Wait Till You Hear About Synthesizers

AI is here to stay. That is not a threat, a promise or a marketing line. It is simply the world we all are creating in now. And music has always changed with its tools.

There was a time before synthesizers. Before drum machines. Before people built entire tracks from samples on a home computer. Then came machines like the c64 with SID sounds, the Amiga 1200, where people like MiK worked with ProTracker, tiny samples and limitations that would feel almost ridiculous today. Later came software studios, plug-ins, digital recording, sample libraries and complete production setups that fit into one PC or laptop.

None of that ended music. It changed how music could be made, for everyone, it changed what it could sound like and even who was able to make it. AI is part of that ongoing development.

That does not make learning an instrument less valuable. It does not make music theory irrelevant. Playing, composing, producing and performing are real skills we cherish, admire and keep working to improve ourselves, because we know how these skills are often built through years of discipline, curiosity and practice. That deserves respect.

Labels also have their place. A good label can bring experience, structure, funding, distribution and people who genuinely understand how to develop an artist. And a label should be a partnership, not the only door through which an idea is allowed to enter the world. Drum machines changed access. Trackers and samples changed access. Home studios and digital distribution changed access.

AI is changing access again. It can reduce the distance between having an idea and being able to hear it, develop it and share it. That is a form of democratisation. And let’s be honest, not everyone is going to make music now. Not everyone wants to. It is not everyone’s cup of tea. Like owning a camera did not turn everyone into a photographer. ProTracker did not make every Amiga owner finish an album. A synthesizer does not automatically create taste, patience or a reason to keep working when the first version sounds terrible. AI does not do that either. It gives more people a way to express themselves. What they do with it is still their decision.

Some people will learn an instrument. Some will work with samples. Some will use drum machines, synthesizers, software or AI. Most will combine several of those things without feeling the need to turn the process into an ideological argument. And no, not every suggestive track that was released a year ago is suddenly taking income away from professional musicians. Sometimes a joke becomes a line. The line becomes a hook. The hook becomes a track. And then the track finds an audience or it does not.

That is also art. And we respect that.

Not every painting hangs in a gallery. Not every photograph becomes iconic. Not every song needs to become a career, a product or proof of exceptional talent. Some things are created because someone wanted to create them. That is enough.

We are not professionals, and we are not pretending to be. Not every mix sounds right immediately. Sometimes we hear the problem the next morning. Sometimes we change the same section five times (at best). Sometimes we only understand what we were trying to do after doing it slightly wrong first. And we keep learning. The idea matters to us. The feeling matters. Turning a conversation, a mood, an inside joke or complete nonsense into something we can actually hear matters.

We do not need Solanoxx to pay our bills. We are not building it around recognition, admiration or whatever an algorithm currently considers successful. That is our freedom and that freedom matters too. Music that earns money can be brilliant. Artists deserve to be paid for their work, but when every creative decision has to be safe, scalable and designed for maximum reach, something can easily disappear along the way. The strange detail gets removed. The uncomfortable idea becomes softer. The work starts trying to please everyone before it has decided what it wants to be.

We are lucky enough not to need that. We can follow an idea because it makes us laugh, because it moves us, becoves we get better at it every day or simply because we want to know what happens next. As we keep saying in our messenger group chat: We make things because it is fun. Then we release them.

So what?

Some of the Tools in the Room

Yes, there is gear. No, it does not write the track for us and it does not spark creativity by itself. It enables.

We use:

FL Studio 26 Producer Edition
Adobe Audition
Serum 2 (with Krosper presets)
Several Phil Speiser tools (The Instrument 2, The Granulator, The Stutter, The Pattern, the Gain, the Smoother The Balance)
MPC Studio
FLEX packs (Chip Tune, Core Synths, Euphoria, Histibe Electronica, Olbaid Bass Utopia, Olbaid Compendium, Black Octopus Pandora, Arksun Cityscape, Mainroom techno, Melodic techno, Rave Essentials, Seamless R Monsters, SH-1 Floorshakers and many more.)
samples, plug-ins and whatever else helps an idea move forward
ChatGPT for reasoning, structure, language, creative sparring and developing ideas together

On the hardware side, there are a set of Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro headphones, AKAI MPC Studio, MIDI keyboards, Beyerdynamic FOX microphones, speakers, laptops, a hell lot of cables and the usual collection of unfinished ideas.

None of those tools guarantee a good result.

And none of them replace taste, intention or the decision to keep on working. They simply help us turn an idea into something audible. Sometimes that becomes a track. Sometimes it becomes nonsense with a kick drum. Both have their place.

AI has entered the creative space. It will be used brilliantly, lazily, thoughtfully, badly, professionally and purely for fun, exactly like every tool before it.

The technology is new. The human urge to make something and put it into the world is not.