Back in the day, touchscreen video monitors were the future.
And light pens? Serious 2001 sci-fi tech.
Now, though, these types of interfaces are off-the-shelf reality.
This demo video, via inbetweenmovements, shows Madrona Labs Kaivo – a capable software modular synthesizer – running on a touchscreen. The system is running WIndows 8.1, Ableton Live & using a Lenovo 1423p monitor.
Software modular synthesizers and virtual studios are now very powerful options, today’s computers are a cost effective platform for synthesis and touchscreens take the usability of these systems to a new level. And, yet, more people are getting into hardware synths than ever.
So, here’s the obligatory slightly link-baity Synthtopia question of the week: Are inexpensive, powerful computers and touchscreens the future of modular synthesis? Or are they destined to be a gateway drug to hardware?
Leave a comment with your thoughts!
I’ve been thinking of doing the same with U-he Bazille. If you’ve got a really good audio interface then a tablet pc with a modular soft synth can be extremely powerful and a lot more practical then a hardware modular. It’s 2 different things.
I once saw Christian Vogel do a great liveset where much of it was done editing a Kyma patch with a big Vacom tablet.
Who cares about being “practical” ??? I would rather fill my livingroom with modules, patch cords and every synth, sampler and FX hardware gear items I want than pretend that cheap software and my tablets even come close to replicating the studio experience….I play my mixing console like an instrument and treat my various synth’s and samplers, midi sequencers and outboard FX processors like modules to sculpt sound…moving around the room and interacting with gear to create original sounds and music! There is synth gear in my living that I’ve owned for 20 years! You won’t saying that in 20 years about ttoday’s tablet and this software, will you? No, you won’t.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I would rather have a real modular synth kit than a virtual one. I’m thinking on get an kit to use as fxs for recording through, and you can’t use a virtual modular synths.
The truth is though that you probably dropped $10-$20,000 on a bunch of hardware, when most people who have modulars don’t do anything that you couldn’t do with software on a $1500 computer.
The gear is nice, but don’t pretend that it’s going to make you more creative, or let you make better music. It’s mainly going to satisfy your nostalgia for older ways of making music.
Understand your opinion but tend to disagree. You underestimate the interface of devices. When playing music you don’t want to go into menus or have knobs with multiple parameters behind them. What you want is direct access to your parameters. That’s the main reason why some synths are still successfull and others are not. Instruments first and foremost have to be playable.
The biggest usability issue with hardware modulars is that they cost $5k and up, and you have to spend $200 every time you want to add a module.
That means most musicians will never use them.
Tend to agree – I’m definitely pro hardware rather than pro software, but the hardware ‘is’ expensive, even though its more enjoyable to use. I think the solution is the have a software engine and a hardware front end. Nord had the right idea with the Modular G2 – and I’ll never understand why they discontinued such a fantastic instrument, or have never followed it up with a ‘G3’.
But here is where new technology can help. A few weeks back I put a question on the forum about using 3D printing to ‘print synthesizers’. The only response I got was that printing a synth was too complex and challenging to do yet. So how about printing purpose-designed MIDI controllers for software modulars? If you have software modular like Reaktor, how might you design a hardware front end that would work with the software, and thus give you the best of both words?
Not a generic MIDI controller, or even one that automatically works out how to assign controls to functions (i.e. like Automap), but a piece of hardware designed specifically to control software modulars, that then can be produced at low cost through 3D printing.
When you say “you want to have physical knobs” i believe thats only what you want 🙂 music is not about touching the knobs, if you have enough knowledge softwares with dozens of embedded parameters wills suite you better, you’ll get to that point eventually if you are interested in music, not the gear.
I use modulars, analog synths, digital synths and yes, these modular synth in a box type programs. (I use sun vox on my tablet). It’s like anything else. Sometimes you just want to pull out a rompler or dx7 and go. Sometimes you want to spend hours patching something up on a euro. I use the virtual modular for things that I can’t do on my euro and things that I can’t do with keyboards. Nothing uncool about it at all 😉
All cool stuff, though I would put forward that introducing a pen doesn’t add any real functionality or “future” stuff to the scenario. In fact, I am far more effective when using a mouse for these sorts of tasks. Pens are great for certain things, like emulating…. uh… pens! And brushes. Drawing/painting with a Wacom tablet in photoshop is a lot better than using a mouse. But using the rest of the OS is a lot slower.
