Kids and working constantly. Does wonders. The best part of it all though is watching them grow and adapt. It reminds me that we are programmed to build amazing things with next to nothing in terms of resources. Puts music production in focus if you think in terms of the essentials. Gear is fun but you all would still probably make great tracks with a couple key pieces.
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My gear lust usually subsides between the months of November and May.
But seriously, sitting at a desk half the day for work, is no goodā¦āoh, let me see whatās happening on Elektronauts. Oh, Roland released some new Boutique. Oh, when are they coming out? Ohā¦:ā
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And the nauts are talking about meditation in a gear lust thread and I didnāt even instigate it, itās the dawn of a new eraā¦ 
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I fully support the idea of meditation. I cannot recommend many books on the subject but I will say āBorn to Runā by Christopher McDougall would be on my short list. Being chained to a desk as a tech professional, like many here, I was concerned that I needed to make changes and be proactive about my health as I was heading towards 40 years of age. I read this book as I was working up to being able to complete my first 5k run without feeling like hell afterward. 3 months later I ran my first half marathon and havenāt stopped since. I never ran as a youth but now at 42 years of age I can confidently say that I am in better physical shape now than I was when I was 25.
What I never realized, prior to this stage in life, is that running becomes very meditative and spiritual once you get past that whole notion of focusing on how much the activity can suck. I also realized late in life that I am blessed with an unusual ability to recover very quickly. Like the book says, I was born to do this and I only wish I had discovered this earlier in life. I was reminded of something meaningful to me personally on that first half marathon: sometimes itās worth doing difficult things that force you out of your element; in the process you might find yourself surprised at how well you did in the endeavor. Anyway, this led me to make another difficult decision and make a career change that now has me working for myself.
OK, back to the gear talk nowā¦
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/Book GAS/
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thisā¦thereās never a dull moment, and so, Iām forced to carve time out. Whether itās waking up at the crack of dawn or staying up later than usual, I find time to make stuff.
Itās so easy to move into the latest and greatest or constantly tweak your setup, but actually sitting down and making work that youāre proud of is very hard work.
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Heres a repost from the last time this topic came up:
Psychology is the key, as always. If you truly are interested in living āthe examined lifeā you may find some very healthy and helpful ways of dealing with it. Sadly this seems to be a minority concern in the overall scheme of society - and by extension, its economics.
When it comes to growing up and out of particular phases, situations and so on, the natural order is rarely outmatched. You can certainly water a plant, give it great fertilizer, place it in the absolute best environment available and so forth, but you cant necessarily tell it to produce a crop overnight. Of course, creating all the best possibile surrounding conditions is far better than just ignoring it and letting it whither away to nothing. And yet doing anything productive in this capacity will certainly require a fair amount of action, attention and concern that is basically against the mainstream current - and thats where all the āinteresting timesā begin to happen. So, good luck.
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Amen.
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Bills Hicks: Itās just a ride.
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AdamJay,
As a therapist, Iām well versed in mindfulness, it is an ongoing topic in my field. As with most things, there are aspects I like, and some not so much. As a Christian, Iām a follower of Jesus, and consider some Buddhist views beneficial and practical, but ultimately he was a man like us, whereas Jesus is God. My prayer is meditational Jesus is my source of peace, purpose and life. Without Him, Iām hopelessly trying to play a guitar with no strings, or a Rytm with no samplesā¦
I fully support you and your religious beliefs and wish you all the best, but we may want to leave religion as a personal choice and not go to far into such topics as comparing Jesus to Buddha, I think thatāll be a bit too much for this forumā¦ Some of us canāt even compare synths without creating a stirā¦
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Open_Mike,
Are you a monitor?
No, and I hope I didnāt offend you, that definitely was not my intentionā¦
No, I wasnāt offended. I totally get your point. I was responding to AdamJayās suggestions and questions. Sometimes itās kind of interesting where those conversations can go. A few years ago on a Line 6 thread it went crazy in that direction. Ironically, I tended to challenge the Christian views for not respecting the non-Christian views!
