prophetic words…

Max Matthews from an interview in September, 1978

Could you look into your crystal ball and tell us what we can expect in this field during the next decade?

One thing we can certainly expect is that computer instruments will become very cheap, very cheap compared to conventional instruments.  As a result, I think we’re going to see a lot of these instruments in people’s homes, used perhaps by amateur musicians much like those who use electric organs today.  That market, I’m almost positive, will boom.  Another likely market that I think will be exploited will be the popular musicians, in particular the rock musicians. They are already heavily into electronics, and adding computers will simplify their lives rather than complicating them.  It will also make it possible for them to use more performance-oriented electronics, since the present synthesizers are actually rather difficult to play in performance.  Then the last group of musicians who will take the thing up, if they take it up at all, will be the classical musicians.  They’re a conservative group, and they take up new technologies very slowly.