- Hello, there is no reason to panic.
I'm not here to talk about Justin Bieber.
(audience laughing)
I'm not here to talk about Radiohead as well
but you ought to know that neither of these
artists' sounds would have been the same
without synthesizers.
Now, synthesizers are amazing
because they take this
(subtle synthesized buzzing)
and turn it into this.
(loud synthesized buzzing)
And how they're able to achieve this effect
is by taking electricity,
turning it into sound
and morphing that sound so it becomes music.
Way back when, this is what synths look like.
They were huge, complex, and you practically
had to be a genius to get even a simple sound out of one.
Over time, they became smaller, sleeker,
more affordable, and as most things,
found their way onto computers.
Which was awesome for me 'cause
I grew up in a place where I didn't have
access to high-res synthesizers.
But when I tried to explore synthesizers,
I was confronted with interfaces
that looked like this
and I had no idea where to even
begin figuring these things out.
And the fact remains synths are amazing,
expressive tools but it's this very expressive
nature that makes them so complicated
and they provide no entry point for beginners.
In order to address this, I created an interactive website
called Signal Flow.
Signal Flow is based on three key problems
that surfaced during my research.
The first is that of cognitive overload.
Synths throw every single parameter at you
when you open them up.
And as a beginner, it's not the best feeling
to have 45 knobs staring at you in the face.
I wanted to simplify synths down
to the most essential components
and introduce them one by one
so the user knows exactly what's happening
as sound travels from one component to the other.
I'm gonna take you through what this experience
looks and sounds like but be warned that this
contains unshaped sounds which might be a little jarring.
So start with a power switch
and you get your first component.
(low synthesized buzzing)
(high synthesized buzzing)
(low synthesized buzzing)
(buzzing slides to higher pitch)
(buzzing slides down to lower pitch)
You can add new elements to the circuit
just to see how the sound is shaped
as it moves from one component to the other.
(low buzzing sound in background)
And you can add modulators to see
how the sound can be shaped over time.
(buzzing in quick repetitive bursts)
(buzzing bursts slows down)
While this was a great way to get people comfortable
with synths, I realized that there was really no
understanding as to what was happening under the hood.
And, the problem is that in order to figure this out,
people have to refer to synths tutorials
that are focused on replicating as specific sound.
And they have to navigate away from their synths,
absorb knowledge and come back to them.
And this process is full of friction.
So people become more interested in trying
to follow the instructions of their tutorial
than experimenting and making new discoveries.
In this realm, theory and practice
seem to be two different things
and I wanted to see what happens if you combined them.
So I added a feature where able to open up
each component and see how it actually works
by reading a bit about each controller.
And then you can close it and go back to jamming.
And finally, there are a lot of learning tools
that teach you how to use complex systems.
But while they're really good at sorting
out the fundamentals,
they don't really take into account the context
in which are actually going to be working.
And I wanted to see if I could bridge the gap
between my product and pro audio software.
So I added a feature where you could see
how each parameter looks like in the most common
commercial synths found out there.
Signal Flow was an exercise in understanding
complexity by reducing it to its' most simple components.
After all, what is complexity
if not simple things piling up?
But the thing that really kept me going
was moments like this.
(synthesized beats)
(laughing)
This is what happened after one of my synths sessions
where I got a room full of five people
who knew nothing about synthesizers
and give them just enough knowledge
to start putting it together in unexpected ways.
And they weren't replicating anyone else's song.
They weren't doing covers.
They were making their own original music
which was so exciting.
I realized that what giving people the knowledge
to experiment does it frees them up
to combine it in ways that makes sense to them.
And what you end up with is really unique combinations
of things that no one else could have heard of.
And I believe this pattern holds
for the future of education
which is not around creating lists of actions
for people to follow but giving them just enough knowledge
to experiment and creating space where they can put
this knowledge together in unexpected ways.
Thank you.
(audience applauding and cheering)