A rant about obsessive gearlust v informed purchases

The Lounge General Discussion
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Oppressive gearlust or an informed purchase ?TRTING TO COMBAT MK2 MANIA

There’s enough for our need but not for our greed -Gandhi

All due respects to fellow elektronauts and I am guilty of gearlust also but isn’t this MK2 MANIA a little extreme ,have we really pushed the gear that we have in all’s it’s sonic range and functions or because of not being at peace with ourselves are we just chasing the latest and greatest because of false prestige and false ego, social comparison and gearlust .85% of us elektonauts are coming from electro ,techno ,acid ,where the originators of those sounds in Chicago, Detroit and Europe buying £1400 drum machines ? ,no they where not ,they where in the D.i.y ethos of pushing there gear and running it through cheap fx but they ended up rocking the world and creating new genres ,other than Cenk After all the technical talk of us elektronauts ,I don’t here on YouTube any decent tracks done on elektron gear .i don’t hear the funk ,I don’t hear the groove I don’t hear the atmosphere ? I don’t feel it tripping ,I don’t see it transforming I just see power crazed guys chasing the top spec gear but no soul to there sound .i am being pushed by the mk2 hype as well but I thought wait a minute why not run my A4 through the Analog heat and see if I can beef up the the beats and hey presto ,the A4 for beats with the heat is an awesome drum machine .chasing the new gear unless you really don’t have its sound or features is a sign of not practicing on your gear enough and knowing yourself both spiritually and musically .for these forums to be helpful for gods sakes let’s separate addiction g.a.s from advice that can help people make informed decisions and purchases

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So when are you gettin the mk2 :joy:
And dude use some paragraphs next time.
That was hard work

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I thought the formatting fitted well with the rant approach. Clearly wrestling with an existential crisis, wish you well on your journey. And agree on getting more out of what we have.

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Nobody is stopping anyone using shit old gear pushed through FX, there’s a whole bunch of people who thrive on it. People used to ride horses for miles, changed the world. I’ll still take a modern car over a horse though. Anyway have you seen the price of an 808? A 303 now? An MPC3000? Suddenly the £1400 sampler drum machine in 2018 doesn’t sound so outrageous.

I get where you’re coming from, you can’t buy funk, work with what you’ve got etc and I think a lot of people here would agree with you written in a more articulate manner. check out the other anti-gas thread, all these points have been agreed on by the majority over and over. Ive said it before and I’ll say it again there’s a ton of shit music out there, but people are using the gear. There’s such an abundance of bad music that there is surely some stuff you like in there. But anyway, criticising new elektron boxes and people who buy them on elektronauts is preaching to the devil

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Isn’t it the same old story? … :wink:

Every unit of gear is a tool only and we musicians are responsible for what we do with our tools.

I totally agree on the fact that often equipment is not used to the extend possible and that there is a superstition that new gear will help to achieve things better, where we did struggle. Everbody must come to this insight individually, eventually.

But GAS can also be the sign of uneducated purchase. Not understanding what we want or need, what the gear can do, and think that we have found the right gear is an easy trap to get in. Repeat this cylcle and we have GAS … :wink:

GAS is only a bad thing, if it has become some kind of addiction …

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The thing is… you don’t hear the things you are looking for from people using the gear. However other people might hear something that inspires them. I’ve been making music with synthesizers for nearly 40 years now, and I am totally inspired by what people are doing with the Elektrons. I am hearing more innovative and exciting electronic music now than in the past 40 years. I honestly think the Elektron sequencer has been a massive game-changer for electronic music. The Machinedrum and the Octatrack almost certainly irrevocably changed electronic music. Parameter locks were a major boon to electronic musicians. Even Roland is using them now.

The MkII units are Elektron’s way of keeping the machines in production while offering some new goodies to newcomers and, in fact, many of those things are features we users asked for. No one forces us to upgrade, and each individual must make the decision for themselves whether it is worth it to do so. For some, it will be. I upgraded my Octatrack to MkII because I liked a few of the new design choices and they were almost immediately helpful in my workflow. Will I change music forever by using those changes? No. However, I will enjoy it more which in turn will allow me to make better use of what little time I have to make music and that’s what matters.

I am not in a hurry to get an Analog Four MkII, because I prefer the Analog Keys format of that instrument. However, I will almost certainly be buying a MkII AR, because the built-in sampling saves me time and can be inspirational in the drum machine format.

For a lot of people, it might be gearlust, but for many it may be a desire to use tools that offer us the fastest, most enjoyable path from our brains to our ears.

