In this video from ContinuuCon 2019, held May 30 to June 1 in Asheville, North Carolina, instrument designer Roger Linn shares his thoughts on The Importance Of Expressive Touch Control.

Linn is best known for creating the LinnDrum and the MPC. In recent years, though, he’s come to the perspective that modern music is being shaped for the worse by limitations of modern electronic instruments.

Linn makes the case that, starting around 1975, electronic instruments with limited expressive control started to become mainstream, and music performance practice began being shaped by the limitations of these electronic instruments. And, with the growing popularity of the category of expessive electronic instruments such as the Haken Continuum, Roli Seaboard & the LinnStrument – music performance is moving into a new era, less constrained by instrument limitations.

In the second of his videos from ContinuuCon 2019, Linn discusses The Future Of Synthesis Under Expressive Control – his take on how modern controllers change your approach to synthesis.

He makes the case that – under expressive control – envelope generators, LFOs, oscillators and lowpass filters have less utility, because modulation and expression are controlled directly by the performer: