"Synth mastery" is not just mathematical or psychoacoustics... let's add some things:
Dave was routinely pushing the envelope when it came to these boundaries but many times it was too ahead of its time. The ARTISTS never really adopted the tech until decades later. Some things that I consider really obvious are still not widely adopted. The art here is to understand WHY artists don't want to use those tools and features. Whether or not YOU know math and psychoacoustics, it is more important whether your users can leverage that knowledge without the same knowledge, so being a teacher+performer+producer is very important to knowing your user base
Then you also need to be able to do market research. Asking questions to people and getting solid feedback all the time. As an ENGINEER!! Because it's the subtle differences that add up to a really amazing whole and you cannot know the difference without learning from every angle. To paraphrase you above, 'audio professionals who avoid making music because it looks hard, do not ever reach an acceptable level' and 'audio professionals who avoid talking to lots of musicians/customers because it feels hard, do not ever reach an acceptable level'
... and there are a LOT of people who never do these things
And let's add 'PERFORM music' to this list as well unless you are making a solely intellectual instrument or mixing/mastering tool. Since we're talking synthesizers, this is very, very important.
This is also why the vast majority of music instruments, including software/VSTs, are designed for producers and not performers. Having the set of skills necessary to design a successful instrument is very, very difficult. You cannot be a master of one.
Sure you can 'master' the DSP and signal portion of audio but I can tell you just by looking at the UI almost instantly how much effort was put there vs. making it an enjoyable instrument to play
I can add a lot more of skills I find very important to being successful in this industry but as an engineer, that's what I would focus on first.
At some point maybe I should update my blog with stuff like this
Dave was routinely pushing the envelope when it came to these boundaries but many times it was too ahead of its time. The ARTISTS never really adopted the tech until decades later. Some things that I consider really obvious are still not widely adopted. The art here is to understand WHY artists don't want to use those tools and features. Whether or not YOU know math and psychoacoustics, it is more important whether your users can leverage that knowledge without the same knowledge, so being a teacher+performer+producer is very important to knowing your user base
Then you also need to be able to do market research. Asking questions to people and getting solid feedback all the time. As an ENGINEER!! Because it's the subtle differences that add up to a really amazing whole and you cannot know the difference without learning from every angle. To paraphrase you above, 'audio professionals who avoid making music because it looks hard, do not ever reach an acceptable level' and 'audio professionals who avoid talking to lots of musicians/customers because it feels hard, do not ever reach an acceptable level'
... and there are a LOT of people who never do these things
And let's add 'PERFORM music' to this list as well unless you are making a solely intellectual instrument or mixing/mastering tool. Since we're talking synthesizers, this is very, very important.
This is also why the vast majority of music instruments, including software/VSTs, are designed for producers and not performers. Having the set of skills necessary to design a successful instrument is very, very difficult. You cannot be a master of one.
Sure you can 'master' the DSP and signal portion of audio but I can tell you just by looking at the UI almost instantly how much effort was put there vs. making it an enjoyable instrument to play
I can add a lot more of skills I find very important to being successful in this industry but as an engineer, that's what I would focus on first.
At some point maybe I should update my blog with stuff like this