Hehe, thanks for watching me all this time, @blaize! I was watching through my old tutorials in preparation for a new DT2 tutorial, and I realized I was thinking a lot more creatively back then than I’m doing now. Maybe out of necessity, since I only had the OG DT. Discovering new techniques was a lot of fun, and it was gratifying getting comments like “wtf how did you do that??” and actually explaining how I did that.
I made my own bass sound with the stock saw single cycle waveform and stock noise sample on the OG DT and it became my signature bass for a long time. Now I have four different Machines on the DN2 and 4 stacked voices on the A4 to make bass sounds with, and tons of different effects to beef them up through the 404. Which is all amazing, but I feel like I sounded more like “me” back when I had fewer options to work with.
Thanks for the thought provoking input, @LORNIVERSE. The answer is mostly yes to all three, actually.
- We’re not tight on money, but it could be better served elsewhere. Started eating healthier (costs more), been working out more (could get a new set of dumbbells or other gym equipment), spending more time on activities that cost money (indoor climbing, ice skating with our kid, etc). Got enough to pay the bills, luckily :).
- I do have a lot of fun exploring gear. I usually post the results here Current sounds coming from your gear (Part 3) and share it with a few friend on discord. Lots of fun discussions! I’m not sure if it’s just a me-problem, but I do get this itch to upload on youtube when enough time has gone by without posting anything. It was a lot more intense when I first started in 2019, I posted maybe 3 videos every week, but I’ve managed to get away from that to prevent burning out. I’m spending time on other hobbies and hanging out with friends and family without the urge to upload, but the itch to do so isn’t completely gone.
- I have this ritual of setting up my gear to make music, and putting it away when I’m done. I have a bigger desk now than when I first started making music with hardware, but not big enough to have a permanent setup. It’s pretty quick to set up though, got an audio interface with an L/R jack cable on my desk and a couple of Elektron PSUs plugged in at all times, so I just have to take a groovebox or two from the shelf and plug them in and I’m good to go.
Thanks for the advice @moving_particles! I have a patreon where I share my project files, and a cynical view of my channel could be that it’s advertisement for my patreon. “Wanna figure out how I did all this with just 4 voices? Join my patreon and have a look at the project files yourself!” I’ve been careful not to turn music into a jobby though, only uploading when I feel like it, using gear that I want to use. But youtube clickability has absolutely influenced what gear I do want to use. I think this is something I have to figure out, but “Sell the gear that is right for you, not YouTube” is definitely where I want to be.
I also think I might get a lot of relief to just sell and move on. When I switched from Windows to Linux and no longer have (easy) access to my go-to plugins, I think it kinda unleashed this urge to downsize. I’ve thought about downsizing for a long time, but now that I’ve started with switching my OS it’s a lot more in my face than it’s ever been.