As your typical high tech weeny, I basically treat electronic devices as “toys that are cool only till the next big thing happens”. That goes for computers, PDAs, phones and even electronic musical instruments. Heck, I even want to upgrade my cello. 😉
The thing is, to truly master a musical instrument, it takes serious dedication and that kind of focus is hard to maintain in a world where something “better” comes out every few months (whether it’s a software instrument or a new piece of gear).
That’s why I genuinely admire those who work with a single instrument to the point where they have mastered it. One way to make that happen, is to just stop “playing with” everything else; sometimes it leads to the Bach solo cello suites and sometimes it leads to Roger O’Donnell.
For those who don’t know Roger, he was the keyboardist for The Cure from 1987..1990 and from 1995..2005. One of his recent projects is an album recorded entirely on a Moog Voyager synthesizer (+ vocals) called
I have so far only heard the demo bits from his website, but I find the pieces starkly beautiful and quite compelling. I’m now hunting the CD. If anyone sees it somewhere, please let me know.
After presenting my arpeggio generator at the generativeart.com conference, many people asked why I didn’t go further and have it generate fugues, counterpoint, etc etc. It was difficult to explain to people that I didn’t even know yet what I could do with arpeggios, so why add more?!
I was trying to regard it as an instrument, as a space onto itself to explore and exhaust. Nothing like a real instrument mind you, but it made me think about how we tend to try something quickly, want more from it, quickly growing bored throwing it to the side.
Is the consequence that we will never design a new instrument with the kind of expressiveness (but difficulty to learn) as a violin or cello? Who’d bother investing so much to find out what its capable of?