When I started making electronic music in 1980, there were only a few variations on a theme available and most of them cost as much as a new car (Prophet, Oberheim, etc). Now there is a huge amount of affordable gear for a newcomer to sift through to find what works for them. Can the search become addictive? Yeah, most searches for enlightment and satisfaction can. I for one am just glad to live in a time where there are so, so many options to explore. I am not full of gear lust, but full of gear joy.

I am not, by the way, disagreeing with your decision to stick with your A4 and AH - if they are inspiring you to make music, you certainly shouldn’t allow yourself to become distracted by shiny new toys. I’m just not convinced that all that many people are likely to be chasing after these new versions because of some misguided gear lust. I see the term G.A.S. used an awful lot these days, but it’s used just as often to justify a position of not buying gear as it is a motive to buy more gear. This too, is a reasonable approach. It’s all about inspiration or the possibility of being inspired. We all have our own methods of achieving that goal.

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Hi Scot are you the same Scot solida that did the tutorial on the A4 and how to get a moog prog rock sound from it? .If so wow I thought that was great .Thankyou and thanks for your reply . :grinning:To clarify i was reading the discussion on elektronauts forum about mk1 and mk2 Analog Rytm and wether to upgrade or not .At the end of reading ,my mind was reeling and I was thinking Ebay 2 Nd hand mk1 or should i buy a mk2 but then I thought my god no stop !..How much more gear,expense as well as time learning a new machine ,why don’t I just use the A4 for beats run it through the analog heat ,and wow it sounds great .! This then got me thinking about pushing the gear that i already own,and knowing when to upgrade ,rather than being driven by addicts nature and gearlust , :grinning: I ve also been into synths since 1989 I grew up using the moog source and the sequential circuits pro one and the Jupiter 4 .I love what elektron have done with there boxes also. I presently own and love my analog 4 mk1 digitakt and heat .consciousness prevailing over ones purchases and decision making was my point .

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No puns intended those days a tr909 costs 3000! So we are stil making techno on cheap gear :grin::grin::grin:, i wasn’t on the MK2 train hype at all until, i got the digitone ( mY first FM SYNTH in 22 years or music making) but maannn those encoders are so sweet & those buttons… really great but i will upgrade When my boxes dies.

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Yep, that’s me. Glad you liked the video. I really need to make more!

I agree. I just finished an epic-length Berlin School track with a lot of different instruments, and I used the AK to provide the kick drum throughout. I love it for drums.

Oh I miss my old Moog Source so very much. One of my favorite synths ever. I also had a JP4 for a long time. Cool synth!

Like I said, I totally agree with your decision to do exactly that. Any path that inspires you is the right path to take. I often do exactly the same thing - something new comes out and I think “can I do anything new with that? Or does it make what I want to do easier?” Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it’s no. I am almost always inspired by trying to find out. One of my favorite Kyma patches stemmed from trying to talk myself out of buying a Monomachine. I built what I imagined to be similar in Kyma. My argument failed, and I bought a Monomachine anyway (and I love it!), but in the process I also came up with something cool in Kyma that I would not have made otherwise.

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https://xuiqen.bandcamp.com/album/moir

imo, these guys are killing it .

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:joy:

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I think you seem to already know your answer, just work on controlling your own GAS and not getting excited by shinny new hyped stuff. If your getting GAS from reading other people’s opinions or GAS, that is actually your GAS… :joy:
I read all the same stuff on here, I don’t want any gear right now, and my last gear purchase was over 3 years ago. You just got to hone in on those feelings and control them for yourself…

Also, this is a gear forum, not a random sample of the Earth’s population. People on gear forums are lots more obsessed with gear :smile:. I’ve learned to accept the things that go on and still navigate my way around here and have fun, once in awhile I get sucked into reacting to something I don’t like but I’m getting better at just avoiding those things and focusing on the parts I enjoy…

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Great topic y’all

Having an MK2 is not the source of blame.

I think we can all agree that if a hardware platform was good to begin with, then a conscious decision to NOT improve upon that is silly.

This is a complex interaction between desire, imagination of one’s self in a creative act, and the overcoming of resistance when actually creating, and maybe musical skill is somewhere in the mix.

I assert that it is actually extremely threatening to take creative risks, especially because there is this illusion of “community” thanks to the internet. We are all somehow a “part” of the electronic music universe and therefore subject to having our every creation scrutinized and compared to the existing universe of amazing songs.

An effectively-sized creative workgroup should be maxed at like 10 people who are all willing to listen to every track that hits the table and offer brutally honest but not personally-directed criticism.

