The good Hermann Seib (maker of the very useful VSTHost) has just released a PPG Wave simulator as a VST instrument.

Some folk might think upon seeing this that Waldorf got there first many moons ago, but what sets this one apart is that it is an actual emulation of the 6809 CPU, peripheral chipset and OS. It’s confusing as all get out, as it works exactly like the hardware, so if, like me, you have never actually used a Wave, then reading the documentation is a must. You can also use Hermann’s Waveterm emulator (in some way, a mystery to me still) to work in conjunction with the plugin for the complete (but, according to Hermann, unnecessary) experience.

Very cool, leads me to think that there ought to be more full-on OS/microcomputer emulations in VST form around. My vote goes for a Fairlight emulator. Click on the picture to take you there.

Following a recent post at Analog Industries and a recent thread at KVR, it seems I and a lot of other folk are wondering where to take electronic music next. Is there a trend or style under development that’ll be the big trend in electronic music for the next ten years?

So far, it looks like I and a lot of other folk haven’t a clue. The most credible answer, maybe, that I’ve seen is Dubstep. But there are, to my mind, problems with that answer. First, we need to answer what was the last big thing. There have been many House/Techno/Acid strains of music come and go over the past 20 years, and you could say that House/Techno/Acid was the last big thing. Which is true, but glosses over the minutiae that music nerds love so much.

A little easier might be to say that the whole Jungle/Breakbeat thing that emerged around ’93-94 was it. From there, you get the manic IDM breaks of AFX, Squarepusher, Luke Vibert; the glitchy hybrid that stems from stuff like Autechre; the noisier breakcore stuff; and you get DnB and the whole Garage, 2Step, Grime thing. Which is a problem with Dubstep, it sounds remarkably like a remnant thread of stuff that has been done over the last ten years, and for the most part, all of that UK club music from that time didn’t really have any legs (because, you know, we’re all still listening to those classic Garage tracks) nor did it create much of a fertile base for lots of different kinds of music in the same way that Jungle did. A lot of it sounds like the same base form just with added elements from other styles of music (what if we do it like Hip Hop this time, and now what about Dub…)

I think a case could be made that if you took what Squarepusher did seven years ago, removed all the edits/jump cuts and added a bit of dubby echo, you’d have much of what gets called Dubstep. And if you go looking, no one has done a very good job of isolating what comprises the Dubstep form. Most descriptions talk about it only in concert with other styles like Grime, which could be seen as just DnB absent the focus on breakbeats and moved toward a Hip Hop setting.

The Bug’s Pressure sounded to me like an exciting way to take things, essentially Jamaican Dancehall set to an off-kilter bed of machines that go bloop (which doesn’t really make it sound all that excited, I admit), but that thread of music didn’t seem to bear a lot of fruit in the past four years. Maybe that’s where Dubstep comes in, and perhaps the problem is that Dubstep hasn’t yet found its Picasso in the same way that IDM found Aphex Twin.

Most electronic stuff I listen to and make is less about the electronics and more about noise, drones, reductive structures, looped patterns and sampling, which isn’t really anything new, and so likely won’t set the world on fire any more than it already has. So, if anyone reading has a credible argument to make for the next big thing, I’m all ears. It’d be good to hear something that’s trying for a new direction.

So, in the last month (give or take a week), two old school, software-based MIDI step sequencers have been released as freeware: Algo Arts’ Bankstep and the Techno Toys suite (actually a suite of 3 sequencers).

Good times. I always find it interesting to see long-absent shareware return from beyond and given away for free. It’s certainly a neighbourly gesture on behalf of the developer, but it also gives us a chance to re-evaluate software rendered obsolete. The spirit of the times is such that technology is more about the next level rather than its current function. That’s why, despite taking five years to supercede XP, Microsoft has been talking about what was to become Vista for nearly that entire time. There always has to be that “this is the future” upgrade hovering at the periphery.

One thing about these step sequencers, all four were modeled on their hardware predecessors. As a result, I think they got a lot of things right, as they do a lot of what you want from a step sequencer without a lot of extra crap. Surprisingly, not many things since then have done as good of a job at capturing the strengths of the lowly step sequencer in the same way. The best MIDI step sequencer VST plugins around right now are either based on the piano roll form or its offshoot, the drum grid. But the steps and sliders aesthetic seems to have been abandoned, and only seems to show up built-in to instruments. Even something like SQ4 and its replacement Matryx, while admirably capturing some of the spirit of the hardware sequencer (and Matryx seems especially trying to be closer to the Notron), it loses the simplicity and usability of the format, like what you find in the 303, or 909, or the Moog-like sequencers, or the arbitrary function generators, or Elektron’s Machinedrum, or FutureRetro’s Mobius/Revolution, or the Korg Electribes, etc.

Those fairly simple step sequencers are popular because they are also effective. Too many sequencers (especially most MIDI tracking DAW things) seem to forget how easy sequencing can be. I’ve long said I despise the piano roll sequencer view, and I still do. I’d rather work with a staff view or hardware-styled step sequencer any day. And sadly the most step sequencer-like DAW thing around, Fruity Loops, really is only useful as a drum sequencer in step mode, and relegates effective control and pitch sequencers to the piano roll. Vaz Modular’s sequencer modules are my favourite, as they’ve integrated the hardware idea well but still take advantage of useful software features (randomize, copy/paste, MIDI input, etc). Too bad they can’t propel other instruments as well, and too bad its song mode arranger is a bit of a pain in the arse to work with, since it’s locked away in a fairly limited and inflexible pop-up screen. There’s another one out there by Gradywerks, but I found it’s MIDI out messages didn’t always work the way I expected them to.

I’ll be making use of BankStep and Seq-303, as I find them handy and have always liked the way they worked. By the time I could comfortably register shareware without worrying about the cost in any way, Seq-303 had already gone AWOL. So in absence of sending a few bucks his way, I hereby send all praise out to the Techno Toys programmer.

Speaking of Microsoft Vista, I haven’t heard much in the way of its MIDI/loopback routing implementation, so I’m guessing they’ve not done anything about it. Which is stupid, surely full open routing between MIDI apps including an effective way to sync everything could be handled best in the OS rather than through add-ons and workarounds.