I bailed on on the whole synth YouTuber/influencer thing when one of the currently popular ones (I don’t remember who) was so desperate to release content they did a at least 20 minutes on a damn gear stand.
“Look everyone, it holds the piece of gear as advertised. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and share!!!”
I see where you’re coming from but I also think it’s about perspective. It depends how much weight you might attribute to timbre - is it a bigger revelation to add synth drums (to use your example) or would it be more of a revelation to do something innovative with rhythm? From a compositional perspective, Kraftwerk were pretty conservative and the 80s groups you mention even more so. I think it’s a very personal thing… and for me they were innovative in a way I like. In more modern times I can see the many ways in which someone like Lil Nas X is innovative in how he is a musician but I don’t really get it - but that’s OK. I’m an old duffer who’s best days are behind him.
Marc Rebillet
Man thank you so much for this here lead-
Where have I been? Love that.
Will check some of your others (already Beardy fan).
Isn’t this more to do with major changes in music technology and the fact that most technologies are reimaginings now? For example, drum machines (the very basic first few) were a completely new category so the early musicians would stand out at the time by using them instead of an acoustic kit. That’s not likely to happen nowadays because today’s new drum machines are iterative rather than completely revolutionary. But, on the flip side, look at something like the Monomachine. The first people who had it probably aren’t all that memorable (at least to me) but the ones who went deep with it over the years like Autechre or SOPHIE are almost synonymous with the machine right now. So I guess it’s whether you are judging things on YouTube views (which are naturally aided by having the first review while people are very curious to check it out) or whether you look back at what relatively successful music was made from it later on down the line.
You are right they are re-imaginings. I think on a personal level I have been way to influenced by You-tube(even more so in the last 2 years). And derive success as youtube subscribers(which i know is playing the game). Im going to start a new thread on Being Late to the Part and the benefits of being last. I always try to balance thing up 
I believe, that currently, it is not the gear that will bring you up to the stardom.
We are long past due times where new instruments made you look cool, fresh and as a genius pioneering musician. Sure, maybe for GAS driven folks or gear collectors it will still be nice eye candy. But today “golden era” of synth, where something “new” is coming from left and right, is driven mostly by nostalgia. We get same old things dressed in new clothes. How many 3 osc analog mono synth do we need really?
Sometimes there are gems coming out, but if anyone is paying more attention, you will see that most interesting things happen in DSP code and not in configurations of electronic elements.
Worth to keep in mind, that for all the gear that has been around, many new music ideas where just happy accidents where allready known or even obsolete gear was used in unintended way. It’s the use of the sound that matters, not the sound itself.
So be first, but by making new kinds of music. By buying new gear, to make same old shit, there is nothing fresh in it.
If you actually need to be the first to buy new gear to get noticed… well there can be only one then. Gonna stay online for 24/7 refreshing the news page until the Syntakt is announced😁 for my long awaited break thru.
It’s funny though because you wonder, is YouTube basically on par to an ‘album’ nowadays?
Back in the day delivery formats had finite lengths, these days they don’t. The concept of an ‘album’ is really a thing that was tied to a side a side b, 78 minutes, tape length etc. at least in terms of how long it could go for, and that in turn curated the total tracks that could fit on that medium.
But in the end peoples attention spans and appetite for media and where they can fit content into their daily lives now probably has as much of an impact in how they want to consume it.
So it’s easy to brush off YouTube videos I think as illegitimate or whatever, but we may look back in another 30 years or so as these videos being the more memorable archival moments of the time
Haha I’m kinda confused by this thread…
So the point is the most succesfull music is made by people who get new gear first? And so to be succesfull you should get new gear asap?
I might be oldschool in this regard, but to me, succesfull music is music that is enjoyable and exciting to listen to, good music. Not youtube synth influencers’ generic bs tunes they make to advertise gear for money/free stuff, even if they have the most views on yt and make a lot of money now. I don’t even regard most of these people as musicians, let alone the most succesfull ones.
I’d say the time when truly unique sounds came from new gear is 20+ years past, and people who make good, unique, interesting music are often the ones who either really know their instruments well, or dont really care what gear they use, as long as it does what they need. To make interesting music, always getting the new stuff seems like a really bad strategy to me.
Awesome Governor, I knew the style pre-dated McKee but it’s interesting to see how both inspirations allowed him to meld these two styles from Hedges & Reed.
