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> From: Andre LaFosse [mailto:altruist@earthlink.net] > Rick and dcoffin's comments make me want to put this thread > into a slightky broader perspective... Nice post, Andre! Since I'm also myself a musician that loves the feel of an old and well crafted instrument (or two of them, but not too many ;-) I read your post with my smile broadening with the perspective ;-). But to me you seem a little too biased towards holding the EDP, Max/MSP and Reaktor as being only instruments. There are also musicians that would never narrow their personal ways of musical expression to "instruments", since they are constantly refining their art "mentally" by manipulating different combinations of structures, in fact sometimes by asking "what if". One example of this point of view, that comes to my mind, is an old friend and band mate of mine that came to a concert to check out what I was up to these days. He did not know about the Repeater and the EDP so he asked me after the gig how we created "those looping sequences of the sound from our instruments". When I told him he said: "Oh, so it's nothing new then. You're just doing what the old generation of composers already did with pen, paper and some maths - but you guys use the machines to carry out the calculations for you". I was so amazed that he did not find it remarkable at all that we were doing it live, in real-time! To him there were no instruments used on stage except for guitar and saxophone. My point though, is that a person well experienced in this craft of music theory and its application for a personal artistic expression can walk into a wide open system with billions of possibilities, like MSP or Reaktor, and use what he needs to refine his own vision. For him it might make perfect sense to spend years in the bath tub reading manuals without ever touching physical instruments. And when he finally will begin to realize his ideas as sound waves it might sound very mature. All the best Per