Oh, and I just have to add, FWIW, that we were using pens back in the 90s on several devices, like Apple Newtons and Palm Pilots. And they didn’t really catch on. The boom in mobile devices came when an easy to use touch screen appeared. And there are umpteen companies that will sell you a pen to use with them, yet almost nobody buys them.
I hold to beliefs that if a technology is available and doesn’t catch fire, then it probably never will. Just like motion control for games (Kinekt) has been a turd. If there were going to be a “killer app” or widespread love for things like pens, trackballs, motion control, etc, we would have seen the demand a couple decades ago when various consumer devices were introduced.
That in mind, modular software has definitely been successful. Lots of iPad apps are in play, and let’s not forget that “modular” doesn’t have to look like a classic Moog. u-he Zebra 2 and Camel Alchemy are functionally almost completely modular, and they are both very successful and use traditional mouse driven interfaces.
I think pens and other ‘precision pointing devices’ are very good for some applications. Frankly, what I see as the biggest issue with them is a practical one: keeping the pen available when you need it. The things get lost, stolen, left behind, etc. Surprisingly few modern tablet devices have any kind of integrated pen storage – for iOS devices, you’d need to buy some kind of case (although I don’t believe that any of Apple’s ‘smart cases’ offer pen / pointer storage.
yeah, with synths i’m faster and feel more “connected” using three finger drag on osx and a trackpad compared to a pen or a mouse. to me it feels very much like turning a knob on hardware. the clicking with a mouse kills my finger too.
unlike a pen your hand is multimodal so you can switch to doing other things with it, like using the arrows or numbers to punch in values if need be or turning hardware knobs. 🙂 a track pad also doesn’t get in the way and i think until we have 3d screens it’s problematic to block most of your view with your hand. i’ve used a tablet in the past and i prefer it to using it on a screen because like with the trackpad there is some feel to your movements. moving your fingers or a pen on a super smooth glassy surface feels pretty bad to me, it’s like your fingers are numb. i use the ipad and my phone because they are portable, but i don’t think they are that great for interacting. imo, i find “pen” on glass worse because it’s even more alien if you have the experience of using a real pen or brush or anything to mark up glass.
once they find a way of safely sending electrical impulses through the interface, then we’ll be talking. 🙂 and we’re probably going to go the way of head mounted visuals too, but air gestures are even worse than touching glass i think. i’d want more controllers to work in a real 3d environment not less. look at how people work with 3d modeling programs for instance.
i think some interesting stuff could be done with gestures, but you need to have enough of them to make it feel meaningful. like with art or dancing or sports you have basically an infinite amount of gestural control to add subtlety, so there’s a long way to go. while i think it’d be nice if interacting with electronics could also be good exercise for your body, i wouldn’t want to elevate that so much that only the best athletes could use it. then again if we got kids doing it early they would be in much better shape.
i like my “traditional” hardware interfaces just fine, but for a lot of things, like turning knobs or patching i actually like three finger drag just as much if not more, especially if the interface is designed well, and not trying to look so much like hardware. the madrona stuff is good for that. hardware faders i don’t think are close to the software counterparts in speed of interaction and decision making. but then again, less and less hardware uses faders because they are expensive and take up a lot of room.
>i’d want more controllers to work in a real 3d environment not less. look at how people work with 3d
>modeling programs for instance.
That’s one of my test cases for proving that motion control is largely a gimmick, or limited at best. There is no way in hell I could use Maya with a Kinekt and a head/eye tracker attached and get a damn thing done. For now, a mouse/keyboard combination is still the best control interface in town when you need to do a lot of complex multi-interactions on data. And it’s the best by a very long shot. It’s not just about rotating in 3 axis.
Once in a while someone counters by pointing to a couple demos of motion control use of SketchUp, but that kind of thing only works because somebody has spent the up front time in Maya with a mouse and keyboard to built multiple objects that could be easily controlled via hand motion, filtered through some custom software to enable specific results to happen. In other words, it’s mostly smoke and mirrors.
” But using the rest of the OS is a lot slower.” I disagree with this. I started using a Wacom once I started experiencing really bad pain in my mousing hand when using traditional mice. The pen did some take some time to get used to, but once you do, you will be editing audio much faster than you ever did using a traditional mouse. .. Not to mention that it helped with the RSI! 🙂
Nope, i’ll just stick with my Doepfer.
