Make the music with whatever, anything, or anything kinda close to what may possibly be the end result, just make, then tailor the sounds at a later time. Make, make, make, fail making, make again, hone your skills, get to know yourself musically, make, make, make.
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Don’t worry. It gets worse.
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Ya know…
To most people there isn’t an audible difference between wav and mp3
Even less is there a difference from one synth to another.
So, do what ya got with what ya got- appeal to the general public with your music, and from there improve the quality to appeal to the smaller demographic of synth nerds and audiophiles
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It’s not going to make music for you
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If you really want to stop GAS look at how far we’ve gone with 40 years of Cubase
It makes you reflect on how the technology gets better and we still find excuses not to write music.
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Only if one lets it.
Just dive in. Over time you’ll mold it into what serves you while you adapt right back.
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Nice
Well… most of it!
I’d prefer HQ audio. 256k isn’t great on YT. Perhaps if it were 320k at a push. Too many artefacts and then if what you produce goes to MP3 too then double whammy…
I don’t hear any VSTs with the raw sound I want.
Maybe, but I don’t want a regular bread and butter synth I can use alongside the DT live, I just want interesting synths either with a certain sound or that produce fun rhythmic stuff that I can sample off into the DT to mess around with.
Yeah some have them for sale or have a Patreon where they upload the audio… not many, or none, for the synths I’m interested in.
Yes I’m sure this contributes. ADHD impulsions don’t help either. In my case though, I’m just looking for some specific sounds, that I don’t think you can get elsewhere.
Thanks, I used to have that and deleted the whole library. I’m not looking for basic synth sounds.
These are the kinds of things I’m gassing over…
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I feel you can do 99% of this with just a Volca Drum and a Monotron Delay.
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GAS will turn into SAS. Glad i stopped digging newsgroup servers years ago. Before you now it you find yourself surrounded by piles of external harddrives full with samples which you never use because it’s more fun to do your own sound design.
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Any good examples of this?
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Oh yeah - some lovely kit there for sure. Just visually they’re beautiful. I totally get it.
Of course, except for a lucky (wealthy) few, we can’t own everything lol. I’ve found also that the more I own (often) the less I make…music is fun but it’s also work and obsessing over new kit often is a form of procrastination (I do this with vsts and m4l plugins too…I have so many I don’t even remember what I’ve purchased within a week or so of purchasing them = shameful!).
Unless I’m treating myself with something fun I really try to only buy things now if it serves a very specific purpose or fixes a problem. I’m also to the point now where I have too much and so I try to sell before (or very shortly after) making a new purchase.
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Hey these synths seem very interesting ! Thanks for mentioning them.
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My dad has loads of tools in his mechanic garage, some he barely ever used and maybe only for a specific job should that arrive. He enjoyed looking through the tools in the tradesman’s van once a month, seeing what was out there, what he might need to get sometime in the future. I don’t remember him ever having concerns about buying or owning gear. It’s just stuff we use, or we don’t.
Why do we see people feel the need to use it all the time? What’s wrong with it just sitting on a shelf for that one time we might feel inspired or keen to explore that bit of kit or use it for a particular purpose or even sell it for something else?
I don’t see why we need to feel guilty or ashamed of what we have or what we do with it, or feel the need to make do with one thing and convince ourselves of that. Sometimes it’s ok just to buy something, try it, sell it on or lend it to someone else to try, or share your gear in studio sessions with friends.
Having loads of gear is great, and we can still use just one thing and keep things focused if we want to.
I feel the question around why we do this to ourselves is a good one, but if perhaps framed slightly differently, could be more why do we feel the need to beat ourselves up at all?
Just enjoy what you got if you can afford stuff, enjoy striving for what you don’t have, enjoy learning along the way, enjoy learning why we feel this way, enjoy letting stuff go, enjoy using it all, or enjoy just looking at it collecting dust.
