asher

Well, we do have that law for patents. They expire in 20 years. And the patent itself "open-sources" the process being patented.

Regarding Depeche, people on Youtube have broken down exactly what each band member was playing during the 80s shows; you might find it interesting. The parts are simple. I don't say that to knock them at all, on the contrary it shows that pianistic excellence has little to do with great synthpop. Alan Wilder is a trained pianist and found little scope for his talents in those shows.

Of course the fast, repetitive bits were either on tape or sampled into the Emulator keyboards.

Good question. Definitely learn the rudiments of piano playing, up to playing block chords (triads) with either hand.

Beyond that, I think they diverge too much. A lot of piano technique is getting both hands working together to play rhythm and melody - but generally synths are doing one thing at a time, and cooperating with other instruments.

A lot of classic synth lines are monophonic, aka "one-finger" lines, although to play them fluidly with one finger would be pretty hard. So pianistic skills would be wasted in this context.

When polysynths got common in the mid 80s, pianistic fingering of chords (but not necessarily rhythms) was used. I mean, to play the melancholy chords of "Drive" by the Cars, you need some of the skills of a pianist, but not rhythmic ones. You do need two hands.

(Of course the DX7 was played very much as a piano at times)

I do think you need the music theory though, such as awareness of chords and functional harmony.

Consider learning some of the classic synth basslines - they tend to have tutorials on youtube - like Material Girl or Tarzan Boy.

Thanks for the report; don't know why that happened; no iframes involved.

Good catch. Will fix the accidentals.

In the Parsons Code section, if I'm reading correctly, the chords are conceived along an up-down axis. However chords do not really have that relation. Going from 1maj to 5maj can be up a fifth or down a fourth.

To illustrate this, first listen to the default 1645 progression on rhythatom. Then change the octave of row 2 (4maj chord) from +0 to +1. Can you hear its similar role in the progression, even though it's now stressed by being up an octave?

I used to think like that. But consider two things. The capabilities of the state actors are high. They cooperate with chipmakers and OS makers (or subvert or hack them). They compromise routers and hard drive firmware. Second, Kaplan's book documents multiple waves of cyber-fear in the US government; multiple US presidents starting with Reagan have tried and failed to secure our vulnerable systems. Simply put, corporations are not going to let NSA dictate security practices to them, because they need to make money and can't spend all day on security. Similar problems occur in military/government.

Remember how cannons made castles obsolete? We're in a similar era, where offense is outstripping defense.

Consider stuxnet. You have to assume Iran, which is smart enough to make nuclear weapons, took its best shot at securing that air-gapped network.

I think you have to accept that hoarding vulns is the international reality and difficult to change. Maybe a cyber-SALT treaty could change it.

Yes, Kaplan's book touches on the silliness of the term (it was consciously borrowed from William Gibson) but policy makers and advocates seem to use it in discussion. Of course there are more impressive terms when needed, like "Information Warfare".