Commenting here is engaging in hate bait but oh well. I won’t criticize any one for their choices but I’m never going to be able to
Invest emotionally in a software instrument. I’ve heard some that sound great but I just can’t get into it. Touch screens jast feel cold. Physical devices are just more inspiring to me. Others feel differently. Each person can and should make their own choices.
A: No. Physical modular synthesizers are the future for modular synths. In software you can only take that modular metaphor (seriously it’s fake) only so far before you’re back a the “window-in-a-window” reality. Now if you want to introduce a computer as a control module unit WITHIN a cluster of physical modules bring it on! But this whole thing about people beating you over the head with “paradigm shift” and software-based creations until you give in and call it a modular is an age old pain in the ass……….and deserves a poke in the eye. Not that this isn’t innovative, it is, but it’s just far outside the material realm of modular synthesis.
… fair enough… and yet, everything you just said will blow away in the wind when cost and convenience inevitably win out and make software based modular synthesizers the norm. In fact, I bet if we could do an accurate survey right now we would find that far more people own and use modular software than modular hardware. So the tipping point may already be long behind us. Sure, that 3% who uses hardware will sound better, and probably make 80% of all the music we hear that uses modular whatever, but the numbers will work in softwares favor and that is where all the development will go. The quality bar will rise dramatically in short order, and before long any advantages other than personal preference that hardware had will be gone.
I’m reminded of a time when I was adamant that consumers would never adopt mp3 as a standard format because it sounded too crappy. Oops! 🙂
I think you’re missing the theme of my comments a bit and are being a little thin skinned. I have no doubt that software was/is/will be popular. I’m simply trying to state that I feel calling these software synths “modular” in the same vein as the hardware is a little silly, out of context and mental leap of faith. I’m not being a purist orthodox analog monk, I’m calling software what it is.
How is a modular soft synth any less modular than a hardware one?
I understand the love for knobs, but to deny the power of today’s software modulates is just that – denial.
To each his own, but, if you want modular in the box the way to go is Propellerhead Reason.
Clavia!! Are you listening ?? Nord Modular G3 with editor software for iPad!! I’m the last person on Earth without an iPad but I will buy one! I do think physical modular is still the future(and the past and the present) but there is certainly room for both.
Love Madrona Labs by the way.
All of this is a serious in-crowder argument in the end. Most people have no idea of what a modular really is and half or more of the synth crowd mainly knows slabs synths and Volcas. Most of why there has been no Nord Modular reappearance is that for every person who will or even CAN sit and diddle a modular in any form, Nord can sell 50 stage pianos. Its both a market reality and a creative one. If more people found a way to make the results of modular synthesis more accessible to the average ear, it’d be less of a niche arena. Purely modular music is a specialty item that’s hard to interpret unless you’re already in the club. It demands more focus than a pop song, which is what makes it both fascinating and self-limiting.
I’ve drooled in amazement at some of what I’ve heard, but IMO, a modular shines best as part of an ensemble. NIN’s Alessandro Cortini is a good example. He doesn’t aim to pull a Wakeman as a soloist, but he actually plays keyboard and SoundPlane, which is what makes his modular aspects stand out more. Don’t worry about module formats or iPad editors; focus on what’s coming out of the speakers. Seeing people argue over modulars is like watching Grandpa name every model of car in an old B&W movie. If you have the time to seriously program a Nord Modular, you either have a trust fund or some criminal income. 😛
Some interesting point but I find modular synthesis most enjoyable in a solo capacity or in a small, non-rock ensemble.
Also, not sure why you’d need a trust fund or criminal income to have the time to program a Nord Modilar. I have a G1, one of my most favorite instruments and have never found it to be too arduous or too time consuming of a task to program it.
NO, but an ipad Eurorack module, that is
They are both wonderful in their own ways, and really anyone who says that one is better than the other is missing out on a hell of a lot of stuff.
I love my Eurorack modular- but I can only have one patch on the go at the time, it’s monophonic (unless I want to buy another boatload of VCAs and VCOs), and the oscillators go out of tune pretty easily.
Software modulars (I use Reaktor) offer almost infinite expandability and flexibility, polyphony, and patches can be stored and recalled instantly. They also offer much more flexible access to additive and granular synthesis and other related methods. But you have to really work to get them sounding great whereas almost any sound that comes out of my Eurorack is immediately pleasing in some way (even if it is not always musically usable)
Maybe one day someone will invent a system which perfectly integrates the advantages of both.
