Stupid as a Keyboard Player

A remark below implying that keyboard players might be wasting the Receptor multi-plug in module was inspired by one of the demos on the Receptor site, a video of a professional "keyboard whiz" playing different patches and mostly showing off his fast, Rick Wakeman-esque fingering techniques. He says "here's an organ" or "here's a glitchy electronica sound" and proceeds to play the same type of riff, each with a different state of the art timbre.

In the movie Moog Herb Deutsch recalls that, in the early stages of designing a portable music synthesizer, Vladimir Ussachevsky recommended that Robert Moog not add a keyboard, because he felt that would encourage playing the instrument in a traditional way, as opposed to discovering new sounds it was capable of. That observation was prescient since most players went on to use the Moog as a kind of spacy organ. And they still are: the fellow in the demo has this powerful box packed with elaborate soundware (including Reaktor and all its DIY instruments) and he's using it to play prog licks.

I wonder if Duchamp's phrase "stupid as a painter" might also apply to musicians who think mainly with their hands.