No New Gear Year 2023 AKA NGNY 2023

Quality>Quantity everytime. focus on getting gud and being a sick musician not a gear nerd.

wait what? there’s a mixer app for Logic? how does that work? like having the ipad on sidecar or is there a dedicated ipad app?

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Exactly that. An app. You can also run it on an iPhone.
Logic basically killed my GAS for good.

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No new gear for me this year :fist:

I scratched a bunch of rather pricey itches the last couple years but have found working with Ableton + my MS-20 can’t be beat, so am sticking with that for the year while I sell off a bunch of stuff.

The only thing that would put the effort at risk is a new Softube Model synth. I started and ended last year wanting a Waldorf M and can easily go one more year without it. It will feel much nicer bringing one home when I don’t have a half dozen other synths sitting unused.

New gear can be very nice and even helpful to get through some harder times when there isn’t so much inspiration to make music, but great fulfillment can also come from appreciating what one already has, though it helps when that includes a Machinedrum UW, Monomachine and full size MS-20.

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Not sure if I can commit to no new gear, but I can definitely commit to not growing the amount of gear this year. :blush: I plan on getting rid of at least one of the current ones, and if I buy anything new this year, it better be filling a real need.

I must say it has gotten a lot easier to resist new gear to me in the past six months, for two reasons:

  1. I’ve learned more about what I really like, what workflow works well for me, what I actually want vs what I just think I want. This already rules our 80% of all the gear out there.
  2. Basically all of the remaining gear I’m lusting for have ridiculous and arbitrary limitations that make me feel like I’d be instantly disappointed if I got them (mono sampling, no polyphony, limited track count, things like that).

So that’s a good starting point for this commitment. Then again if I find something second hand for a price too good to be true, like I did with the Syntakt, then I probably won’t be able to resist it. Fingers crossed. :crossed_fingers:

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Just saw my facebook-memory from this day 9 years ago.

I had made a new year’s resolution not to buy (or sell) a single synth for the whole next year. So apparently I came up with the concept of NGNY ages ago.

If I remember correctly that resolution went down the toilet in a matter of weeks, but I’m a grown up man now - I can control my urges.

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You’re ahead of your time

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I don’t understand why NOT selling unused gear is something to achieve.

Is it that some feel its related to compulsory behavior?

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The stuff that you own might end up owning you in many cases. It can occupy one’s mind.

Of course I’m only talking for myself but I’ve hated it when my house is full of unused gear collecting dust and taking space physically and mentally.

I has made me feel (imo justifiably) like an idiot.

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I just amended my post…

I meant why was NOT selling gear something to achieve.

Otherwise, I agree with you 100%. That’s why I am puzzled by the idea.

I’m also in a NYC apartment so something unused, needs to go ASAP.

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Agree

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Abstinence from selling is not a part of this challenge. I do it myself because in my case selling gear is always related to buying more gear.

I come from a poor family. I’ve never had much money for music gear. At many points in my life I’ve had to sell a beloved piece of gear to be able to pay month’s rent etc. That’s why I at some point decided that money from selling gear is always put into gear. Otherwise I’d end up with no gear as I’d sell everything to pay for the phone bill or car insurance.

For that reason they’re linked in my head. No selling, means no buying. That makes this challenge easier for me to achieve. By all means you do you and what’s best for your case. This is not a cult, I am not a cult leader. This is a sincere effort to shake loose of our consumerist habits and get in touch with what we originally signed for - making music - not buying and selling gear.

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Some say that selling is part of the churn of gear, like getting rid of something too early and then craving something else or the very same thing. I know that when I was in debt I would sell things just to make rent. When in reality I wouldn’t have sold them if it wasn’t critical to my daily living. So yeah, that’s why some say don’t sell as it can lead to more GAS and spending more money in the long run. Hope that makes sense :upside_down_face:

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You said it so much more elegantly. Thanks!

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I get it, but I know I’m among others here that set aside gear because they know they won’t use it ever again.

I have a 3-4 month rule that if I was unsure about something before I set it aside, if I don’t miss it after 3-4 months then it can be safely sold.

I actually have things that are sitting for a year, unused and unmissed.

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I do believe getting rid of gear you don’t use is actually a good thing. It would seem you’re not attached to gear for the things you might (but never) do with it, you only care about what is used, and this is pretty sane in my book.

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Definitely not attached and I love knowing what to do with what I have versus always re-learning the same gear I stored away. That’s not productive.

It’s just one of those hard lessons of learning by using what works best.

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Yeah, the constant re-learning is tedious and mostly a total waste of time.

If there was an option to sign up to this but only being 80% successful, I would. I think it’s always good to have a bit of buffer.

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No one is holding you accountable but yourself so why not sign up and do your best?
I did fail a little bit last year but in the end I succeeded more than I failed, so that’s a good start. :slight_smile:

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