No New Gear Year 2023 AKA NGNY 2023

The Lounge General Discussion
#1006

My GAS is kept in check. I still watch every Push 3 review and will still evaluate Live Suite to see if that daw is for me (a prerequisite to even considering the Push), but I’m pretty sure I won’t (well, can’t) buy one in the next few months anyway given supply and demand. Plus, I’d rather not pay to be a beta tester.

My GAS for the Polyend Tracker Mini has worn off quite a bit. I’m finding so many moments making music in bed with the Syntakt and a powerbank/birdcord that I don’t really see why I’d want to switch to the much clunkier and less immediate tracker workflow. It just seems like a slower way of achieving similar results, and there’s no ctrl+all either. I love twisting knobs, and the PTM has zero of them.

In the meantime, I’ve made three new songs on the Syntakt in about a week. :muscle:

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#1007

Since you are clearly suffering for your decisions (as you should), use this feelings while they last to make some music on your new synth (and post it here on the forum).

Meanwhile I was gassing over a bunch of different gear, but so far still managing to keep things under control.

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#1008

hahaha yeah that didn’t last.

new stereo big muff here we come!!!

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#1009

In some ways, NGNY requires failure. In the failure is the lesson and the importance and the meaning of the challenge.

6 months ain’t too bad, anyway.

And if it is something about the summer months that makes it harder, why not do a NGY 23-24?

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#1010

Welcome to the confessional box :slight_smile: Not the first and probably not the last either! I’ve been feeling the itch but hanging in there. Curious to know the name of the old synth with expansions and the new synth too, but feel free to pm me if you don’t want to disclose amongst the gas addicts :wink: I am just really curious.
PS you will have to stick around to update the list in Post number 1!

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#1011

Is this another confession?

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#1012

”Whoa, we’re half way there
Whoa oh, livin’ on a prayer
Take my hand, we’ll make it, I swear
Whoa oh, livin’ on a prayer”

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#1013

@Wolf-Rami
Do not feel bad about what’s happened. Progress not perfection.
I caved in and bought a dream synth a couple of months ago. Nothing wanted or needed since then. In fact I’ve just pulled out more stuff I’m not using to sell. So I’ve failed the challenge but ended in a better place than I was. Sounds like you’re the same!

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#1014

Yeah. I remember maybe five years back I had a dream of getting one of my two dream synths someday. They were both way out of my reach because of their price. Now I’m in a situation where I own them both and I’m very happy.

My summer vacation started basically yesterday (not a moment too soon) and now I have 3 full weeks time to do what ever I feel like. It’s sunday but it feels more than a regular sunday because I know I’m not going to work tomorrow morning. Life is good.

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#1015

hope I’m right this time…

ngny50
ngny50500×514 43.6 KB

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#1016

Five consequtive months of NNG here (ignoring for a second the opportunistic trade in January) and I have fewer pieces of gear than ever. Just the Syntakt and the SP-404 MKII, the latter is going out for sale soon too as it’s not for me.

Feels great to be so light on gear and the Syntakt continues to surprise me. I made a little 20 minute challenge to come up with a new song from scratch and after I lost the track of times, I had the embryo of another banger (to my ears, which is all I care about) in under an hour. I’m even getting pretty good at mixing on the Syntakt in standalone using the base filters. Not to the point where I’d skip the multitracking into the DAW, but at least it’s at a level where I’d be comfortable with playing some of my tracks live.

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#1017

also it’s a good time to sum up the last six month for me.

although I’ve been really looking at certain things with craving to purchase, it went away couple of days/week later. I’m really trying all possible variations of my humble setup like with different routings, different methods of control, different methods of recording, and I have to say that the more time I spend with my existing instruments the more I like them.

after all that time I KNOW that adding stuff to my setup will NOT make me more productive or will make my music sound better, I know I have to keep digging into what I have to get better and better results. also, the more I use it the more I know where the limitations in my setup are, so planning the “next move” becomes easier as with time I know what would really improve my game and what seems shiny but simply unnecessary.

