Thanks. It all makes sense.
Iâve just bought a piece of gear for ÂŁ5k. Im too embarrassed to even show it in this forum.
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Drum machine or one of my bass guitars. Matters what music Iâm making. A sampler also is extremely powerful for these things.
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Moog + Octatrack
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Vermona PERfourMER and a DT II (for sequencing the PERfourMER and Drums).
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For 6 monthas last year i contemplated the Perfourmer.
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It is called a car 
Perfourmer is definitely a synth I donât regret to have bought.
It is mandatory to keep your hands n it while you play, if you want the sound to evolve, though. Which is good to me, but maybe not for someone that has a truckload of gear in their roomâŚ
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I find it helpful to put things in a closet when Iâm not using them. Like, insanely helpful. And if youâre buying gear faster than you can even fathom, well, youâre not alone, but itâs going to take some personal reflection and commitment. I find that when I buy too much too quickly, or even when too many updates drop at once, I start to hate making music. It sounds like youâre in the same boat! Try to break the momentum. Putting things out of sight lets you downsize aggressively, but temporarily.
A few days ago, I started feeling really overwhelmed because I havenât learned all of the new Ableton Live and Push features that launched with 12.3, plus I bought a Digitakt mki last month that Iâm still in the very early phases of relearning, plus I bought a Tascam 414mkii that took me ages to clean but is now ready for action, plus I pulled out my copies of Chord Chemistry and Stick Control for the Snare Drummer but hadnât made time to practice guitar or drums, plus I bought a new MIDI controller on Black Friday sale, plus plus plusâŚ
Anyhow, I pulled some choice pieces out of my main setup and brought them to the dining table. I didnât think about the gear in the basement at all, and I actually enjoyed myself instead of feeling guilty about everything else I wasnât learning. Then I pulled the mini setup apart to make space for family dinner, and I stopped thinking about gear altogether.
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I sold it to finance something else. That something else is not in my studio anymore. 
It was a stupid move but at the same time it made me realize that I really like simple and knob-per-function Synths. Now, I have to rebuy a PERfourMER.
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Syntakt and OP-XY any day! Enough tracks to do it all, simple enough and fun synth engines to not get lost.
On a more abstract level: learning the Elektron workflow and establishing habits that work for you within it. I can make music pretty fast on any Elektron without thinking too much. The different machines just bring different flavors but the core feels the same. XY is close enough to the Elektron sequencer that Iâm fast on it because I can apply a lot of the same skills.
Synth wise, anything Roland or Take 5 thatâs just all sweetspot so you can tweak away and record without thinking.
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This one too. Mine just came back from repair.
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Stop it!!
I still am trying to work out exactly why i bought it. 
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You sound like youâd potentially be interested in downsizing:
Youâll have to find out yourself though if the âonly one machine at a time â thing is for you before selling everything and then regretting/rebuying.
Personally, I found that itâs important to focus on 1-2 devices that are at the center of a project (= the device I write all of the core elements of a song/EP/album). But I also like to then be able to maybe bring in a few other machines for icing on the cake/re-record sounds with that special sound. Or change the core piece from time to time to not get bored. But Iâm least productive when I try to trick myself into thinking I will write an album by live jamming with a huge spaceship of machines with complex audio and midi routing. So find your middle ground and follow your gut.
And the most important thing is to force yourself to see things through, commit and finish tracks. Only then will you find out what works and is fun and whatâs just GASing about things youâll realistically never do. If finishing tracks is your goal, of course, no shame in jamming and trying out gear if itâs rewarding to you.
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probably something simple like 202 303 or 606 - almost instant music making with any of those three (sad i sold my 303 will not be able to afford another any time soon)
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Once your brain and soul are fed by the sandwich, something that helps get past that âwhat exactly am I doing here and why doesnât this gear just play itself?â phase, is to take any one piece of gear or your DAW, and just start recording a few loops on top of each other without any real regard for genre or completeness or how well theyâre played or how appropriate the sound is.
I find that after about 3 to 5 layers at least one of them will stick out as better than the others and then my brain either starts to work around that as a hinge and if Iâm hearing a way the one that I like can be better I might edit it, or I might just erase the other tracks and record a few more on top of that linchpin until something sounds like thereâs some potential there.
I find that I really only have the energy to repeat this process a couple of times before my attention wanders so I focus more on getting it done and making sure I save these sort of projects so that if my ears donât want to hear it today, I can always come back to it later and see if any of those idea generators spark something or if one track of melody or rhythm jumps out at me later as something worth doing more with.
The focus here is not to make something that sounds good or that will impress anyone or even yourself, itâs just to get you in the mode of hearing what youâve done and identifying if something there is worth doing more of.
It almost always starts out like âthis is absolute shit and I canât believe that Iâm doing this again because Iâm a piece of shit has been with no original ideasâ and before long turns into to âoh yeah this shit bangs I wish I remember how I got hereâ so in my small insignificant opinion, sometimes the repetitive act of just noodling with the record button armed can yield decent and unexpected results.
Of course having a go-to piece of gear, or an inspiration machine is a great thing, if such a thing exists, but I find that some of these boxes are more interesting to me one day than they are on another so I guess that I focus more on the act of vomiting up the creativity rather than being selective about which wastebin I choose to do it in.
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I cant downsize the software ive built up over the years. It probably outweighs the hardware.
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That there. Being a perfectionist with a short attention span and changing moods. That makes a lot of sense.
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Yeah, I have a difficult time letting go of perfectionist behaviors.