Nord modular G3 (with CV connectivity) please!
No.
Personally I think that’s tedious to even watch.
Get bazillee or reason or reaktor if you want software modular. I wonder if this guy had to ice his wrists and arms…. Not an ergonomic environment with that pen…..I’m calling OSHA
Not so tedious when you recall a saved modular patch!
When are they gonna make inexpensive digital modulars for people who dont want to spend their life savings like me ? Might not sound as good, elitists will scoff but it would still be fun.
Look at the Little Bits from Korg: http://littlebits.cc/kits/synth-kit
There are plenty of digital modules for Eurorack. What do you consider inexpensive?
been doing this since 2006
http://youtu.be/KFpRsHirHh0
#synthhead
#inbetweenmovements
I have only been into synthesizers for the last 3 years and have been using software synthesizers (never used a harware analog synth ever). Recently I got the Korg Volca Beats, Bass and Keys and for me I have never experienced anything so exciting, immersive and expressiveness in my life. I now understand the obsession of analog synthesis and I have only experience nothing more than the Korg Volcas. Note I still love my iPad and iPhone for idea creation when out and about.
touchscreens and inexpensive computers may be the future, but the video in this post is no example. There’s nothing going on here that couldn’t be accomplished with a regular mouse. The UI is too fiddly for effective multitouch interaction, and it is totally lacking in the tactile feedback that a traditional analog interface delivers. Show me a synth with an interface designed from the ground up for multitouch interaction and you’ll get a sense of the future. Just for starters, such an interface will have exactly 0 pseudo knobs, which are a lousy way to interact with a touchscreen. Value readouts that are obscured by your finger while you are adjusting the value are also a step backward.
An interface designed for touch will have controls at least the size of your fingertip, will make intelligent guesses about intended destination so that gestures don’t have to slow to a crawl as they approach the target, and will provide enough visual feedback to offset the lack of tactile feedback.
#Sam
you can still use external controllers –
the video was done very quickly more to show both of Madrona Labs synths
running on a touch computer
the Acer iconia dual touchbook offers dual 10 point touch –not shown here —
i could also just use lemur off the ipad
—on my YouTube i have a bunch of touch videos with Reaktor and flstudio and ableton live
i have 6 touch screens across 4 different OS — and i hardly use them
it i not the future they are just tools
i got in to euroracks a few years ago
In truth, touch screens won’t truly realize their potential until they can detect proximity, so that you can start interacting with the software before your finger even touches down. That will allow the interface to give a visual indicator of which control it believes you are headed for while you can still see the control. The ability to lift (but hover) your finger rather than having to touch for the duration of the gesture will also end up being important when it comes to speed and accuracy.
multi-touch is cool
but in reality
on my eurorack system
i rarely turn more than one knob at a time
The most advanced and most interesting synthesizer modules now are digital, so the reality is that hardware modulars offer some usability benefits, but are largely very expensive fetish items.
Euro manufactures have figured out that they can sell a lot of people a $100-$200 module every couple months, and it’s like crack fix to synthesists.
There’s nothing wrong with that, really, but let’s not pretend that most of these modules are doing anything that you can’t do with cheap software.
I have to shake my head every time Audio Damage releases a new module. They’re all basically the same module, with different apps loaded – and it’s stripped-down versions of their plugins!
What’s the point of expensive, single use hardware versions of apps, when you’ll get better audio quality with the software plugins?
I find that most successful composition involves having solid concepts and musical ideas first, and letting those determine what mode of expression best suits their realization. Physical versus virtual instrumentation is only an issue if you have some sort of proprietary (ego-driven) stake in the matter, one that has little with actual musical composition. If that is the case, you’re better off collecting vintage cars on the one hand, or investing in sharper image products on the other.
i agree. personally i’m into using musical tools to learn based on initial assumptions and exploration more so than recreating something in my head though.
it depends on your process, i think. ideas and concepts are important to me and i also value tools that let me use the intuitive processing power of my brain and learn while doing in a manner that i feel works for me. i get results i like and enjoy using both physical and software setups.
software bugs can really hamper the learning experience for me because i can discover something while doing and then it crashes. 🙁 on the other hand, i can save something and go back and look at it or build upon it more easily. physical tools can let me work very intuitively though i can end up with results that you aren’t quite sure what is going on. i can also end up with huge pile of gear and mess of cables that is overwhelming figuring out where to even start with the initial concept.
