If your not successfully selling music or releasing tracks over a long time then your going to Gas. I find this inevitable. We all need motivation new gear is the best answer most of the time as it keeps our motivation peak up. So if your not wanting to GAS. And not being successful in writing or composing. Then what is left for motivation? This is a problem i’m sure a lot of people have nearing the end of their interest.
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I don’t sell music or release tracks other than occasionally sharing stuff in the Current Sounds thread. No GAS. Just write music because I love writing music. Love the process. Love to make something. Massively benefits my mental health to be creative.
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Enjoying what you do can go a long way.
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Well, if you play guitar or piano what keeps you motivated to play? Most guitarists I know don’t actually play in bands or release music. They play for fun and to get better at the instrument.
For me increasing my skill level on the instrument is the motivation. It’s imo a weird quirk in electronic music production that it seems like there is no validation unless you release music or play shows. Like you have to justify owning the gear in some way other than just enjoyment.
Using GAS as a motivator I suppose is similar to getting a new guitar to make you practice more. I cannot however see any guitarist thinking that a new Les Paul will make their music actually better in the way synth lovers do when adding a new piece of gear.
Take the Octatrack for example. Getting proficient on that is very similar to getting proficient at a more traditional instrument. I don’t expect to become Cenk or EZBOT overnight, but the journey is fun. I won’t play guitar like John Mayer anytime soon either, but I keep practicing.
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Very similar to the fallacy of “new basketball shoes will make you jump higher”. Interesting thoughts in here.
[ segue into the topic ]
I find that nothing keeps me motivated to be honest. But I’d rather force myself and periodically feel inspired than let my apathy spiral out of control and keep me from ever enjoying the process and the end result.
Releasing stuff is awesome, I haven’t released anything in years and the last time that I did it was so far removed from whatever I’m doing these days that it’s almost like a different person made it. I think the fact that at my age (for a lot of us our age) I’m still doing anything with music at all is pretty rewarding all by itself.
I think that if you find motivation in buying new shit and you can afford to do it then have at it, otherwise just enjoy it when you can, it doesn’t have to be a sports mentality all the time unless that’s what really does it for you, and then there’s also nothing wrong with that.
If everyone were the same, I’d be so bored that it probably wouldn’t matter how good the music was. I really prefer hearing people’s personality come through in their creations, probably more than anything else. Certainly more than the gear they used to create it.
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I think it’s incredibly important to enjoy the process. This is something that eluded me for a while and I used to focus on trying to create the sounds I wanted to make - I managed to do that to an extent that I was quite happy with but eventually came to realise I didn’t enjoy the process of creating some of those sounds (e.g. creating big lush soundscapes sometimes felt quite laborious to me).
Over the past year or two I’ve been really leaning into focussing on enjoying the process more and trying to be more open about the output that results in. Has meant a change in the music I’m making but also more enjoyment along the way.
In an ideal world the two obviously collide, I imagine it’s a lifetimes work searching and honing in on that whilst your taste, experience and gear evolves over time. For what it’s worth it’s also become a big reason for why I’m gassing less lately, as I find it more fun working on a setup I know that leaning a new one (YMMV of course, and sometimes a new addition is needed to keep things fun).
More directly answering your question I work an office job and have a busy family life, the latter of which I wouldn’t trade for anything, but sometimes a bit of balance and escape is welcome. A creative outlet I think gives me that - something to escape in, look forward to and give a sense of personal development outside of work. The process has to be enjoyable though (at least in the main)!
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I just love making stuff
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I am a little addicted to it, i dont feel whole when i didnt play at least a little bit each day. I also like to figure things out - that alone is reward enough.
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I suppose I’m something of an idealist.
The substrate of my worldview is pure potential.
Nothing can be said of this, in and of itself, but vibration makes it so!
I’m motivated by the thrill of participating in the creation of vibration, as a homage to the roaring silence of the absolute. A prismatic refraction of white light into a multiplicity and diversity of the weird and the wonderful.
Joy, play, fooling around, and sometimes, just sometimes, pressing record 
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I make downtempo lofi ambient jams for my dog to nap to. She falls asleep every time, therefor I am 100% successful in my music career.
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i love my own music now and it gets me grooving in the car, and sometimes im thinkin “damn what banger will he drop next” and then i gotta make it
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If it’s just a hobby, then having fun should be enough to keep you motivated. GAS is part of every hobby and also part of the fun. Releasing music is great if that’s what you want, but making money of it shouldn’t matter. When you lose motivation, just change a hobby. I did it a few times (but always eventually returned to making music).
Going pro/making money/living from it - that’s when fun takes a back seat and GAS becomes a problem, because it consumes time and causes you to spend money, which you could spend on some fun hobbies instead 
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Band practice is scheduled twice a week and I like to see my bandmates. The solo stuff I do because I…can’t not do it.
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I think its fun doing music, and learning new gear and playing instruments. Been doing it like a hobby 12 years. Never tried sell any or even release any and im still motivated because its the process thats fun. Dont care about ”sucess” in music
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Wait, what? That fella at foot locker is a dick!
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never trust a back alley referee.
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I think your motivation has to be intrinsic, and this has become even more important than ever with the rise of social medial, AI, and the million other modern technologies meant to make you irrelevant to yourself.
Years ago I read the book ‘A song of praise for shifu’. Ostensibly it is about making Japanese paper thread, Kami-ito, from washi paper, and the process of weaving it into fabric called shifu. I was expecting just a very dry niche how-to book, but it turned out to be one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. 400 pages about the author’s life and journey learning the process, its history, the people she met along the way, her philosophy and beliefs, etc. Even the technical how-to parts were written so humbly, and with so much love for the process that just reading it nourished my soul lol.
It was really eye-opening to me. I think there were something like 60 copies of this book made and it didn’t even sell out. This lady devoted her entire life to making thread out of paper, something that literally 99.999999% of people don’t even know is a thing, and it was such a rich and meaningful life. Didn’t matter if she never sold anything she made because it had been made irrelevant by modern technology, or if she never got any likes on her instagram account, or if only 30 people read her magnum-opus that took her 20 years to write. She loved every minute of it along the way.
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I had this idea that I’d be the next Klaus Schulze or Brian Eno if I kept at it. 
I’m 66 now and that didn’t happen, so I guess I’m still motivated just by my love of making interesting sounds with cool gear and software.
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It’s been a long time since I’ve released anything and even longer since I’ve tried to sell anything. The nature of releasing music changed such that I was no longer interested in participating in that aspect of music but it had no effect on my desire to make it.
I honestly can’t imagine going through life without doing it. I don’t know if it’s passion or a sick compulsion but it’s running in my head 24/7. I’ve always done it for myself first and felt that if anyone else liked it that was just a bonus. If I were to play something that I liked but everyone who heard it hated it I’d still consider it a success because I liked it, likewise if I played something that I hated but everyone else loved I’d consider it a failure.
It’s like Vonnegut said, “art is what makes life bearable”.
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There’s something wonderful about music that allows me to make sense of things by organizing sound into patterns. It’s calming. Life can be so chaotic that “letting go” and “losing ones’ self” in such a structured (or unstructured if you like) way is centering.
Given that, GAS can be a real drain. Forums like this one are great because people generally talk about the aspects of music that are inspirational such as sharing information, music, techniques and memes. Modern forums unfortunately dig into the consumerist aspects that beg us to want for more collections of things.
I mostly stay motivated by the fact there there’s never enough time to explore everything I want to explore and that helps me keep the consumerist side in check.
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