From las8323@rs175174.ks.boeing.com Tue Aug 21 12:54:22 2001
Subject:Re: Nord - last drawbar & percussion ?


> And if a clone was otherwise pretty good other than this, would it
> bother me ? It depends what it's compared to, I guess...
>
> Doug, speculating today...

Which, in a nutshell, is what bothers me. (No argument with you,
Doug, nor your comments, they're very welcome.) What bothers me
is that the clone portion of the industry is keyed toward
"imitation" and "compared-to" as opposed to striking out for
even more.

Laurens Hammond pioneered an idea of tone generation which found
its way into many forms of music. Many more than even he could
comprehend -- though he was reputed to be not much of a musician.
Ok, fine. But where does it go from here?? Even Hammond
started with the A, a very no-frills 91note TG with NOTHING else.
No Vib, No perc, No Chorus, and of course No Leslie. A Vibrato
was quickly added after a couple hundred units, but even perc
was years in the making. But it was still *progress* in the art.

Drawbars are great, Lord knows we need a good 4 d/b sets style clone.
But how far in the past need we keep ourselves? The CX3, for
example has (forgive me, I don't own one) a 'super mode'? Where
tones can be created with *more* than 9 d/b? What a great idea!
Course, it seems there was a Hammond along these lines,too. But
still, **progress**.

I've long maintained that the timbre is no longer the issue, but
the human interface. A console Hammond with internally wired V-5's
or such would fool all of the people some of the time and some of
the people all of the time -- no doubt in my teeny tiny brain.

OK, I'm still [very slowly] working on some of my own ideas. But
it would be nice to see something that looks like progress to my
selfish, egocentric POV. Maybe that's what Nord has in mind
with their led d/b set. Maybe Korg had that in mind with the
"super mode" (izzat what it's called?) Maybe selectable waves
*per drawbar*? Maybe EG controlled morphing between d/b settings?
(Hmm.. does Nord do this already?) Maybe first/last note only
Vibrato? Just some ideas...Maybe oughta shut up.

Emotional Rants: while-u-wait

Larry