i find it’s down to artistic tastes.
i often prefer physical stuff for working with really broad concepts or getting a general understanding of something, while software i prefer to be a bit more focused. so speaking about modulars, with hardware i might play with some “complex” LFO and frequency multipliers, switch and logic module topologies. then i’ll be like, oh this and that interaction produce rhythms i like, then start by recreating those specific interactions in software modular and hear where that ends up. or might hook it up to something to put out numbers or record it into a linear sequencer and see what that looks like.
i picked hardware based on what i like to do in software and then i adjusted my use of software based on things i discovered working in hardware and then i adjusted my use of hardware based on what i discovered in software and….! 🙂
sound wise i mostly just work until i find something that resonates with me be it timbre of melody or harmony and tbh, i’ve never used anything that i wasn’t able to get something out of – it’s just some tools i don’t seem to get more than 1 thing i like out of it. 🙂
then i have friends that work more with an emotional concept in mind to start with and they are less conceptual in the framework they use to achieve that. i feel all ways of working are valuable and have something to teach me.
i suppose you are right there is an element of ego to it in that i am following my tastes and preferences for what i feel and have found through experience works well for me. i don’t see that as a good or a bad thing though. i find that the more intuition that i am able to use the less ego i have in the creative process and the more i get into the act of creating. i mean it seems like sticking really gung-ho to your initial concepts would also be an ego thing and that can end up creating music that transcends ego.
Arduino is the future of modular synthesis
Or even better, Teensy 3.1. 🙂
this is just my opinion, but having a foot on both sides of the fence, both have their place. as a Net. Eng. grad. i would never trust my production or traktor set-up to a tablet for mobile computing, although i have recently replaced my desktop with a windows laptop.
a piece of hardware like a good synth or goovebox has always had a nice full sound and a certain crunch that digital can’t compare with, but these things degrade over time and take up a lot of space. a reasonably priced piece of hardware is a nice place to start with production and depending on your tech skills with a soldering gun, you can produce sounds like nothing else found in any software pack.
these days i’m pretty content using maschine with komplete, but i still feel that everyone should learn some hardware to give them a better practical understanding behind the theory of sound synthesis.
I love certain hardware. I love certain software. Nothing sounds like my Moog. Nothing has the instant, physical gratification, and sound of the P-12. Mach 5 is the best sampler I’ve ever used. Sculpture and BreakTweaker are off-the-charts hip. Nothing does Ring Modulation like the MF-102. There are no boxes that can do what my UAD/SoundToys/Waves arsenal can give me in the EFX dept. Its all good!
Different musical tools seem to have different effects on different people– they will or will not enhance the inner feeling that drives music-making . Staying in touch with that inner feeling is difficult in these distracting times! For example, I write with a pencil/paper for focus, but edit with a keyboard/computer for speed.
I’m an architect by trade and synth enthusiast by heart. Hardware gear defines the space in which you create. Surrounded by all those knobs and patches I feel right at home and when I power them up it’s like turning the ignition key of a steam punk space ship. It’s all that promise and mistery which lies dormant in that modular behemoth that makes my day and also stirs the curiosity of those looking at it. Whith software is just bussines, no friend, relative or child will look at a blank screen and wonder if that is the coolest thing he ever saw.
no chance. the beauty of a real modular is the tactile feeling of wiring those patches and turning the knobs. also the beauty of being able to chose whatever module you want to add to your modular (eurorack) is just unmatched. tough as soon as i can have a big touchscreen with a good resolution i gonna get one for my daw 🙂
Reminds me a bit of the Nord Modular – but without all the nice hardware interface. I can’t see it replacing hardware per se – people buy hardware modulars because they want that hands-on interactivity that you can’t get through software. But this could be a great complement to a hardware setup, or add an extra dimension to a software system. But the price has to be right – relatively cheap. What would be neat would be some sort of CV-GATE interface to make the software and hardware work together.
hardware is more inspiring to play with. nothing beats tactile.
but have you ever made music on an ipad on the beach, at an airport or just out in your garden? taking music from a basement studio to places is inspiring, too.
Making music without electrical energy? No problem. Most people are doing just that using their hands, feet and/or mouth.
I’ve been doing this on my trusty G1 Nord Modular and an old Itronix Gobook for years.
