Other interesting synth communities that you are a part of?

[c0nsilience]

WATMM is certainly interesting.  As such, what other communities are you involved with that you find unique or special in some way?  I think it's important, with such polarization online these days, that creative types have a place to feel included and heard.  It's leveraging technology for the better, imho.

Here are a few that some of you might also find worthwhile:

VI Control - geared toward the cinematic and TV scoring crowd.  Worthwhile discussions on a variety of topics.

Lines - this started as a space for monome users, but has blossomed into a very thriving community.  All range of electronic music discussion takes place and has a nice mix of ITB and hardware folks.

KVR - an older forum that covers a breadth of synth and sampler topics.  Tends to be more of a snake pit, but there is still useful information that can be gleaned in the sub-forums.

Mod Wiggler -  as the name implies, geared toward modular users, but has a few subs outside of that niche.
 

[decibal cooper]

Thanks for sharing these, looking forward to checking out the VI Control forum.

While it is not really a forum or place for lots of people to discuss and share things, I like the site Sound on Sound. They do a lot of synth reviews, and the people that write them for the most part are accomplished synthesists (my favorite is probably Gordon Reid, who did a very length series a while ago called Synth Secrets, which, taken together, was like my introduction to synthesis). I also love their reviews of hardware and software. Even if you do not own or plan to own the instruments that they review, there are still all kinds of tips that you can garner that might inform your own processes.

I also still regularly visit Gear Space. I definitely preferred when they were called Gear Slutz I must say. This forum is definitely a mixed bag, and you usually have to either search or get lucky to come across quality content, depending on which subforum you are in. A lot of discussions quickly deteriorate into boomers sharing pictures of their lush setups unsolicited or getting into inane debates on the benefits/drawbacks of hardware vs software, or other frivolous online bickering, but there are are sometimes people who have a lot of knowledge on different pieces of gear. Saw a thread on there where a user was trying to get original samples of the Oberheim DMX drum machine, unhappy with all of the sample packs out there, and had an incredible depth of knowledge on the machine itself and the history of recordings which featured the machine etc (songs and artists that I had never heard of and delighted in checking out). Also, there was a thread where a dude mentioned having worked with Angelo Badalamenti, and when prompted, talked in depth of his interactions with him and his composition process. Also, if you get a new synthesizer, checking out the thread about it on there is often very beneficial. You do have to wade through a ton of crap and petty arguments, but still worthwhile to get patch ideas and also to ask questions to users who may be either more experienced with the gear or who have a novel approach to using it.

I think your question also hints at the fact that there is room for new spaces for people to talk about gear, music-making, and other topics in new ways that might not be covered in the spaces that currently exist.

[xox]

Gearslutz and Elektronauts but mostly just looking for news

[c0nsilience]

2 hours ago, xox said:

Gearslutz and Elektronauts but mostly just looking for news

Here are some popular RSS feed URLs:

https://www.audiopluginguy.com/feed/

https://splice.com/blog/feed/

https://cdm.link/feed/

https://www.gearnews.com/feed/

https://www.kvraudio.com/rss/kvr_news_top.rss

http://www.synthtopia.com/feed/

[xox]

2 hours ago, c0nsilience said:

Here are some popular RSS feed URLs:

https://www.audiopluginguy.com/feed/

https://splice.com/blog/feed/

https://cdm.link/feed/

https://www.gearnews.com/feed/

https://www.kvraudio.com/rss/kvr_news_top.rss

http://www.synthtopia.com/feed/

Yo fhenx  

[c0nsilience]

We've created an interesting little community that's open to all electronic music enthusiasts.  Sort of the antithesis to social media.  It's been open for a little while now and has a decent membership of sound designers, plugin developers, musicians, and composers.  Might be an interesting supplement to this discussion forum for some of you.  Please feel free to check it out if it piques your interest:

Dawesome Village

[logakght]

MaxMSP and similar Discords.

[Bubba69]

On 1/13/2024 at 9:05 AM, logakght said:

MaxMSP and similar Discords.

Yeah I get a lot out of various discord communities. Bitwig for example

[zlemflolia]

this is a synth community?

[c0nsilience]

18 minutes ago, zlemflolia said:

this is a synth community?

Yes, absolutely.

[c0nsilience]

There is a neat little sound competition (Sound Ceremony) running on the Dawesome Village discord server to coincide with the recent Zerus expansion for KULT by Spektralisk. If you have the time/inclination, please check it out as it just kicked off this morning and will continue for the next week. Looks to be both inspiring and fun (yes, I am biased)!

Here's an invite:

Dawesome Village

 

 

Edited January 17 by c0nsilience
Update

[Key]

I dont have accounts there but elektronauts, gearspace and mod wiggler are all worth a browse if youve got some new gear and you want to find out some in depth info about it.

Elektronauts synth memes thread is an absolute classic.

And as dB cooper said above gearspace is great but absolutely rife with rich old guys who have pretty conservative tastes in music, and some incredibly self-righteous zealots set in their ways arguing like fuck over ladder filters or something.

Edited January 28 by Key

[user]

I like lines and lmnc.