Family, work and elektron

Cheers to that :beers:

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Ha thatā€™s wild. Juggle three wearing ten of those midi controller rings. Thereā€™s some real weird gear out there these days, Iā€™m curious to hear it used practically

Yeah, itā€™s a funny thing how your perspective can change as you age. I wouldnā€™t want to have to fly around the world constantly pulling all nighters at festivals anymore. Iā€™d rather be at home with my wife and son where I can hopefully make an important difference to them. I have so much more going on now that I have to try to find time for myself to write a track now and then or work on a painting, etc. It seems that so few people even go to shows to connect with artists anymore, itā€™s about drugs and drink first and foremost. For sure, this has been a problem for many years but I canā€™t find it personally stimulating to know that what Iā€™m working on is essentially meaningless.

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I saw it, it looks amazing, the balls are also midi controller :slight_smile:

At that age, you need something durable for the kiddo to bang on. My 16 month old loves smashing the keys of my old Roland XP50 because itā€™s placed at her height on a table, thing is like a tank. It connects to my other synths, so she plays keys and I twiddle the knobs. She always tries to play my Digitone or MD if she has a chance, I think she likes the clickiness of those buttons the most.

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Our son -26months- is banned from the music room until he can handle his new toolsā€¦

:x::no_entry_sign::o2::no_entry:

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seems to be the ā€œbuild your own synthā€ section
no wait,

2 synths will make one better (2 in 1)
no wait,

the new concept for elektron machines, like teenageengineering - bring your own tools for syntheses

I am selling my stuff now. Sold monitor speakers, sold Octatrack, and will sell my A4 and ah soon.
It takes a lot of cognitieve Space, energy, time and money. At the end i have music
Slowly i change, i prefer to spend my time touching slicing and baking food to end up with a meal to eat with my family.

During covid pandamic, i have been over-digitalized. Zoom, teams, remote work, and after work elektron, ableton. I prefer walking around in the forest, cooking, juggling, guitar playing, and family and friends. I sold most computers, tablets. I disconnected my WiFi and soon i will sell my last synthesizer.

It feels like a good step, i learned a lot from this community, thans you all.

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Wishing you all the best with everything wouzer drop in and say hi from time to time :slight_smile:

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Sounds like a very liberating move and by the sound of it a well thought out one. Take care and enjoy family life.

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I can really relate to this and have been on a similar journey in the past few months. I still keep some things around (guitar, op-1f, m8, beebo), but the mental relief of concentrating on fewer things in life, lowering expectations, focusing on being in the present (especially when cooking or being in the forest), reading (listening to) more books instead of watching YouTube or Netflix, and having more off-screen time in general feels very good. And I donā€™t even have kids.

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Oh yes. I tried doing music and sound engineering for a while, alongside a day job and new parenting. My day job is ā€œa career jobā€ so I wanted to keep it going well. After a few months, I stopped music. I kept most of my gear and restarted when my kid reached about 8. (I could have started sooner, but put that time into kicking off a wider social life again first). Iā€™m nearly 2 years into my ā€œrestartā€, and finding my music energy is very variable and Iā€™m much less productive than I hopedā€¦ but Iā€™m learning to be ok with that and still enjoying it. YMMV.

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I guess this really depends on what making music is to you.
i actually got back into music after my second child was born.

i have three kids and to me sitting with my synths is a way of regaining my energy. but my expectations of my interaction with my synths is basically non existent. sometimes i manage to scrape up a song, other times i jam, sometimes i just sit and tweak a synth or make a cool patch.

For me, my synths have been one of the bigger sources of relief and reenergizing in my life.

edit: and furthermore my kids love to play with my synthsā€¦ they especially love the OP-1, my four year old has learned how to sample his voice into the synth samples, so i have a bunch of patches with him screaming into the mic :laughing:. sometimes we sit together and patch my modular and let them patch and turn knobs and sliders and its been really cool to see them interact with my synths like that.

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I ā€œmadeā€ my kid watch Sisters With Transisters earlier this year. The following day we made rubber band bass and spooky lead melodies with my OctaTrack and Syntrx. Theyā€™re amused and sort of interested, but rarely ask to play without prompting,. They seem pretty capable of expressing moods and tones through sound (piano improv), but really struggle to be interested in the more systematic tutorials and practice that helps ā€œlearn an instrumentā€. I can empathise: I was/am pretty similar.

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A full-time work, a wife, a 3 yo child here. I know exactly what you mean. Donā€™t sell your gear, time will bring you back to music soon or later. An advice: look truly to your daily routine and you will discover that your time to play music is more destroyed by the fucking smartphone than by family and work. Switch it off in the evening and come back to real life.

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ive found this to be true as well

This. Digital detox.

Do it. 30 somethings and younger seem hopelessly hooked on their phones, sad state of affairs.

I went to the seaside for the weekend, the amount of young parents staring into screens whilst ignoring their kids was depressing, I lost count of the number of toddlers running in front of me and nearly copping a knee cap to the face, because their parents were too busy doing ā€œimportantā€ stuff on their phones rather than looking out for their kids. Really weird.

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Mid 40s here. Caught myself being almost this bad more than once. Usually on Elektronauts. Stop being so nice, everyone.

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Enjoy the time with your family! There will always still be synths in the future whenever you feel like getting back into it.

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I think it is not about time, but More about making contact with my direct environment. It relaxes me, and brings more to the table for me.
I almost sold all i have, try to buy nothing, love my vinyl connection and my phone makes me (a little) nerveus.

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