The computer as you know it is fast evolving - just in case you have not noticed. As they get smaller and more portable, what’s disappearing is ‘standard’ connectivity. Of course, everything has to evolve. Just don’t count on it always supporting the level of “professional” recording that currently exists.

Computer operating system changes always send ripples through the entire Musical Innstrument business. It takes these rather small music companies time and resources trying to update hardware and software drivers, etc. just to keep up. These OS changes do not always have the interests of the MI community at heart.

It is frieghteningly easy to imagine something like iPAD type devices temporarily bringing a halt to laptops and desktop computers as we knew them. As everyone rushes to come out with some type of mobile lifestyle pad device that could become the computer-substitute (for the masses)

However, musicians (although we have a high opinion of ourselves and our art) are just not that important to the computer industry and other big technology companies - oh we’re in there somewhere. But when computer/technology industry companies are designing their own touchpad devices, do you think they are thinking about connectivity of professional microphones, guitars and keyboards? Do you think they are thinking about professional recording?

Those who see the future as one where today’s desktop and laptop computers evolve into a device that does everything, may be in for a momentary pause in that history (as convenience wins out over powerful and smart, every time. What functions as the permanent home “dock” may get absorbed into the television/entertainment center… and hopefully connectivity will develop fast enough so that the home musician market does not get left out.

The home entertainment/computer center is likely to be of greater interest to the average customer/consumer and therefore more appealing to the computer/tech industry - once again pushing serious music making to the side. Music and music making/recording is so very niche (you have to see that). You’d better hope for a time where once again dedicated devices - dedicated computers designed to do just one thing but do it very well (oh, yeah, that’s called hardware), may be making a comeback. Who knows? Let’s just hope it all continues.

NIce_boy - 26 February 2011 07:32 AM

Given all you guys said, how come PCs are used for producing most of the music we hear on the radio?

Maybe because one can’t watch porn .avi’s on a Motif?

Joke aside, once Yamaha *does have* a Motif that does everything by itself from MIDI through 24 or more tracks of audio recording through final mastering, I’m pretty sure the industry will embrace it.

One could pretty much claim that the heart of producing in the biggest studios is dedicated hardware right now. Unless we call a SSL 9000 a mouse peripheral. :-)

The computer as you know it is fast evolving

Hello Bad Mister,

Thank you for the deep and insightful post. Just one remark, for “evolution”, new features would have to work with all of the old ones. The new tree branches work with the entirety of the old tree. There is continuity. I do not see this with computers. Instead, there is a rupture every 10 years, where everything evolved so far must be tossed due to a CPU migration or equivalent event. Nature has no such evolution ruptures. A tree doesn’t change into a dog (or other unrelated creature) overnight every 10 years for the sake of new features.

Perhaps “churning” describes closer then “evolution” what the computer industry really does. Old goods are repackaged, renamed and resold with just cosmetic changes to beat more money out of an old horse. When it’s not the next token Adobe CS or OSX or Windows release, then it’s the whole computer - hello Netbooks and iThings. Innovation? We still design 2D documents as decades ago, we still wrestle with GUI window clutter as decades ago, we still have to spoon-feed the computer what MIDI channels our synths use, etc. as we had decades ago. So for not a whole lot of evolution on the feature side, we had to toss the computer every 10 years. I wonder if maybe even “churning” is too kind a word for this? :-)