nice to see you too, Uwe
Just s quick shout out to the awesome team that has been developing Pigments thru to the current v4.
I have been a long time Arturia software user and enjoy all of their software and the hardware I own.
Pigments is definitely something extra special and extremely intuitive.
The best way I can describe it, is. That it has the same easy to use interface that I first had on my Ensoniq ESQ1 and SQ80, with all of the modern symth engines and sonic sound quality of today. In orther words, what made my old ESQ1 so grwat to use was the visual feedback and mostly a one physical button for every function.
Pigments 4 has multiplied all of that at least 100x fold. I can only imagine if Pigments was around when I was first interested in synthesis. It sits veryvwell amoungst other favorites of mine, OMNISPHERE, DIva, Zebra and of course other great ARTURIA software like your version of the SQ80 (Very good) and your newer emulations of Juno synths!
Keep up all the great work and innovation!!!
I haven’t been around quite as long or done nearly as much as you have, but … quite a while and quite a lot. My earliest electronic compositions were on SID Editor. I only got the chance to play around with music concrete in college. My first synth was a used DX-11, my first real sequencer Dr. T’s for the Atari ST (and I still find myself missing some of its unique editing features). I delight in Reaktor and now the Bitwig Grid. Lots of the same software synths you’ve used.
As it happens? I’m also, unsurprisingly, a software engineer. I’ve wanted to work with computers ever since I saw them in science fiction when I was a small kid growing up in the 70s. And as a visual artist as well as a musical one, I naturally gravitated towards trying to make any software I made as pleasing to look at and work with as I could. Not always succeeding but, often enough, and progressing over time.
I got myself Pigments in a hurry soon after release. I’d looked at it and knew I wanted to get hands-on, immediately.
As the original ads said, after many years of making expert legacy recreations of synths, Arturia knows a thing or two about how to make a synth. This was the first time they gave themselves full permission to create and market something from scratch.
And you know?
I’m so glad they did.
It feels like someone’s inspired labor of love that took off into a team project for fun and then everyone became enthused. I might be wrong about how it actually came to be, but it really feels like that. Like someone had an awesome idea and the more they worked on it the more folks around then also loved it. Especially the fact that it’s received a lot of updates over time. But that layout? The usability we all enjoy? Was fundamentally there from day one. It makes it a joy to muck around with and just make new patches or tweak old ones. All while being rainbowy-pretty.
The fact that it’s MPE also means it can be my workhorse synth for practicing my Linnstrument. Which makes me even more happy about it. I have a lot of synths I love, but so few of them really allow me to make excellent use of that. So, basically, it’s my double workhorse synth.
I really hope I can, one day, make something as pretty and usable, in ANY software category, for my employer or for myself or others. This is a high bar of design to aspire to, all around.
Anyhow…
Just piling on the gushing like the nerdy fangirl I am, sometimes. When I love a thing, it’s nice to have the occasion to share that!
[And to all the folks at who had a hand in this? More! Encore! Can’t wait to see if there isn’t another brilliant original waiting to happen… Take all the time you need to make it what you feel proudest of, I’ll just … you know … pretend to be patient over here.]
Cheers!
We’re clearly very much on the same page in a lot of areas. As a former developer, I especially relate to your comment, “It feels like someone’s inspired labor of love that took off into a team…”
My experience in software development has been exactly that. In the early days of personal computing, just before the IBM PC, I had a team of entirely self-trained microcomputer programmers working on a handful of projects for CP/M. At a staff meeting, someone mentioned ruefully that IBM was installing a microcomputer development HQ in silicon gulch with 800 programmers. Everyone looked glum – how could our team of 8 compete with that?
My reaction was quite the opposite. 800 programmers? Excellent! I guaranteed everyone that we would never see any significant product from that operation. Too many cooks, too much required management complexity, and nobody to write the best-seller. Or if someone did, it would never be noticed.
A few years later, the main product to emerge was IBM’s revolutionary new microcomputer OS. No, not MSDOS (which was obviously the work of one person, Gary Kildall), but something much more advanced. Nobody I’ve met even remembers it. Eventually, in the new world of GUI OS’s from Xerox PARC and the derivative Mac, IBM’s multi-tasking windowing OS appeared. TopView. – What?
Meanwhile, we had published a dozen little products, each one of which was the brainchild of one of our team, with specialization assistance from the others. My conclusion was that in almost all cases (CP/M, WordStar, VisiCalc, etc.), great software is like a great novel. You don’t get a best-seller by hiring a dozen writers and telling them to write like Sartre, Dumas, or Verne.
Nowadays it does take a team, in most cases, but still, the best vision comes from one inspired creator in an environment of skilled, like-minded peers. Pigments seems to be another great example of that kind of focused synergy, something no amount of industrialized software generation could achieve.
You should probably watch (if you haven’t) @jamesonnathanjones recent YouTube video on how Pigments tempted him to sell his Iridium. Again.
And Venus Theory chimes in through comments to accuse him of just being a used Waldorf salesman at this point.
PS you’ll notice Jameson underscores his videos. I wonder if you’re hearing Pigments in this one.