The video for this script will be posted on Friday, July 7, at 5 pm.
I watch a lot of synth-based YouTube channels, and there’s an almost religious respect for vintage synths. I can’t speak for others, but for me, my love of vintage synths comes from being young and not being able to afford them, combined with watching my heroes play them. Tony Banks made me love the CP80 and the Prophet 5.
Honestly, I’d love to collect vintage synths, but what I really want are the SOUNDS they made. Plugins can get you pretty close, so I’ve decided to focus on getting the sounds I want using plugins. In this video, I’m going to give you 5 reasons why I choose to use software synths over both old and new hardware synths.
Before I begin, I want to give some praise to the Pro Synth Network channel as well as Starsky Carr’s channel. Both of these channels give plugins a fair shake, which I really appreciate. Because, let’s face it, there are definitely haters out there when it comes to software synths. I’m not going to address that here. If I did, I wouldn’t have anything nice to say about people who want to trash talk gear instead of make music.
OK. Let’s get into the 5 reasons.
Reason 1 – Reliability
I saw an interview with Jem Godfrey of the band Frost*, where someone asked him if he took vintage keyboards on the road. His answer was that no, he didn’t, because it was very important to the band that they always deliver the best possible show to the fans, and vintage gear could be unreliable. He tours with a Jupiter X and two Korg Wavestate keyboards. The Jupiter X recreates sounds of famous Roland keyboards via what is basically an onboard computer. The Korg wave states contain sampled versions of Jem’s keyboard collection.
That sense of practicality is why I sold my Fender Rhodes years ago before moving to Florida. The thing weighed 120 pounds and was very difficult to move, and between FM and Sampling, I thought I had good enough Rhodes sounds. I don’t regret it. My Rhodes did sound great, but it takes up a lot of room and it’s a one trick pony. And when I’m doing my one man band gigs, I can’t move a 120 pound keyboard.
Back in the 80s I gigged with a Rhodes, a MiniMoog, and an Arp Pro Soloist. The MiniMoog and the Arp belonged to our bass player, Joel Johnson. I loved the MiniMoog, but it was prone to being knocked wildly out of tune by random power fluctuations, much to the delight of our drummer. He thought it was hilareous. I would LOVE to have a vintage MiniMoog right now, but I wouldn’t gig with it.
Reason 2 – Size and Weight
I already mentioned the weight of the Rhodes, but there’s also how much room it takes up. As cool as it would be to have a big room full of working vintage synths, you need a big room for a big room. And I basically have what you see here. Half a bedroom. I don’t have room for racks of keyboards. Plugins don’t take up any real space – only virtual space. And I can fit two terabytes in my pocket. Is that a terabyte in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?
Reason 3 – Complexity
Think of all of the audio, electrical, MIDI, and USB cables you’d need for a big synth collection, plus all of the stands, and then there are the tricks to keeping vintage synths up and running. I don’t worry about any of that with plugins.
Reason 4 – Cost
This one is a no-brainer. The last synth plugin I bought was $39. Two plugins before that were free. Some of the big names in the world of plugin synths cost a lot of money, but hey, “budget keyboardist dot com”, I lean toward the plugins that are free or inexpensive, or come in Logic Pro.
Yes, I do own a Yamaha MX 88, but it was the least expensive 88 weighted action keyboard that had great built-in sounds. It’s a romper, but I do program it.
OK, yes, I probably will break down and buy a synth with a bunch of knobs I can play with at some point. But it probably won’t be a vintage synth. It might be a recreation of one, though.
Reason 5 – Flexibility
My old Rhodes had one patch – Rhodes. It sounded great, but it was dialed in to be more bell-like, which is what I liked, than honk. There are variations between Rhodes models and years. Unlike my old one trick pony, I’ve now got probably 30 different types of Rhodes sounds that I have access to.
And unlike the monophonic MiniMoog I used to play, my Arturia MiniMoog can do polyphony – so if I want to play chords, I can. Yes, the software version doesn’t sound quite as good as the original, but the size/cost/reliability/flexibility are so much better with the software version.
The Mercury 6 software synth by Cherry Audio is one of my favorites. And it can definitely do things the original Jupiter 6 couldn’t. And since everything is software, I can have as many of each synth as I want in MainStage. If I want the sound of two DX 7s for a gig, I don’t need to own two DX 7s. I can just throw two copies of Dexxed into MainStage.
Downsides
But let’s touch on the downsides. Software synths aren’t as inspirational to me. Nothing beats a real MiniMoog for turning knobs. I play differently when I play the real hardware, and it’s more fun. In most cases, the original hardware sounds better than the software versions. The original hardware is certainly worth more money.
And there’s latency on software synths. We can pretend there isn’t… but there is. And yes, you can map controllers pretty easily, but it’s not exactly the same thing as turning an actual knob. Which is why I mentioned earlier that I’ll probably buy something like a DeepMind at some point in time, because it’d be nice to have at least one synth with actual knobs.
If I were a multi-millionaire, I’d have a big studio with a big vintage synth collection as well as a ton of new synths, and I’d have a repair guy who could keep everything running. I’d prefer that.
But I’m not rich, and for the music I make, I need to have every keyboard sound I can think of, from a CP80 to a Mellotron to DX 7 brass to a Prophet 5 pad to a MiniMoog bass to the kind of cool sounds I can get from Alchemy. I could either afford one vintage synth, or simulations of every synth I want, that never go out of tune and don’t need to be repaired when parts go bad.
Yes, you can end up with plugins that break with new operating system upgrades, but you can keep old computers or buy them for next to nothing. I’m running Reason 5 on a 2008 MacBook, for example.
This is just how I feel. Different people have different priorities. I grew up playing a Poly 800 when I wanted a Prophet 5, and a DX 27 when I wanted a DX 7 but couldn’t afford one. To me, the most important thing is having access to any sound I want, because I never had that before. Why would I want to go back to that? Even if vintage synths were dirt cheap, I wouldn’t have room for all the keyboards I’d want.
People like me who like plugins are sometimes made to feel “less than”, and I think that’s silly. If a pro like Jem Godfrey can gig with simulations, so can I. And so can you.