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…end of the day, we’re all consumers…that’s why…
therefor, make it a mantra…more creator, less consumer…
to end up way more on the creator side, keep in mind, once u have ONE flexible and solid sample based device (u got that, check) u really also need ONE flexible and solid synthesis based device…
that much is and remains truu…having anything beyond that in hw might be all great and really nice to have, but IS NOT ESSENTIAL in any way to any single drop of all ur creative juices…
and “all” that really matters in all sorts of any creative content is indeed it’s ESSENCE…
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I see this like stage fright or performance anxiety.
Don’t get anxious, get excited! Turn that energy into something you can use.
There can be a fine line between stimulation and over-stimulation that becomes inhibition. You are the master of your mind’s domain, master it.
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It sounds to me like you’re bouncing around off your compulsions without taking a beat to analyze or understand them. You want a particular sound but can’t say what about that sound. You find VSTs or YT audio to be missing a certain rawness that can’t be defined. You’re worried about audio artifacts that may not exist in the source, won’t be an issue if you don’t produce anything, and that pros are intentionally reintroducing to their tracks if you do. The most distinct thing in the synths you list are not their sound but their interfaces (which range from unusual to gimmicky), but you just want to sample them. But given the raw samples of these sounds you delete them because you don’t want anything basic.
You’ve mentioned ocd and ADHD tendencies, and I can say from experience my ADHD compulsions are a matter of attention thresholds. I obsess over a thing because, in a mix of tracks competing to catch my high-threshold attention, it has the loudest signal. And as a result I can’t hear any of the tracks containing the stuff I actually want to accomplish.
I need to reduce the level of the tack peaking my thresholds so that all my other tracks have a chance to come through. And to do that, I need to figure out what’s loud about it so I can focus on it and satisfy it. It doesn’t sound like you know what’s loud about this obsession yet. Maybe it’s sound? Maybe it’s interface? Maybe it’s an illusion of audiophile purity that doesn’t really exist? Maybe it’s physical totems with spaceship-like blinkin’ lights.
All are super valid pursuits. But bouncing from thing to thing without taking a moment to understand which part of each one is actually scratching your itch is a great way to get nothing done (if your goal is to get anything done) and spend a ton of money (if your goal is to have any money left).
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There’sa ton of Volca Drum experimental videos on YouTube
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Gear and samples are not the essence of music. Music is not even the notes or the sounds. Music is, rather, the mysterious force between the notes and the sounds. It is the form, the architecture, the musical ideas which, when placed together in layer or sequence, create an argument for the whole. Or the groove, if you wish. Music is not the sum of its parts. It is the product of its parts.
An antidote to GAS is to, rather than thinking about all the gear and samples unavailable to us, consider rather all the musical techniques that are available to us. Mozart didn’t need separate fortepianos to play sonata form, rondo or theme and variations.
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Sort of. But I know exactly what type of sounds I want.
VST/YT absolutely can be defined… YT SQ is too low and I haven’t found any VSTs where the depth of sound is as raw or deep as the Soma, Erica or most of the synths I listed. Yes the synths have lovely inspiring interfaces. I don’t just want to sample them. I would play most of those live as their own thing and record the output to turn into songs, but I wouldn’t use them alongside the DT. But what I’m saying is if I can’t have them, then I cab get 90% of the way there using samples of them in the DT.
I haven’t deleted samples of any of these synths, I deleted the SFM library (and quite a few others too), because there is nothing interesting or inspiring about them. They’re just multisamples of basic synth sounds from classic synths, which I find quite boring.
What’s “loud” about these particular synths is 100% the sound. Except for the Sismo stuff and the Double Knot where I’m attracted the interfaces and the processes (actually for the Pulsar it is both!). I think I could replicate the Sismo stuff and double knot with the DT pretty easily, but I suppose then the fun process is lost. Whereas with the Soma and Erica stuff, I doubt I could replicate the sound any other way than by using samples, just to get a flavour of their unique sound.
I don’t need them all at once. It would be nice to buy one, make an album exclusively with it, see it, but the next one the list, make and album exclusively with it… ad infinitum.