Diva vs Pigments?
For the past few months, I’ve been listening to increasingly more classic electronic music (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and I quite like Conrad Schnitzler). The other day I wondered how hard it could be to play this music myself. I have a reasonably well-equipped Mac and (next week) a usable MIDI keyboard, and after some tests with (among others) Surge XT (whose interface I didn’t like at all), I found out that in terms of synthesisers, I get on best with Pigments and Diva, although I somehow prefer Diva.
I’m asking the question here because I hope there are more experienced musicians around than me: given my setup and musical preferences, what speaks in favour of one software solution over the other? I’m really a layman in this regard - the fact that I like Diva and care less for Pigments is the result of spending very little time on the subject. I’m probably overlooking the long-term implications. 🙂
I think you’ve mostly answered it yourself. Diva is probably a workflow experience closer to something like the synths used in classic electronic. As its a classic analog subtractive workflow youll probably learn those fundamentals as well. Pigments is newer, has a more novel workflow and more synthesis methods (wavetable, granular etc).
Full disclosure : have not used either. Have watched reviews in the past. If you’ve used both yourself, you’re more qualified than me.
Eventually you’ll have both of course :) VST GAS is a thing too . Thats the long term implication.
I have tried both. Pigments is rather resource-hungry, trying to hog as many macOS privileges as it can, and it seems to have more features, but I feel Diva is much more intuitive to use. With Pigments, I always felt like I pressed the wrong button to get the correct sound. But Diva seems to be neglected, now that u-he has released zebra 3 which is their flagship… I guess.
Ah, decisions. Being an adult sucks.
Theres also something to be said for simplicity with gear - hardware or software. To exagerrate things Korg MS-20 vs Korg Wavestation . The latter is fun, novel , now retro digital, but deep and complex. The MS20 is a just a mono synth. It sounds great with a gnarly filter and semi modular flexibility. But its a simple synth. So with either you could construct genius music. The process getting there for a beginner I would recommend the simpler approach.
With 4 synth tracks, and some FX , suddenly you’re Tangerine Dream :)
An instrument doesn’t have to tick every box. If it feels right in your hands and it encourages you to make music immediately, thats enough.
Have you dabbled with free options out there? Theres probably some decent stuff. Even the default synths in some DAWs can be usable in a mix.