Everybody should use what he want!
Hardware is dead.
I was a die-hard, modular synth guy. I built Serge systems at the Serge factory. I had a Roland 700, and a system 100, a Wavemaker 4, a Synthi AKS and a dozen other hardware synthesizers. I love them. But …reality is reality.
1. You cannot save your patches on a hardware modular system. You CAN save entire studio configurations including dozens of interconnected interacting soft-synths, effects, mixers, etc. on any software based system and enjoy essentially infinite storage capacity and near-instantaneous recall of even the most complex patches and even entire studios.
2. Hardware systems are simply inaccessible price-wise for most people. On the other hand, for a minor fraction of the price you pay for a modest Eurorack system, you can have the holodeck of stuidios like Reason sitting right in front of you ready to go.
3. Hardware systems inevitably FAIL. They break down. The laws of thermodynamics do not apply to software. Sure the computer you are using will eventually fail, but the software will run on any comparable computer.
4. Sound quality is variable in both worlds. Analog is prone to noise. Digital systems sometimes introduce glitchy artifacts. You have to work around the problems inherent in each system. But the sound quality of software instruments continues to improve, whereas hardware has gone about as far as it can to due to the PHYSICAL limitations that software will never face.
I miss the tactile experience and the tech-asthetic of a room full of modulars. But the benefits of software systems simply overwhelm even the most capable, advanced and expensive hardware system on earth.
Those are good arguments for software. But it seems to me that both software and hardware are enjoying massive innovation and an increase in popularity. Eurorack has enabled dozens (at least) of innovative module makers to (apparently) thrive. And the increase in computer performance allows increasingly good-sounding music software.
You say that hardware is increasingly inaccessible for people, but musicians are well know for their ability to spend on hardware rather than, say, engagement rings, cars, couches, dental work, etc. I don’t know how many “broke” musicians I have met who have very expensive guitars, amps, synths, recording gear, refurbed classic this and that.
If anything, hardware is easier to buy now since it comes in Eurorack modules that are $75, $100, $200.
i’m not anti-software, i like it as much as hardware. people should use what they like and what works for them, but:
1 does this have any bearing on musical quality? people did good stuff in the past without it and they will in the future. i make stuff with software and don’t save the patches and routing because i don’t want the clutter, just the audio is enough. i make stuff with hardware and document the important bits because i want to remember it. if anything i think stuff like presets and the overwhelming number of options in software might be why electronic music seems stagnant.
2 i’m poor, but i was able to afford gear by making poor life choices. who needs a car. 🙂 software gives you a lot for the money, but you don’t need that much to make music. i mean i can make tracks on an mpc1k which is less than reason let alone the computer. it’s great that people can get into electronic music cheaply, but there is enough cheap hardware stuff out there too. it doesn’t have to be 1 vs other.
3 key point “comparable computer”. because the operating system will change and break things. cloud servers will be taken offline, disks will rot. nothing lasts.
4 imo electronics software or hardware isn’t about the sound quality it’s about how you can work with it. sound quality doesn’t mater either way to me, i like listening to old blues records. music is about taste and expression to me.
Good point about the old blues. It’s the rare current track that hits me anywhere nearly as hard as a scratchy old Skip James track with just his voice and his weird cross note tuned guitar. Or Son House’s Grinnin’ In Your Face which is just a voice and an unsteady hand-clap.
Is the future of modular synths software? No
Is the future of synth software modular? Probably.
I was doing exactly this on my HP all-in-one touchscreen PC back in 2008. Now I use an all-hardware setup. I think all the kids start out watching “how to make dubstep in ableton with massive” videos on YouTube, then buy a Korg and end up here yelling ANALOGUE FTW
To be very honest what matters is if it works for you or not hard or soft if the outcome is good its good, however the experience has shown that even the ones who were into modular systems at some point and tried to go all 2050 and try 10100001 instead of real voltage controls realised that the sound of digital synths aren’t really as sweet as the analog synths and on top of that the experience doesn’t even come close. Try playing a guitar with a mouse I’m not talking about playing a solo just strumming without holding a chord… tell me which one feels better. Try playing a piano on your kontakt library using a weighted keys keyboard and see if that feels better than the actual piano. Synthesizers are instruments which could be used very interactively… Once you achieve the transparency with your synths you can actually produce material without thinking straight from your feelings. Don’t talk about what you don’t know! PLEASE.