I recorded some stuff, uploaded it to bandcamp, someone actually bought my stuff, lol, never ever I thought it would happen :smiley:

I know that if I’m going to break this year it will be only to get monitors, I’m getting real tired of using headphones all the time and occasionally I’ll get ringing in my ears (which started after me getting covid couple of years back), and honestly I’m not sure if that’s considered as a disqualifying move as I’m just looking not to damage to my ears, I’m already as low as possible on volume in my headphones and it sucks hard, I can barely hear anything and once I crank the volume up a bit I almost always get ringing after ~1/2 hours session.

good luck next 6 month!

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#1018

Same here. I’ve never had this little gear since I started my synth journey, but I still have a little bit more than you. Around ten pieces of gear, of which four are guitar pedals. Really happy with my setup now.

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#1019

I used to dj for 18 years. When you play in a club for a big crowd, you really have to crank up the headphone volume to be able to mix. I’ll have tinnitus for the rest of my life for that reason, but it is what it is. Nowadays I try to be more mindful about my hearing and use plugs when seeing loud gigs etc.

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#1020

yeah the constant headphones use is killing me, I really need to switch to speakers for most of the time and leave the headphones for reference mode, I had rare occasions of ringing before covid but after that it became a real constant issue, I’ll probably switch at some point…

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#1021

I also find that it’s hard to mix levels right with just headphones. I can mix things down to apparent perfection in my headphones, only to play it for ten seconds in my monitors and hear painfully obvious problems with the mix (mud, hi hat levels being at least 5 dB off, etc). So, GAS aside, I highly recommend monitors as a mixing tool and complement to headphones.

Not sure it’s any better for your ears though. I try to always mix at very low volumes and only crank it up briefly when I think I’ve gotten things right, to verify it and make necessary corrections. You get used to that pretty quickly and it minimizes the exposure. I’ve still got tinnitus though, ever since I was a teenager.

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#1022

I underestimated how much I needed monitors prior to getting them. Even though I have good closed headphones, I would spend waaaay too much time in repetitive things, like patch/sound design, that for 6 hour+ sessions would leave me feeling sluggish the day after. A friend of mine put it well and I adhere to this now; use the headphones for precision work, use the monitors for everything else.

Granted, there are some situations outside of your control where you would be boxed in to using headphones anyway, like construction outside, noisy neighbors, etc.

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#1023

I almost fell into severe GAS because of iPad music making apps. I started toying around with some freebies I had and I started to felt the need of integrated apps (AUM, samplers, midi effects, etc…) that cost a bit of money… I stopped right there and decided to keep the iPad just for playing with some synths I already have, and keep using Ableton for more integrated workflows.

It is similar to GAS produced by vst’s, but iPad apps make it much more difficult since they look sooo cheap…

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#1024

I was thinking and have been thinking about that for a awhile but out of embarrassment
@mncrmo
I had been avoiding posting and I am more of a reader and listener …

I have been buying M4L and VST’s for the same reason my friend…so easily accessible and seemingly cheaper…mostly for my laptop ( which I need to upgrade…it’s 2012 and not upgradable OS which has prevented some updates…another excuse for GAS)

Thank you for posting this and I feel better for speaking up the facts of my failure.

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#1025

I really feel you. Luckily I realized that GAS is not about just spending money (although saving money is one of the reasons I’ve been avoiding it) because you can feel the same frustration derived from GAS just by downloading free VST’s: too much tools and no time to use/learn. Probably I’ll end up buying AUM to integrate my iPad to my whole setup, but only if I really feel the need of it.

hahahaah Also for me that doesn’t count as GAS… if you feel your computer is changing the way you like to work because of hardware/software limitations well, it is understandable. Actually I upgraded my iPad earlier this year since I’ll start studying again in September. All this time the upgrade have felt as an impulse GAS buy because I haven’t been using it much, but I know it’ll end up being great tool since September… Also the price was too low to wait until then to buy a new one hahahah

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