A long-dormant wish to learn music was activated by a visit to the amazing Moogseum in Asheville.
I fell in love with electronic music as a listener decades ago, but I never really thought about the science of its production before. I came away from my visit starving to know more.
@jmac :) we’re all a big family. Maybe it’s something about “making weird noises” being as valid a use of the instruments as making “music” is, so there’s less presumption of skill, talent, virtuosity, (or even artistic intent!) than other instruments
I started talking to friends hither and yon about my experience, as one does when one encounters something special. And more friends than I would have expected immediately started sharing their own music-making (or, at least, electronic noise-making) knowledge or obsessions with me. It's as if the subject had never come up before, so none of these friends had mentioned it until now—but now they were only too happy to bring me in. Which I suppose is what literally happened.
A friend on the west coast I know from MUDs started sending me strange, wordless videos of wooden boxes studded with quarter-inch jacks and unlabeled colored knobs that go whummmmmm. Then they'd demonstrate playing a chord on a nearby keyboard and it'd go wherhrmmmmm. Yes yes, this, all this, what else you got.
Another friend guided me to Syntorial, which seems amazing: a very gentle bit-by-bit education in analog synthesizers, which starts you off with the bare minimum of (virtual) controls—choose square or sawtooth waves, press a key, hear the difference—and gradually reveals more knobs and faders and modules as you demonstrate understanding of each component. It has a very generous demo period which I haven't exhausted yet.
I dove into unexplored corners of good old GarageBand, but felt initially disappointed; it has a lot of prefabricated electronic-music setups but not the sound-lab capabilities I felt hungry.
But you know what it does have? Piano lessons, which integrate with a MIDI keyboard you supply. And I didn't know the first thing about piano, or its keyboard. Never even took lessons as a kid! (I opted for trombone, because all the boys in my school did trumpet, and trombone was basically Silly Trumpet.)
(Girls did violin instead. This wasn't enforced but it's absolutely how things fell out across my whole fourth-grade class. The weird girls probably did viola, I don't know. I never thought about how strange this was until recalling all this Amy very recently. Anyway!)
I did a lot of research over several weekends, including trying the first GarageBand piano lesson using a silly virtual piano on my iPad, barely wide enough to display two octaves of narrow simulated keys, but absolutely enough to convince me I wanted to keep going.
After much research I settled on a 49-key MIDI controller: a keyboard which doesn't make any noise itself, but directs your computer to handle that bit. And now I can play a baby-talk Ode to Joy arrangement, as pictured here.
At risk of sounding maudlin, I really do feel like I'm connecting with a literally fundamental aspect of shared human culture that I've had an only passive relationship with my whole life.
I went to a jazz show this week and for the first time noticed how single notes sound different from chords, on a piano. Look: the topic never came up before, like I said. I am playing catchup on all of this! But I am, I'm doing it!
I think too of something @CarlMuckenhoupt tooted recently, that playing D&D as a grown-up can be more rewarding than as a kid, because an adult understands how to share the spotlight, and why that makes the game better for everyone.
I understand why we teach music to kids; similar to why we teach em sports. And just like sports, I hated it! I wasn't ready. Maybe I was ready 20 years ago, when I wanted to buy a keyboard but was too poor. I'm ready in a new way now. (And no longer poor. Sigh.)
I also think of something that @mogwai_poet wrote last year, when Elden Ring was the big thing in video games, marveling at individuals' boasts at spending hundreds of hours or more mastering this game, and comparing that to the length of time it takes to learn a a skill with much deeper cultural presence and relevance—like, you know, learning a musical instrument.
That stuck with me!!
(Jim also clarified that he wasn't knocking folks to whom Elden Ring has brought joy. I'm among them!)
So that's where I am, as of this weekend. The keyboard I bought was a Samson Carbon 49, from Sam Ash here in NYC—a very friendly and browsable music shop. I visited twice, in fact, because I originally got the Samson Graphite, with a ton of programmable knobs and faders and buttons. But it had some busted keys, and I decided that was just too much kit for a novice and so traded down to something smaller and simpler. Really happy with the Carbon as my starter kit. https://www.samash.com/samson-carbon-49-usb-keyboard-midi-controller-with-native-instruments-komplete-elements-software-ssakc49xx
I plan to grind away at both the GarageBand piano lessons and Syntorial, the latter of which encourages you to apply what you learn to a real analog synthesizer—or a "real" one, such as the all-singing-all-dancing VCV Rack https://vcvrack.com.
Piano and synth are two very different approaches to making music! But they're holding hands with a common keyboard, the operation of which was completely opaque to me before last week. And so I set off on a hybrid education. It's noisy and I love it.
@jmac a sitcom where a serious gamer is roommates with a normie. I can’t find the clip where the normie starts learning to play the flute (to the great disdain of the gamer), but here’s a selection, it’s quite good https://youtu.be/8nMtHc5OPRY
@jmac same. I dove into making music for a few years and now have largely moved on to other interests, but I gained so much useful context to understand the stuff I listen to.
@jmac this whole thread sounds fantastic. if you ever want to figure out modular, Moog's Model 15 iPad app has a decent tutorial built-in that walks you through which wires to hook up and why.
There also ought to be some good intro videos online for VCV Rack, which is open-source-with-premium-version desktop software that is just awesome for simulating analog wires that make funky noises.
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