Many years ago I learned about what I thought of as the “synthesizer wars”. Back then, the Roland keyboard synthesizer worked by creating an instrument’s audio waveform entirely by procedural methods. This is more or less the musical equivalent of the way procedural textures work in computer graphics.
In contrast, the Yamaha synthesizer worked by having lots an lots of different recorded samples of instrument sounds. To create variations in tone it would blend samples together.
Since I am a big fan of procedural textures (for obvious reasons), I really liked the Roland approach. Alas, the Yamaha did better in the marketplace, because it was easier to create sounds for.
The Roland required somebody with real skill to write the procedure that synthesizes a given sound. The Yamaha just required lots of sound samples. That’s a problem you can solve without a lot of skill, if you’re willing to throw enough money at it.
This was a dichotomy that has repeated in a lot of computer fields. Should you try to build a procedure to describe something algorithmically, or do you find an actual sample of the thing out in the world and then modify that? Each approach has advantages and disadvantages.
More tomorrow.