It’s 2012 – and one of the things we’re doing to start off the year is taking a look back at 2011.
Here’s a list of the 10 most talked about Synthtopia stories of 2011, ranked by the number of comments that readers left by the end of the year.
Most of posts that you discussed and debated were about some of the major electronic music news stories of the year, including the Roland Jupiter 80, the Korg Monotribe & Moog’s Animoog iPad synthesizer. We going to have a lot more synth news in a few weeks as the 2012 NAMM Show kicks off (and we’ll probably have a few early scoops again, too.)
But three of the most talked about posts of 2011 were questions we put to Synthtopia readers – things like “What Electronic Music Track Changed Your Life?” and “Does Music Notation Matter For Electronic Music?”. The popularity of these posts tells me that Synthtopia readers are interested in more than just synth news – you want to share your thoughts on music and music technology and maybe even to have your assumptions challenged a bit. I’ll try to look for more opportunities to expand this in 2012.
Here’s the list, with a comment count through the end of the year:
The Top 10 Talked About Synth Stories Of 2011
- Open Mic: What Electronic Music Track Changed Your Life? (130)
- Is The Teenage Engineering OP-1 Synthesizer ‘Only For Hipsters’? Or Should We Give The Developers Credit For Creating A Synth That’s Actually Unique? (109)
- Roland Jupiter-80 Synthesizer – First Photos (Leaked) (100)
- Moog Animoog – The ‘First Professional Synth For The iPad’? (91)
- Roland Jupiter 80 – Photos, Sounds & Demo (86)
- The Korg Monotribe Analogue Ribbon Station (First Photos) (82)
- Teenage Engineering OP-1 Synthesizer Beatmaking (82)
- If One Vintage Synthesizer Could Be Put Back Into Production, Which One Would You Pick? (80)
- iOS Music App Developers – Where’s The MIDI? (Rant)(79)
- Which Synthesizers Are The New Classics? (70)
Umm, some of these are slightly skewed by the comment bugs earlier in the year.
Eg, #3 has the “FYI – Peter Kirn” comment 30 times, one 20+ and several others 5-6 times…
So it’s rather in the 50+ comment range.
Nice to revisit the posts though. Great blog!
Klik Trak
Thanks for the comment. I’d forgotten, for a moment, how much of a problem the Intense Debate comment system had with creating duplicate comments. What a mess!
I went back and cleaned up duplicates on the most commented posts and updated the ranking.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Biggest story of the year was the rise of iPad music apps that are actually pretty killer.
Definately the rise of music apps for ios, and midi interfaces like iRig to connect your iPhone to the outside world.
For me, the central theme of all of those topics is “change”. They are all the product of tremendous changes all around us… economic, technological, social. These factors are causing things to get smaller, smarter and cheaper, but in ways many people didn’t expect (Monotron, Animoog, iOS, etc). And the inevitable lash back is to also see things get bigger, grander, more special, and more expensive, in ways we completely expect in an attempt to re-balance things back to the way they have been (Jupiter 80, OP-1, etc).