Anyway, I digress. Creativity happens when tools are used creatively…it’s hard to do if you don’t master a tool and gain an intimate knowledge of its functions. To be honest, I actually see the MK2-ization a respecting of that truth. Rather than spraying out new euro modules from some hose, Elektron is on the other end of the spectrum…being one of the few who continues the lifespan of a single product over years so that we can become adept.

In order to keep-in-check our human tendency toward materialism and consumption, I think the the discussion should focus on creative resistance and the cold hard truth that there is a line that some hobbyists eventually cross and others don’t (and there’s nothing “bad” about that)

Steve Jobs said “real artists ship” and that means that the courage to post material and share your work, and “release” it into the world for criticism is necessary to get past the stage of “hobbyist”…

But what we’re lacking are “filtering” mechanisms in this day and age; gates of quality control. That used to be a record company and then after that a DJ.

I say the solution is to start your own YouTube channel with only videos of Elektron-based music that YOU find worthwhile. BE CRITICAL, BE DISCERNING. Let’s not worry about feelings here…let’s try and elevate that which deserves to be elevated and create, as Jordan Peterson calls it, a heirarchy of competence. How else can you incentivize people to up their game?

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Early house and techno does sometimes get romanticised that it was all about poor kids buying 909’s in pawn shops for $20, but back in 86 this gear cost a fair bit as it was still fairly new, and most of those tracks were recorded in commercial studios, not necessarily super prestigious state of the art studios, but nonetheless still not quite just 4 bits of equipment recorded in a bedroom as is often told.

As for ‘the funk’ that comes from the user not the gear, a good example of this is Legowelt who will quite happily make a track using whatever he sees fit, yes he has a lot of vintage gear but he also has a lot of cheap stuff like Korg microstation, 90’s romplers and so on.

On the mkII I don’t feel the need to upgrade, I won’t rule it out but I’m not prepared to slaughter away my mkI’s in order to do so, the way I see it is the added features on the analogs are worth a couple hundred extra but not 500 which is basically the secondhand mkI price difference to a new mkII. I did get a OTmkII but I still have my mkI, the extra buttons were the main draw though and the price difference is much easier to swallow if I sell my mkI.

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You could try the other GAS, Give Away Synths…

You might be surprised at how good this could work, however counter intuitive. You’ll be doing someone a favor, score good karma points, you’ll have less parameters to worry about, and you can prove to yourself that you are stronger than the other gas… If you still get the other gas, Give Away Synths again…
Sooner or later you will become completely empowered with yourself knowing you have conquered gas and glad that you could actually be comfortable giving something away without needing anything in return. This new found power can bring inspiration to your new minimal setup which you will now get more done on with less distractions… :wink:

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I like the give away synths concept

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I like this comment :content:

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I’ll take one to help you on your path. Cheers

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:laughing: I like where this is going …I heard a lecture recently where social scientist,s have concluded that humans feel more happiness from giving not getting …My original post though was just a rant about gearlust and pushing the gear that we have to its full extent ,in an effort to combat addicts nature . A rant by definition doesn’t always have to follow the letter of the law but the spirit of the law ,or the spirit of the “thing “is attempted to be conveyed,Sometimes in passion and ignorance and sometimes eloquently articulated …Iam a 48 year old londoner :uk: but i don’t always speak the queens english ….ooopsss :grinning: . I love Elektron gear, my first boxes being the M.D .UW and A.R. MK1 …There are some brilliantly talented Elektronuats out there on youtube and on this forum, i really appreciate all the tutorials and insights .Electronic music is hugely diverse and yes i very much agree with Scot Solida that the 80,s electronica that i am reminiscing about back then was impossible for most people to afford …So yes i am grateful for the facility that Elektron is giving us now ,back then would of cost the price of a house …But being an old school bloke out of the uk growing up from 1984 with electro ,rare groove and early techno ,acid i was just sharing a little grumble that i am not seeing many Elektron users on youtube demonstrating that early techno funky worm baseline heavy groove sound ….i was looking on youtube for more examples of that old school techno style played on elektron gear …Anyway rant in all its ignorance foolishness and passion ,after all chastisements and agreements are done can open up discussions ,education and changes of direction …? A change of direction for me has been from reading OPEN MIKES REPLY i already feel like giving away some of my gear ,but only in my will when i die…:grinning:ha ha …and from Scots Solidas reply i will happily eat humble pie now and wake up to the fact that yes £1400 is a bit pricey but hey compared to back then in early 80,s we are getting a bargin …so thank you for your reply,S my consciousness and attitude has been changed .Ahhhh .time for a cup of tea :coffee:️ … …As vinney jones said in lock stock and two smoking barrels ……”ITS BEEN EMOTIONAL

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