[linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype

[Chris Cannam]

On Friday 11 Jun 2004 11:39 am, Alfons Adriaensen wrote:
> There seems to be a belief that computers and software would
> eleminate the need for education and training, that sitting at a
> DAW turns you instantly into a sound engineer, and clicking the
> mouse on soft synth makes you a qualified musician. This is a
> complete fallacy, and IMHO just one manifestation of the global
> dumbing-down exercise that's happening all around us, and that is
> driven by those who make money out of it.
> [...]
> I play keyboards, and I'd love to be able to play string or wind
> instruments as well. Unfortunately, these are fundamentally
> different, and it would take years of training and exercise.

While I think you're right about this over-optimistic marketing of 
creative software, I think you should beware of excusing poor 
usability on the basis that what the software does is complex.  Real 
instruments typically have a technique that's difficult to approach 
at all, as well as being hard to make really good music with: 
software is also hard to make really good music with, but that's not 
an excuse for allowing it to be difficult to approach at all.  
There's nothing in your metaphor that would excuse, for example, 
making your file selector hard to use or your sliders work 
differently from everyone else's.

I find analogies along the lines of "violins are hard to learn, so 
it's reasonable for software be hard to learn too" or "cars need 
training to drive, so why do you expect to use software without even 
reading the manual?" troubling.  (Actually I find analogies between 
software and cars troubling altogether, but don't get me started on 
that.)  An advantage of software over violins is that software is 
generally open to improvements in usability without altering its real 
function, while a violin is not.

If software was as hard to use today as it was forty years ago, 
obviously few people would consider making music with it at all; I 
simply don't believe that you can disassociate usability and 
creativity completely.

(I think there are arguments for making things hard to use and learn 
that I could find quite compelling.  A comparison with real-world 
objects doesn't seem enough, though.)


Chris