SteveCastellano.com

The end of the year is a time for lists, and as I am a writer it only seems natural that my list is about words. And because I am cranky, it is equally natural that my list is about words I don’t like.

To be clear, I am not fascistic about the English language; language is an organic thing that grows and changes over time, and I accept that. I have biases of course, but I will be the first to admit that many of them are subjective. They are, however, well-considered, and difficult to refute without being cursed and derided roundly. And because my intention is not only to deride but to educate, I offer suggestions here that will make your discourse at least as effective, if not more, once you have eliminated the offending words from your vocabulary.

Usability
The shame about this word being on my list is that there’s nothing wrong with it. But we in the business of creating websites and other things people can mess around with on the internets (I’m not going to say “online experiences” because that one narrowly escaped this list and may yet find its way into an addendum) have been using it for a long time now, and too many of the people we’re saying it to still have no idea what we’re talking about. Maybe a new word would help; I’m willing to try anything at this point. Suggested alternative: sense-makingness.

Tout
This word was ruined for me by a hipster creative director who used to come into my office and put his stinky Converse-clad feet up on my desk while we were talking. He is also remembered for unironically uttering the words, while attempting to high-five me, “Come on man, don’t leave me hanging.” Irritating dig-me personalities aside, this word just sounds ugly. And when you use it as a noun, the etymological connotation is of a shill or con man. Is that what you meant to say? I didn’t think so. Suggested alternatives: sell, advertise.

Amuse bouche
I’ve got nothing against dragging non-English words and phrases into your conversation or writing if they actually express something that doesn’t have a precise English equivalent. Ennui, for example, is distinct from mere boredom. The German language has a lot of unique and appropriate compounds like weltschmerz and schadenfreude that you can’t really duplicate in English. But not only does amuse bouche not describe anything that can’t be described equally well in English, it is composed of a couple of words that pretty much any Canadian student learned in grade 4 French class, and so my brain hears “amuse mouth” before it hears “appetizer.” And then my brain becomes angry. Suggested alternatives: appetizer, palate cleanser, taste.

Optics
This is a great example of people trying to use a word in order to sound clever and failing miserably. That’s pretty commonplace in the marketing industry, but the misuse of “optics” has infected the world of journalism, and I suspect PR flackery was the carrier. I don’t have any objection to this word when it appears in its natural habitat. But if you’re saying “the optics aren’t good” and you’re not talking about the kit lens that came with your entry-level DSLR camera, consider my objection lodged, and if you’re lucky it’s not lodged where I’d like it to be. Optics already means something guys, and it’s not what you’re using it for. Suggested alternatives: look, looks. As in “It looks good” or “It doesn’t look good.”

Olympic
I have little to no interest in sport but even if that wasn’t the case I don’t think you could convince me that there aren’t enough world championships already. In fact, if your sport of choice doesn’t have a means of determining who in the world is best at it outside of the Olympics, please consider the possibility that no one really cares. And speaking of not really caring, all the Olympic city selection scandals, bribed judges, boycotts, doping, and sponsorship saturation have pretty much obliterated any recollection of this tradition’s noble and historic origins. Suggested alternatives: None. Do us all a favour and pack it in. Special Olympics get a special dispensation, of course.

Additional suggestions are welcome in the comments.

I’ve been using the free Kore Player since it was introduced in the spring of 2008. I have started a few projects over that time by just flipping through the sounds looking for inspiration, and Native Instruments has been pretty decent about releasing free soundpacks, so now I have a few hundred to choose from. Sound quality and variety are good, and you can’t really beat the price. The latest release, Holiday Selection 2009, has some very interesting rich, textural and ambient sounds. Not all the sounds are great; the Hammond stands out to me in a “not sure why they included it” way; it doesn’t have a Leslie simulator, which makes it kind of pointless. Likewise I’m not sure I see the point of a couple of heavily processed sounds from the Sax & Brass package. Realistic sounding sax and brass with articulations are hard to come by, but neither of the sounds included in this set fall into that category.

Having said that, there’s a lot of interesting and thoughtful sound design in this compilation. This is definitely not a GM soundset. There are plenty of unique evolving sounds, and a decent complement of vintage-style reproductions. Even the Urban Arsenal shows remarkable depth and grit – and I tend to avoid self-styled “hip-hop” collections as they are often derivative and predictable.

Obviously Kore Player is a sales tool, but as bait it’s mighty tasty. You get a free instrument with a bunch of cool sounds and the expected number of throwaways – and that’s all fair enough, sound choice is subjective. Then you will bump your head against the instrument’s built-in limitations, which may frustrate you enough to convince you to buy at the full Kore 2 software package or one of the softsynths whose sound engines are represented therein.

The main limitation is that you can only tweak those parameters that the sound designers have made available. If you want to mess with the filter and that doesn’t happen to be assigned to one of the knobs you’re SOL – this as I understand it is the nature of Kore. Likewise if you want to hear it arpeggiated but the Kore arp isn’t activated for that particular patch, you are (literally) left to your own devices. The eight variations that most of the sounds have are based on tweaks of these parameters, so some variations provide less variety than you might want.

I also have some complaints about the interface, due in part to the fact that it doesn’t play nice with my controller (Motif ES 7). Load time for patches is unreasonably long on my MacBook Pro dual 2.4 Intel. You have to double-click (or cursor then hit enter) to load a sound and then wait, which makes auditioning sounds a bit of a chore. You can rate sounds, which is handy, but you can’t edit the list or create your own user patch library.

So to sum up, it’s a great deal and a useful instrument for people with zero budget, or anyone who could use a few hundred more quality sounds at their disposal (and who couldn’t); ultimately unsatisfying for tweakers and sound designers (I am a Reaktor user with a lot of vintage hardware in my past), but a good way to test-drive the sound of the synths on which the patches were originally created. Personally I’m not sure who the market is for Kore; maybe the same sort of people who bought ROMplers back in hardware days. But I wish that something like the very interesting “Sonic Fiction” soundset was available for Kontakt or Absynth rather than just Kore, because I’ve got the Komplete 6 upgrade on order and I’d love to get under the hood of some of those sounds and mess around with them.