Dave, it seems we Motif users try to fulfill each of these roles to one degree or other. With every notch of progress on the Motif line, we who began musical life with acoustic instruments find ourselves drawn toward the more technical roles in order to exploit the power we paid for.

I'd be interested to hear your experience with professionals of all three types. I suspect there are crossover points where the musician wants to get "behind the glass" and tweak the knobs, and vice versa. With the electronica genre especially, one has to understand a lot more about audio technology even though one prefers musical creation to technological prowess. All kinds in between I'm sure.

I have a computer background working with electronic instrumentation. It strained my meager engineering education to translate digital signal values to soft logic, but I actually did quite well. Now that I'm faced with the power of an XS and Sonar 6 (my choice of sequencer) I want to create CDs with a good mix, and this pulls me away from pure music into discussions of LPFs and cutoffs and rolloffs and a host of new terminology.

I'm not afraid to tackle the stuff, but I don't want to linger there. So I'm hoping your new DVD presents a sane approach to sound creation that people like me can absorb and still emphasize the music.

Dan