Anyways, peace
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I agree that itās difficult to suggest a good book on meditation without simultaneously suggesting a ābrandā of meditation. Iāve noticed a trend in the U.S. to try to say, as @AdamJay did, āmindfulness meditationā as a way of bypassing those challenges, seeing it as a general tool that doesnāt necessarily have as many strings attached. That seems really wise to me, so I agree with the above, and encourage some open-minded exploration, probably even some trial and error. Some would say that improvising on Elektron equipment can be a form of meditation or a practice of being mindful, present, in the moment, or awakeā¦and Iād say that some of the same tools that lead to that kind of experiential learning are quite relevant to both.
So with the caveats aside, but really meaning it when I say your conscience (or however you would like to frame it) can be your guide, Iām going to mention two books that are deeply tied to specific practices but that Iāve found useful. Iāve been practicing, and sometimes wrestling with, mindfulness for decades, including a Masterās in Fine Arts degree from the only fully-accredited Buddhist university in the U.S., where meditation was required in order to graduate.
So thought one is a founder of that school, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He was a reincarnated tulku, but also someone who, for better or worse, was a little nutty and helped to bring Buddhism to America, and maybe even vice versa. His Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior is probably the best-known work, but Cutting through Spiritual Materialism is up there too.
The second thought might be just as controversial because itās Transcendental Meditation, but the musician, director, and painter David Lynch wrote an unusual kind of self-help book or guide to creativity called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. Maybe itās best to flip through them at a library or bookstore? Neither one strikes me as altogether heavy-handed or preachy, but both are deeply connected with specific practices and even dogmas.
So I guess Iām hemming and hawing because I feel a little weird suggesting what some might even call religious texts here on a synthy discussion board that, at least sometimes, inspires passionate debateābut in context I think there are some generally applicable aspects of creativity that make me willing to say that, based on whatās coming up here in this thread, those two might prove to beneficial, or they might not. Then, to offer something a little different but that I can endorse more fully, Julia Cameronās The Artistās Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity isnāt about meditation as much as developing a solitary practice of creativity, but itās something that has helped lots of people become more attuned to being creative. She can seem a little preachy, but the truthās that she helped write the movie Taxi Driver, wrote for Rolling Stone, and worked on a hit 80s tv show about crime and drugs in Miami. So her brand is probably trying to get people to buy more of her books, but I doubt anyone could take The Artistās Way seriously and then conclude that one wasnāt worth the price of admission.
And I will check out the books @konputa and @AdamJay recommended, because those sound great, where the science of meditation and the need for proactive health changes are both things Iām really into right now. All best wishes on all of this!
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sometimes i get wet dreams over mfb tanzbƤr kicks
I just cannot read these words without hearing this song in the back of my head.
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I just want to say I love that the forum is talking about meditation and spirituality/religion, and clarify that my only point above was that it might cross a line if we start saying one is better than another, but by no means do I want to discourage any conversationā¦ And this of course is just my own opinion anywayā¦ 
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I think it is worth also mentioning that mindfulness and meditation are not necessarily about spirituality and religion, since they are practices which anyone regardless of their beliefs can benefit from.
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im planning on the a4 mk2 upgrade, for me the individual outs bring something new that Iāve been wishing the mk1 had. I pre-ordered but that doesnāt mean I wonāt change my mind (I make lots of bad decisions). Pretty often I would run some of my euro oscillators into the A4, use the filters and get close to happiness, but then Iād wish I could apply some of the OT FX to just one of the voices, etc. A lot of people have said they would rather get 2 A4 MK1s but im trying to keep the footprint as small as possible and Iām already rolling an OT+ Heat. The enhanced distortion is also appealing to me, in my head its probably much different than IRL but interesting nonetheless. CV/Expression inputs might be cool, Iād want to run some euro modulation in but I guess that would depend on the voltage specs (Iāve never used CV/Expression in on any synths so I donāt know how that works).
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