Musical instruments create easily identifiable timbres, their "signature" sounds.
The sounds of piano, guitar, drum and flute are distinctive; the fretless bass, baritone saxophone, timbales and harpsichord are equally unique. Individual instruments possess wide variations in sound quality from others of their type, as do human voices. Any and all combinations of instrumental and vocal arrangements may produce the generally recognized expressive forms associated with music, from ballads to symphonies, given their adherence to respective stylistic configurations.
The electronic or digital synthesizer, on the other hand, generates sounds by the manipulation and production of electric signals or waveforms. Though it may finely imitate the sounds of other musical instruments, the synth is, in fact, an instrument in its own right. One may look back musically, and do the same things with a different capability, or forward, to sounds, combinations, and ways of composing as yet to be discovered.
To paraphrase synthesizer designer Dr. Robert Moog, it is no less difficult to make good music than it has ever been.
The sounds of piano, guitar, drum and flute are distinctive; the fretless bass, baritone saxophone, timbales and harpsichord are equally unique. Individual instruments possess wide variations in sound quality from others of their type, as do human voices. Any and all combinations of instrumental and vocal arrangements may produce the generally recognized expressive forms associated with music, from ballads to symphonies, given their adherence to respective stylistic configurations.
The electronic or digital synthesizer, on the other hand, generates sounds by the manipulation and production of electric signals or waveforms. Though it may finely imitate the sounds of other musical instruments, the synth is, in fact, an instrument in its own right. One may look back musically, and do the same things with a different capability, or forward, to sounds, combinations, and ways of composing as yet to be discovered.
To paraphrase synthesizer designer Dr. Robert Moog, it is no less difficult to make good music than it has ever been.
