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I do have a solution for sampling as well, the QY700 being an important part of it, but I’ll leave that for another day if you really want to hear it cause it would mean explaining my whole hardware setup.
Great to hear your insights on both grooveboxes and sequencers. I feel that for ornate orchestrations the QY700 would most definitely overtake any Groovebox in terms of versatility and sound pallete, even sans the sampling. MC 808 will no doubt be more immediate (or easy to use) and some of its features certainly do lend well to specific genres but it is also quite limited in terms of extensive tracking if that was a requirement especially if directly competing with today’s terabyte sized sample libraries or extensive midi power of QY700. But all gear has its quirks so it boils down to how one uses it and not only what it can do.
I see these various hardwares as individual modules to begin with built for a specific feature or use case. I imagine a perfect hardware machine with all possible features and it would be 1) too expensive, no one would buy it 2) too complicated, no one would use it. Maybe many think of these machines expecting them to do everything out of the box rather than thinking of them as useful additions for a specific purpose in the studio. That immediately puts their value in perspective. Because hardware was and is expensive to design and develop and market, manufacturers don’t fool around trying to make a quick buck. In software nearly everything has been done from the knob to the DSP algo and code repositories have made it mostly a copy paste affair if thought of that way, since the bulk of the RnD is already done. The expertise is valuable no doubt. Just like zip libraries and time stretching and filter algos they can be shared via email and an app can be deployed for 2 dollars on the market place. It’s has become easy to make an all in one solution in software. This is a virtue as well as a vice.
Von Neumans computer architecture is a resounding success and the only hardware needed for being a polymorphic automata that does very thing from email to E-banking. For music we are using the same architecture, which makes different tools run on one hardware, rather than build different hardware for each job. But if you look at it that way then all manufacturers need to only perfect building a computer, which is again pointless because of monopoly in the microprocessor market (Intel, AMD, ARM). So that is where lower powered chips can be used for innovative and feature specific hardware that solves a particular requirement instead of making yet another computer. In that regard software related dev and research goes hand in hand. I read in some older tracking magazines in one article where the writer says about building an OS specific to demo scene which was critiqued as pointless becos OS markets and graphic card markets are conjoined and no way a Demoscene OS will be able to support all the existing hardware without a business model or a market share. It’s just the nature of the world we are living in. Monopoly rules. The creativity envisioned by the Demosceners for a particular hardware speaks for itself. Let the engineers do their part and the artist their. Let Beethoven do his part and the piano maker his.
I must remember to stop before I pontificate too much on this, but hardware is awesome and not just our laptop or computer hardware but dedicated hardware. Software is awesome too and every hardware has one nonetheless cos that is how computers work and that is how Turing machines work. All these hardware have a clock and internal OS and multi threading and chips, but they are encapsulated around a well designed interface that is also tangible. They are computers built for music making, just like a graphic calculator for comparison. Technically speaking you could build another Groovebox hardware just like this on a regular laptop and just wire it’s controllers via usb and plug the outputs to a custom LCD unit to liaise over the custom software written that runs on the laptop unit all kept inside a machined box that does not immediately give away that this machine runs on a computer to begin with. Now that would not take away the experience but rather make it more reliable and modern becos of better memory and storage and cpu speed. Quite possibly very feasible for a small tech team of audio devs to accomplish.
NI Maschine and Akai controllers with their software have made their own versions of it, though completely tethered to the laptop and not really a Groovebox in that sense, a Beatmaking alternative tool mostly and a controller for a complete definition. There could be different mod versions of an MC 808 or 303 or 505 selling for a third of the price while giving us the authentic experience of using an original. Just plug your MacBook and load the software from a the website and place it in the vacant space inside the mods and plug the USB peripherals and off you go, the LCD picks it up from there. With today’s hardware and software I am surprised no one is doing any of this sort of re modding vintage gear with modern tools from scratch. Not OpenLabs style units though, those were bulky and a really bad American design and performance, running regular PC parts selling at 5 times the original price.
But going all the way software is like spending too much time on prayers at the cost of physical neglect. It is no doubt an asymmetry. Would you make love to a video simulation or drive a car via a touchscreen? Humans are not biologically made for that and barely 30 years of software technologies must not convince us otherwise. It’s good for convenience and like using Uber it’s fun and easy but in a survival situation when fitness, presence of mind and alertness is required and not to mention regular practice, that is when convenience gets all the natural skills atrophied and leaves us wanting and wishing we had not given up our potential for the sake of convenience. When we are complaining about limited hardware it is like complaining about too much weights or a rigid schedule of discipline like using a pull up bar, it’s stupendously difficult at first but then your mass and fitness and calibre all increase and stay that way. If you however go for the convenient road the mass never even develops to be useful when you really need it. Hardware constraints are not constraints in terms of creativity becos the hardware itself is the product of the human creative mind. It’s like a puzzle box and it’s your job to solve your way out of it or figure out the best techniques to. If a puzzle was not hard enough who would bother solving it? Would be dead piss easy and even my grand mom would be able to solve it before going to bed every night. To sell people on easiness is a big business on its own becos the latter is clear, people want convenience and entertainment, which also means a large part of the populace don’t exercise or eat right or have a disciplined lifestyle, possible a stressful one nonetheless or a chaotic one but a streamlined one not many and certainly not all. A mistake many make is thinking once you become disciplined it will all fall in place as if discipline is an easy bitch. Discipline itself requires discipline and concious effort to keep it going. Then comes the money part which sort of simplifies thinking (“let us do the thinking for you, you just do your job”) since it mostly boils down to a number and regardless of how you get it its the end that matters, and that mode of thinking trivializes the journey or the process of attainment and puts persistence and perseverance secondary to the mode of getting results, whichever way you achieve its fine as long as you so it - the number mind you, nothing about time or life or spirit or ethics or self mastery etc. This is a Machine mindset and is a direct byproduct of the indoctrinated schooling systems teaching everyone to lose their humanity and become machines with only one collective purpose, make money for your master and eat some in the process or you die. This kind of thinking also suavely bypasseses any concious thought of an individual to master himself or his goals and it tries to coerce him into fitting in with everyone else like a factory mould. Hence the bevy of tools on the market that sell music making skills for you from midi file packages to detailed sample CDs and drum collections- “let us do the music making easy for you, you just pay us”. For pros who have limited time I get the point, but then those guys already have a budget or human resources to do this for themselves. It’s not a “we save your time cos you too busy, you pay us model” but rather a “we save you from spending time to attain that skill and you still pay us, you will have less money than you had and still no skill to speak of”. It’s like ghostwriting projects or an essay writing service for students. But from their perspective as a service provider, they too need to pay bills and make money and they are capitalising on their skill and selling it as a cheaper form of consulting which in todays economy is absolutely fair, bit only if their target audience learns form it as well, doing it just for money is like hustling your bitch for quick cash, just using it not loving it or living it. Tutorial sites are cool though, disseminating knowledge. These grooveboxes never marketed themselves as a do-it-for-you solution but rather a unit for you do discover and play around and express yourself, very different from this “we do it for you” marketing approach which is more visible in todays times and markets. End of pontifications.
Now that you mention it, I am intrigued as to how you manage sampling in your setup, would be great to know since you use a very hardware oriented setup with older gear.