity. For those other music geeks out there, yes, there are holes in this quick history I wrote, so if you want to fill them in, feel free. F. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred Beecher Sr. User Experience Consultant Evantage Consulting O: 612.230.3838 // M: 612.810.6745 IM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (google/msn) // fredevc (aim/yahoo) T: http://twitter.com/fred_beecher ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