Itâs depressing having that personality trait when you (read: I) immediately recognize the limitations of my own talent and am fully aware that some of the rust is due to years of neglecting whatever proper training I acquired when I was younger, so at this point if Iâm to enjoy making music at all I have to let go of that trait, quality or defect (whichever describes it most accurately) at least during the brainstorming phase.
some perhaps relevant, rambling thoughts on the topic:
When I used to draw and paint a lot, I would get hung up on trying to execute the ideas as flawlessly as possible and would lose 10 other better ideas in the process of trying to draw one perfect picture and eventually I found that the images I was spending the most time on were taking so much time more because I wasnât good at conveying them properly rather than that they were better ideas.
With music or art this boils down to how well youâre able to audit your own creativity and this is not such an easy process if you put all your eggs in one basket as the saying goes. Thatâs probably why if I need to use and start one of these brainstorming / layering sessions due to not having any ideas, I make sure not to get caught up in making that one good. If itâs not good and itâs not going anywhere I may still come back to it later, but in a sense itâs like playing through a bad take.
When youâre recording a take on a composition and you can hear what you want but your hands just arenât doing it, I think that if you keep stopping at the same part and restarting, that when you finally do play the correct sequence of notes in a way that sounds good to your own ears, your brain is not prepared for the completion and you flub something immediately or one measure later.
Not to say âplay through all bad takes no matter whatâ but I try to get in the habit of playing through the bad takes because it gets you into the mode of completing things and this sort of brainstorming is the same concept. Itâs ok to hear things and know they arenât good, but getting over that feeling of âI can do better than thisâ and having a proper idea which inspires you to do better is worth more than feeling like a prodigy.
Iâm too old to ever be a prodigy, I was never that good to begin with and I missed my window, so if Iâm now going to continue spending my time in pursuit of this stuff, I think that I need to cut myself some slack and I do try to, because my pride is a huge roadblock to my creativity.
I used to take myself too seriously and it had mixed consequences on my creative endeavors, often earning the wrong kind of recognition from others and making the act of being creative stressful. At this point itâs much easier for me to set aside those feelings but the perfectionism still lies beneath the surface and when I feel it creeping up it is sometimes very difficult to suppress.
If you are like me in that you are a creature of habit and you become firmly set in your ways (sticking to that mentality even to your own detriment) the only way to really let go of this which Iâve found to work is by practicing the act of completing things without regard for the outcome and there is some discomfort which accompanies that but for me, itâs a necessary evil because otherwise I will fixate on one image at the center of the canvas and not even have a proper layout.
If you draw a layout in pencil, it can always be changed and then youâre working towards a composition, not just defining a detached image in the center of the canvas and trying to fill the space around it after youâre happy with the image. If youâve ever drawn a picture you probably have some idea of what Iâm talking about, where you focsed too much on the central image and end up with a weird chair and a window in the background or something that are in no way compelling or match the focus of the image you were trying to create.
Unless you have a really strong foundation of an idea that you want to work on from the very point at which you start your session, then without some kind of method, no synth or groovebox is going to get you there, and while I canât promise that this as described is the perfect method for you or that we shouldnât all find our own version of a workflow, I think that getting in the habit of small completions will ultimately lead to more output, and so when you do audit for clarity or to decide what is or is not worth developing further, you arenât so attached to one idea which isnât working and you have the clarity to let it go if itâs not.
Probably a bit much for a simple topic like this but I honestly still struggle with this so Iâve really tried to identify what it is thatâs holding me back and I do have some perfectionist traits and completion anxiety about things in my normal life so I guess that extends into music and art as well.
We donât necessarily need to change who we are to change what we do, there just needs to be ways to work around the behaviors that weâre able to live with and positive results will help reinforce that whatever method you choose is worth doing again.
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Wow you sound just like me. For 30 years iâve been painting. Trying to do perfect copies of classics. Obssessing over the tiniest detail to the point of exasperation. Finally defeated as it can never be as good as the original so why did I even bother trying. Its the same with the Music. I cant get past that point of its crap. Move on. Lots and lots of starts and going wells. Then the rot steps in. And it happens so fast I know I have to quit as all motivation has gone. Iâm not a quitter. I will work at things a lot longer than most people. But Iâm not a finisher. That old perfectionism steps in. The answer (the wrong one). Look for some new gear to kickstart you off again. Its been like this for a while. One soddin horrible vicious circle of nothingness.
I think you are spot on though. I have to accept mediocrity for me to acheive anything. Whether it be Art or Music. Cheers for the insight Iâm not alone.
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If I might amend one thing, I think that itâs less about accepting mediocrity and more about acknowledging that nothing worth itâs weight in salt starts out in a final form.
The thing you have to accept is that you cannot predict what something will be from what it starts out as, however the talent you want to develop is in identifying when something does have potential and then allowing your creativity to shape that part of it.
I always enjoyed driving manual transmission because I like the act of driving. The shifting, the rhythm of the pedal transfer, the feel of the road and steering with my own hands. I canât really imagine having a self-driving car not only because it sounds like a loss of control but because isnât driving the car the whole point of it?
I suppose for those looking for a ferry ride that this is not the case, and I think this is the difference between some of the topics here such as the quickest and most inspiring device for coming up with new ideas sounds a lot more like âis there a good shortcut off of the main road to get to the store?â, vs some others like âbest generativeâ etc (while admittedly fun to play with) sounds more like âhow can I get the car to drive me around while I read my book?â.
What you are accepting is, in fact, the human condition and that nothing starts out in itâs final form.
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