That’s exactly the point of this! If we don’t have exactly what’s needed, we have something to create an alternative that will sound more personal!
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And if you found a mint MDUW for 20,- ???
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But how would you find what you’re not looking for?
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Often, the things you aren’t looking for are the best finds 
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I will try not to get any new gear in 2022. I’ve got everything I need and more so I feel very confident.
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Added! 
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Buy and fail challenge, no questions 
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Can’t promise I won’t buy something. But I didn’t buy anything last year and actually developed an “ok” workflow. Go figure. 
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You flagged me…Seriously ?
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Well this aint the thread to post gear for sale thats fo sho! (I didnt flag you) 
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that’s like a crack dealer walking into a drug rehab center asking if anyone wants any crack
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To take some of the discussion off of gear, I’d like to hear if any of you have music stuff you plan to work on in the NoGear New Year?
Among other things, I plan to work on an EP, and intend to go deep on the new SP404 and incoming portastudio. This includes recording a lot of instruments rather than sampling other people’s work.
I’ve been taking flute lessons, so plan to put a lot of effort into that (heading out to my weekly lesson in a few minutes). I’ve mostly been studying classical stuff, but would like to start moving into jazz now that I’m getting past the basics. I’d like to start recording it a bit.
I also want to play/record more guitar and bass and hopefully experiment more with mic’ing my two amps, and learning to use my effects pedals more creatively.
I also intend to make use of the many virtual instruments I bought last year. I’ll mostly be sampling them into the SP though I think, rather than composing mostly in the DAW.
All of this means that I need to go deeper into music composition, which is something I studied a bit with private lessons last year.
Plenty to keep me busy without buying anything.
(PS: Just took some cash out of the ATM, hoping that number goes up instead of down next year).
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Some of my musical goals:
- focus more on non 42theFloor genres.
- focus more on the harmonic components of music and as such expanding my practically non-existent musical theory knowledge
- recording a 15-30 minute liveset mangling the DT and DN with my OT
Related but not actually musical
- enriching of my jam-videos by learning to work with visual synthesis & after effects
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I’d do what @subduct suggested.
Another option is to let your ”sponsors” know in this thread (please feel free to PM me) and I’m sure we’ll find a way to help you.
Then again I fear the 20,- MDUW will only be a mirage you’re seeing after going for so long without buying new gear. Here’s to hoping the mirages will start coming in November and not February.
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Musical goals:
- Finish a track
- Finish… more than one track
- Learn gear properly (or at least better)
- Re-learn guitar (It’s going to be thrash, death, doom, speed metal)
- Work out a live set and practice performance techniques
- Persuade wife that wardrobe and bed in spare room are not needed anymore and make a proper music room. Probably the toughest goal
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Would be MUCH easier if 2022 started already! The past 10 days or so and the following 2,5 weeks feels like a weird purgatory to me! I feel like I’m just as likely to cave in the next 19 days as in the 365 days following that. Would think it’d be easy to just flip the calendar in my mind already and be done with thinking buying/trading gear.
For me it’s mostly about ”tying loose ends”, meaning trying to trade away one piece that I haven’t gelled with and probably won’t feel like deep diving. I may be fooling myself cos trading IS a form of GAS (even if the money in and out is the same) but I feel that if that one piece stays, the idea of trading it won’t leave me alone, which will make it harder to even think about completing the challenge.
All this, of course, is a self-inflicted problem with having more gear than I actually have time to use. So even if I started the year happy with everything, there’ll always be that one piece I’m not using THAT much and will start considering trading/selling. That’s the pattern I’ll have to try and break next year.
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Yeah, part of me is already wanting loopholes. Lol.
Like if I’m deep into recording my EP and digging mic’ing stuff up and want some small hand percussion (I was really after a set of bongos this year, but they got back ordered twice so I cancelled).
I guess I’ll have to use samples and play some glass bottles or something. Save the bongos for the 2023 album.
Edit: I actually just thought of two solutions. They have loads of practice spaces in Tokyo where you can rent instruments. I could bring my mics and Zoom and try recording stuff, which could be a fun day out.
Or,
I could go on one of those sites where you can pay a studio musician a nominal fee to record something for you, or find someone locally to connect with other musicians. That would most definitely sound better than what I would come up with, and could connect with some people.
Creative solutions and new experiences. That’s what this should be all about.
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Trading is DEFINITELY a form of GAS… part of this challenge is certainly financial, I could do with saving the cash-but I have always been responsible. I think even if you had enough money to ensure all the gear purchases imaginable wouldn’t cause even the smallest dent in finances I still think GAS would be a problem as it can cripple creativity.
I started this ‘synth journey’ in 2019 when I stumbled into it and purchased a drumbrute impact to play guitar along to-prior to that I had zero knowledge of this dark world!!
Pretty soon I had the drumbrute, a microfreak and a microbrute plus a few effects plus TC ditto x4 looper all midi’d up and I recorded loads of tracks into a little 4 track.
I was crazy productive-a tune a day all recorded, some were ok, some were awful some were even quite good. But I was learning the gear, and experimenting and improving….
Then I started GASing… the research, the next great thing, the buying, returning or selling, YouTube-ing…
Since autumn 2019 I have owned 50 plus synths (at least-often multiple times) - spent thousands £, sold thousands £ of gear… and never got that productive workflow back.
Even now-I have just got and set up a new-ish rig with the MC707 and TR8S… it’s cools and versatile and I’ve not even started to learn it properly…… then-inexplicably- I start looking at the Force and the Drumbrute instead of the Roland pair-for NO REASON AT ALL!! I don’t even know what the Roland pair can do!
But the result is I don’t really want to use the MC707 and the TR8S anymore-I’ve tainted them. It is a form of madness-worse still…. I’ve owned both the force and the drumbrute before and sold them!! Why do I think I need them now!?!
That is GAS. It’s the antithesis of art (well for me anyway!)
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Nailed it.
Not directly related, but you made me remember something. I read a book on minimalism once that someone lent me called The Joy of Less. One of the best things in there was the idea of learning to distinguish between the “fantasy you” and the “reality you”.
For instance, it’s easy to get caught up buying way too much for every possibility, but in reality our needs are often much more modest. I’m not a pro audio engineer, so I don’t have the same same needs as someone that does this 8-10 hours a day for a living. In reality, I have at best 8-10 hours a week, so I should always keep that in mind. A much more modest setup is likely to produce much better results than having my attention divided among too many things, all of which need to be learned to be used properly. And as you said, constantly swapping things out puts you back to square one. Sometimes change is good, but not constant change.
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