I’m sure you can’t wait to hear my take on Behringer. I know everyone else has had a stab at it but they aren’t me. There is a difference.
Christmas Past
When Novation shit falls apart you forgive it, because it’s cool, like a Jaguar car that breaks down all the time. But Behringer was the lucky dip at a regional fun fair. Not Cool. I have Behringer stickers on my garbage bin. They came with two broken mixers that probably aren’t ever worth the cost of fixing.
But I now have a Boog bought second hand. It was their last chance, the make it or break it. This Boog is truly Boogiful. From an extreme lack of expectation we have reached a point where we can now argue about whether Behringer is cool.
Christmas Present
When I was young person all the cool people had a Roland System 100. Even Public Image Limited had a damn System 100. I was cool but that thing was way out of my reach. Just this week a Roland System 500 has been on offer and the thought process went like this:
- Look, it’s an unused System 500. For about half the price. You should reward your young self and pick it up.
- It’s not really a System 100. But it has Roland on it. I guess that’s authentic.
- Hey wait a second. How much would it cost to use the Behringer clones? Holy shit that’s a big difference! And it looks more like the System 100 than the Roland one.
- Yeah but they’re not authentic. Actually the whole idea is silly. You don’t even like modular.
- Yeah but the Roland is not going to be available forever and blah blah blah
- GOTO 10
Admit that you have had similar conversations in your head. What’s going on here? It has nothing to do with music – I already have things that can do everything the System 100 could do. It has much to do with rewards, status, myth, privilege and so on. I deserve a thing. I remember a thing and can now have that memory made incarnate. In this particular case the magic is disturbed by the proximity of two things, but most of Behringer’s produce replicates the unobtainable. A ‘real’ Moog is 12 thousand dollars. Fuck that bullshit.
Christmas Future
Slowly but surely the Man from Baden is replicating each unobtainable thing. At the beginning there was some anger based on the idea that each original device was an ‘artwork’ with a ‘creator’. This ‘art gallery’ poise has artificially inflated the value of the objects – which again has nothing to do with music. That anger has recently transformed into tedious competitive bird spotting. On the Behringer Facebook page the members whine for an endless list of obscure, un-heard, bilge heap of failed equipment simply on it being rare. Again, nothing to do with music and all to do with keeping the unsightly mass market at bay.
We’re not at the end game yet but I think it will be soon. Behringer clones will be the Fleacore that falls into the hands of the young, who might make new sounds and spook the horses – this is good. They won’t care about history, they’ll just pick the ones that make the best farts. Yes, they might ape the past, but we can help them with the right attitude. Like fucking off this whole ‘vintage synth’ bullshit. I do that by denouncing what I can.
They may be distracted from the toys of the here and now, particularly software. At very least the clones will rub off some of the sheen and expense of the vintage market. Low prices mean access, and access means lots of reality checks when some venerable device sounds like a wet sock.
I am in favour of this Behringer Thing.