Why do musicians choose synthesizers over real instruments?

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Oh okay, but even a sampled piccolo is still a real instrument though, isn't it, because it is still recorded samples of the instrument. Doesn't that still count as a real instrument as oppose to a synthesizer which is just an instrument that produces synth sounds, which are not the same as recorded samples of a real instrument?

a digitized real instrument such as with Roland's Sound Fonts. they have some excellent wurlitzer sound fonts, btw. but for the purposes of music recording/production it is synthesized. yamaha and roland pioneered the most realistic synthesized/sampled instrument sounds, to the point where there was push-back from real musicians fearing being put out of work [which in large part they have been, at least in hollywood].

There have been a few unpublicized cases where professional musicians "accidentally" caused damage to synths, in much the same way English textile workers "accidentally" damaged textile machinery in the 19th century.

The term "Luddite" has since come to mean a person opposed to industrialization, automation, computerization, or new technologies in general.

^i wonder what modern "sabot" they used to do their dirt?

In at least one instance, it was beer.

the anthropomorphist in me feels sorry for the synth that got shorted out in beer.

Oh okay, well just to be clear a sampled instrument is actual recorded samples of the instrument right? Why do people count this as synth then, if it's the actual instrument recorded in samples. To me that should not count as the same thing, unless people still count it as the same thing?

Not even sure if I should be answering this one as I spent maybe from 11 to 18 playing guitar and starting bands and from 18 to 30 making acid techno and drum n bass (ie. electronic music genres).

If your understanding of electronic music is 'faking' real instruments then I don't think you're making contact with it.

Now, if you're hearing pop synthetic rubbish that they'd play in top 40 dance clubs then sure, I follow that far but... if you'd apply that same logic to serious electronic music I can't follow. The goal of serious electronic music is exploring emotional and psychological spaces that are better reached by what they're using. IMHO it's a different way of being a psychonaut. There are a lot of people with a lot to say, a lot to communicate - and communicate beautifully - that's better communicated with sound pallets other than a guitar, piano, or banjo.

I could leave examples but I worry that I'd drag this off point and I'd rather be more specific if we got to that.

synthesizers do both. to synthesize something means either to assemble (something) by synthesis, especially chemically [e.g.,"the drug was first synthesized in 1929"], combine (a number of things) into a coherent whole.
[e.g., "pupils should synthesize the data they have gathered"] OR produce (sound) electronically or via other alternate means such as with pipe organs, electronic organs that can play music bass off of circuitry or synthesizers such as those created by Robert Moog and others that can play music based off of emulations of that same circuitry on computer chips, or read the harmonic structure of actual recorded sound samples and crib off of that. pipe organs back in the day were the original synthesizers, only they were not electronic, but they did attempt to reproduce or copy other instruments sounds including the human voice via the vox humana stops. some early electronic organ circuits came close to successfully reproducing certain instruments such as clarinet or horn. moog's original synth extended that into more instruments but there was something missing, so more complex sounds such as flute or sax or percussions required sampling to get right. where synths depart from original instrument sounds are unusual modulations [speaking not of musical key changes but the structure of waveforms] and ADSRs [Attack/Decay/Sustain/Reverb] not found in nature.

Oh okay. Is there a term to differentiate sampling from synth created by a synthesizer on it's own, rather than pre-recorded samples?

in the beginning it was called sampling, then synths that could do it were called sampling synths. i'm not really "in the business" so i don't know any more than that.

Oh okay thanks. Well sampling sounds so much closer to the real thing than synth sounds that are conjured up by the synthesizer machine itself, rather than being recorded samples of real instruments. So I consider samples to not be synth therefore, as long as they are real samples from the instrument, unless I am looking at it wrong?

it is all a matter of definition. the mellotron was a type of sampler, even though it was analog and used 1/4" recorded tapes to produce sounds. the Optigan was an unusual beastie, another type of sampling synth that used translucent floppy discs, 12" in diameter, upon which was encoded concentric circles of recorded instrument sounds encoded optical motion picture soundtrack-style, with variable width opaque stripes in circles which had the sound of various instruments on them. it was decidedly lo-fi however, with a top end of about 5000 cycles per second which was even worse than motion picture optical sound stripes at the time which would go up to about 7500 cycles per Academy spec.

Oh okay. What about the synthesizer music in Blade Runner for example. Where did those sounds come from? Real instruments in samples of any kind?

from Wiki-
Vangelis recorded, mixed and produced the score for Blade Runner in his London recording space Nemo Studios in 1982. He crafted the score on an ad-hoc basis by viewing videotapes of scenes from the film in the studio, and then improvising pieces in synchronisation with the images on the screen. He also applied the use of some foley techniques, using synthesisers to produce diegetic* and non-diegetic sounds. The most prominent synthesiser used in the score was the Yamaha CS-80, which can be prominently heard in the opening scenes. Other synthesisers employed by Vangelis included four Roland instruments: the ProMars, the Jupiter-4, the CR-5000 drum machine, and the VP-330 Vocoder Plus; a Sequential Circuits Prophet-10; a Yamaha GS1 FM synthesizer; and an E-mu Emulator sampler. A Steinway grand piano, a Yamaha CP-80 electric grand and a modified Fender Rhodes were also used. He also utilised a variety of traditional instruments, including, gamelan, glockenspiel, gong, snare drum, timpani and tubular bells.

*Diegetic sound. Sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film: voices of characters. sounds made by objects in the story. music represented as coming from instruments in the story space ( = source music)

Oh okay. Well I recognize some instruments that are real such as the timpani or saxophone. But when it comes to the instruments that do not sound real at all, that is what I would call synth. But am I applying the term wrong?