Got more tunes for my road-trip this weekend. Thanks!
I attended a free workshop he did at a local Guitar Center and that’s where I heard him confirm learning off of Reed’s VHS tape or DVD, as well as being a fan of Hedges.
I briefly encountered Reed at one of the Summer NAMM shows, just a few years after his Homespun course came out on VHS tape. I was too starstruck to say anything coherent to him. I bought his course when it was released on DVD. His percussive style is harder on my hands than on my guitar. 
When I’m making an album, I am basically creating something that I want to listen to but cannot find anywhere. In that sense I am the first to do this. Not saying that I’m creating groundbreaking new genres, but I cannot find artists out there who sound exactly like me, so that’s the only first I really care about. I choose my instruments depending my ideas/feelings, so I would not buy an instrument just to be the first to use it, because that would be letting the gear control my creative process.
“The earliest consumers get the biggest payout”.
Is this a MLM scheme? Either way, sounds vaguely dystopian. I don’t want it.
Not too long ago, I preordered the Novation Circuit Rhythm. So I would have been among the first people not affiliated with Novation to have one. But people who were affiliated with Novation got one early. They had videos ready to go on launch. There was no scenario where I could somehow beat loopop. I wasn’t part of the launch, it turns out.
But I am one of the first people putting up videos on youtube where I’m using it. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many people doing hip-hop with it generally yet, let alone boombap type stuff. So I’m still early I guess. What that’s shaken out to is a few hundred more views on a handful of videos than I would have got on a Digitakt video. Nothing viral. Companies aren’t reaching out to send me things. I’m not assuring you that any relationship I have with said companies won’t effect my review because I’m supported by my patreon. I still don’t even have enough subscribers to get an address at youtube that’s not gibberish.
The fact of the matter is that the people who do the big first videos are all people whose videos would have been popular if they came out a month later. They’ve built an audience. It’s why they get to be first.
So nah, as far as I’m concerned, being early has not been a great marketing strategy for me. But I didn’t buy it to market myself. I bought it to make beats on the couch and in my yard. That’s been a success.
Make music. Share music. Have fun.
It seems that this thread is more of interest to people who are competing with the likes of loopop, BoBeats etc., by growing a channel through gear demos and tutorials than to those who are more focused on their own music. So the idea of people rushing out to buy Human’s League’s album because of their new sounds, seems out of place to me here (maybe that’s a sign of how the world has changed, but maybe people would have rushed out to buy the Human League’s records if they hadn’t used a Fairlight because the wrote great songs anyway). But I guess there are probably a lot of people out there who spend more time watching gear demos and tutorials than listening to new music and to them the likes of loopop and BoBeats are the people to look to for inspiration. I’m not knocking this, it’s each to their own (I’m also aware that some reviewers etc. do make good music), but it’s definitely a different world and mentality than mine.
That was Bob eats. But actually I found that video okish. I also like his Top 5 Xmas gifts for synth nerds. Otherwise his fair trade coverage (yes the journalism aspect) is also good. He looks at stuff that other YTers don’t do.
If you look for the anti thesis of this topic, check out Audiopilz.‘ „Bad Gear- the most hated audio tools in the world.“
Good.
I don’t want to be on that boat.
Quite happy missing what ever nonsense is on it.
‘If I keep changing my set up, how will I ever improve?’
Carole Riviere.
It was because of the huge coverage and news of a Fairlight coming to the Uk. The Human League were one of the very first to get one and a lot of folk had never been interested in them before. We had our family record store back then and the sales rep made a big thing of it as well It was talked a lot on the radio about it. The Fairlight sold itself.
In the end it all comes down with your personal view on what it means “to miss the boat” which boat?, the boat of gazillion followers and likes, the boat of feeling famous, the boat of gettin noticed by manufacturers so they start sending new gear, the boat of being one of the musical influencers or the first one that invented a new genre.
I totally believe that, but I still think they were good enough that they could have had success with other gear or if they had used the Fairlight later. Of course, the Fairlight was good timing for them but good artists with a strong vision will find the means to do what they want to do one way or another eventually. Anyway, that was a long time ago and my main point was that being the first to use new gear today seems to be more of interest to YouTubers who do reviews and tutorials than people who are mainly focused on making their own music.