true Zoë, i am aware of the licensing fees and charging for the full spec; i was glossing over the distinction between a "free" vs. an "open" system. imprecisely stated on my part.


and yeah, a shout out to Raymond Scott. another too-ignored pioneer.



________________________________
From: Zoë Blade < zoe@... >
To: Doepfer_a100@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: 1 Re: IDOW:HE



 
I lose track of exactly what Bob Moog invented. The 1V/Oct standard The ladder style filter, I believe, yes. Synth modules I gather he was hugely influenced by Raymond Scott, he wasn't just making everything up in a vacuum. And at the other end, the all-in-one, hardwired Minimoog was invented by an employee of his.

Dave Smith (and, I believe, some engineers at Roland) invented MIDI, but it's not entirely free. You can buy the spec as a very expensive PDF, and have to pay annually to have a company MIDI number which you'll need to send and receive data over Sysex. The A-100's 3U subrack size, and bus layout, seem a lot more open in this regard.

Anyway, it's fun to venerate people, but at the end of the day, pretty much everyone takes existing ideas and improves upon them, hopefully in a free and open kind of way. You can downlplay how much you helped push the state of the modular art, but you can similarly downplay how much *anyone* has.

As far as I can tell, you, Dieter, dragged modular synths kicking and screaming out of the prog rock scene and universities, and into the hands of contemporary musicians everywhere. This was a very good thing for everyone! Thank you.

Anyway, this is kinda nitpicking, in general I agree with Chris that Dieter made something wonderful. :) I just think it's more open than MIDI and just as more-accessible-than-what-came-before as Moog modulars were back in their day.


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