Well, first of all I didn't mean my remarks to be understood personally. I was only trying to address a couple of approaches and the different attitudes I can identify with regard to different incarnations of the synthesizer based on some historical circumstances, which is why specific judgements about according different musical forms were not part of my post - in fact, I believe that the latter wouldn't even help much in this discussion.
The debate (and yes - this is clearly a debate) has covered much about technology, but the real issue isn't technology; it's music. Rather than place the synthesizer in front of music - having it determine the nature of that music/sound/noise - I've placed music in front of the synthesizer, making the latter serve the former. I've proposed taming the wild side of the synthesizer with the relative restraint of classical keyboard music, and it has ruffled some feathers.
But what you write in the end is something you can only achieve by technology, or rather by mastering it. Also: If we're talking about different kinds of instruments, we're also talking about technology. A piano, or a violin are just as technological as a synthesizer. On one side, all instruments - no matter how primitive they are - have to be engineered. On the other side a technique has to be developed to master each of these instruments, whether one aims for a virtuos attempt or not. And as long as you repeat something once, you already enter the learning process, get more and more familiar with a specific instrument's response and so on.
What's so special about a synth is that you can actually play its technology in a way no other instrument allows for. In order to achieve that flexibility, you literally had to transform the piano into an organ, and then into a violin, and then into a tuba within a couple of minutes. You can't do that. You can do something similar with a synth though, and it can even be part of the performance itself, basically: instant sound design, that what people had to be good at with synths without patch memory. That's still not something that places the instrument before the music. Quite the opposite: the more analytical you become with programming a synth, the quicker you can achieve your musical-only goal.
What I've proposed is the treatment of the synthesizer in such a way that offends many synthesists. I've suggested that the synthesizer should be treated (in this case) as just another keyboard instrument. Sort of an organ, sort of a piano, sort of a harpsichord, and yet none of these. I've suggested also that, rather than making audio recordings the primary means of presenting and retaining this synthesizer music, traditional music scoring should be used as well. This abruptly places the synthesizer in a category that it has, in its brief history, often led a revolution against; namely, traditional music.
Right. The problem is that if you treat the synthesizer just as a keyboard like any other, it will end up being just that, which is fine, but then the synthesizer portion gets lost somehow. And of course you can also aim for playing it exclusively live, which is not even an anachronism, but it will still differ from how traditional instruments are being used. Just like the specific physicality of an acoustic instrument shapes its sound (unlike the synthesizer, which is largely independent of that with the exception of PCB components of course), so does the specific architecture of the place where it is played (also unlike the synthesizer - at least to the degree that its sound is already mediated by speakers, meaning that there is no direct interdependency between a synth's sound engine and the shape of its surroundings).
In a sense, the synthesizer is the musical apex and symbol of modernity. More than any other musical device, it laughs at traditional music and shows its scorn perhaps most of all when it is used to create bizarre and often irreverent versions of traditional pieces of music. In truth, I'm laughing right back and rolling my eyes at this musical modernity. I don't deny that for a second. If musical/amusical modernity is one's preference, than such a person has plenty of company - a universe of contemporary music and musicians and a mass of the most caustic sounds and noises. It is an industry that only grows by the second. So be it. It's of no interest to me.
I can't see that truly innovative synthesizer music has become mainstream. At least I can still not imagine seeing "Silver Apples Of The Moon" listed in the top ten anywhere in this world. The sort of EDM stuff you're referring to is not innovative and wouldn't even have been called that 100 years ago, except for maybe sonic reasons, but definitely not purely musical ones. There's nothing in that sort of music anybody could have done hundreds of years ago. In that sense it's also not modern aesthetically. It's modern only in that it's exclusively based on consumerism.
But approaching a synthesizer for what it is has to go way further than that. It mostly requires a clear conceptual notion about the uniqueness of a synthesizer. That also has to imply the development of a clear understanding of the particular technology it introduces. If you ignore the latter, you basically ignore the synthesizer, and then it strictly speaking doesn't really matter whether you use one or not.
Agree with my idea or not, it makes perfect musical sense. The synthesizer with keyboards and a pedalboad can be viewed in a way that humbly places it right beside other traditional keyboard instruments. It hasn't much been viewed in this way, but nothing except imagination and creativity should prevent it.
I would argue that it has been used exactly like this for ages - especially by most mainstream artists in the 1970s and the 1980s. Maybe not always based on the organ concept, but definitely based on any precedent keyboard instrument. That is precisely the reason why synthesizers are being discovered for a second time now - at least on a wider scale.
I have to correct myself regarding something I wrote above to Chysn. Actually, my YouTube channel presently is not a good example of my idea. Those pieces are almost exclusively improvisations; they required minimal effort in every way. Hence, the meanderings into dreamy ambient/electronica are only incidental and accidental, due purely to the ease of it all, and not at all what I intend for the future. The music I've described in this thread would not be improvisational but compositional - much more structured, developed, and capable of being scored. It would also require much more skill in performance. There are only two or three such pieces on the channel.
But isn't improvisation just another word for "instant composition"?