Re: Flow and Electronic Musical Instrument Design

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 25 maj 2007, at 00.05, Matt Davignon wrote:

> When I made the switch from cassette 4-track to computer hard disc
> recording, I quickly found that my recorded productivity took a sudden
> and steep downturn.

Matt, I had exactly the same experience. I was very productive with  
my f-track cassette recorder but never really caught up with computer  
based hard disc systems. So I had to start composing more or less in  
my head so I had most parts finished when I started recording. But  
the music sucked from the composition based method... which of course  
might say more about me than about composing as a method to create  
music ;-))  But since 1983 I had found a couple of digital delays and  
a harmonizer that let me do live looping and that was way more  
musically satisfying. So I turned more into looping than multitrack  
recording. I sometimes also used two reel2reel tape recorders, but  
that was not a very portable setup.  When the Lexicon Jamman was  
released wanted to get one but couldn't afford it so I used to rent  
one on a regular basis. Enter the EDP, wow - like heaven :-)

> I feel like my current instrument (drum machine) is a great foot in
> both worlds - I can make complex electronic sounds as much as anyone,
> but I also get that expressiveness and immediate sound-to-gesture
> relationship of 'real' instruments.

You should stick to that old stuff and keep using it as your  
instrument! If you should get into laptops it would maybe make most  
sense to simply put the laptop on the table as a passive recorder of  
what you're doing with those drum machine buttons etc. Use the lappy  
to assemble your most inspired performances.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen