The Gear Myth - hardware fetishisation

[nowaysj]

The shitbirds have landed.

[Genevieve]

The shitbirds have landed.

Someone's hit a nerve.

[nowaysj]

I really don't have a lot of gear, and gear lust has been dormant for a long while, now there are a couple of things on the list, both under 2 hundo, I make music every day, and at least a track a week, you utter fucking shitbird.

[Genevieve]

I really don't have a lot of gear, and gear lust has been dormant for a long while, now there are a couple of things on the list, both under 2 hundo, I make music every day, and at least a track a week, you utter fucking shitbird.

Who was talking about you?

[nowaysj]

You were.

[Genevieve]

You were.

This says more about you than it does about my post.

[fragments]

Yeah it's weird i also don't understand the people that can blab on for days about all this gear and all these techniques but never actually make any music or put the music they do make out anywhere. Each to their own i guess but seems strange to me.

I could be completely happy just jamming on hardware and never hitting record. Personally I do spend a lot of time talking about gear...hardware...software...all of it...its really my only hobby and all my extra time is dedicated to it. Ihave a few friends who are the same way w guiatr and piano...they talk shop all day and noodle and are content.

[wub]

I mean gear aquisition in the broader sense, it could also be the latest convoluted synth VST with a million dropdown menus that you'll never use. Workflow is workflow and if working with a particular set of hardware gear gets you better results than anything else, you should use that. But when does it end? People then aquire this new gear, make 2 or 3 half tunes with it and they're already bidding on another set of gear.

Hate to say it, but I agree with Gene here.

Once people start buying hardware, they have a tendency to continue buying hardware. Hemingway said that one cat inevitably leads to another, and speaking as a man with two cats and a lot more hardware than I had 18 months ago, my productivity has gone downhill as I'm not allowing one purchase time to realise it's place within my workflow before I see another bit going cheap that I just have to have...

...I mean, as of next week when I pick up my next batch, I'll be adding;

Roland 707
Redsound Federation Pro
Alesis AirFX
Roland VT-3 Vocal Transformer

Which is pretty much a setup in itself, never mind the fact I'm adding it to an existing setup I've told myself I don't need to add anything else to it after this, but TBH I'd really like an Arturia Brute to compliment everything else and give me a complete live rig, so already I'm looking ahead before I've integrated what I've got.

Think the same problem affects a lot of people, TBH. Too much gear and not enough sitting down and learning it.

[nowaysj]

You were.

This says more about you than it does about my post.

No it doesn't. As always, I invite you to join reality.

For starters, you could join the reality where you are a judgmental prick.

[_ronzlo_]

Yeah it's weird i also don't understand the people that can blab on for days about all this gear and all these techniques but never actually make any music or put the music they do make out anywhere. Each to their own i guess but seems strange to me.

I could be completely happy just jamming on hardware and never hitting record. Personally I do spend a lot of time talking about gear...hardware...software...all of it...its really my only hobby and all my extra time is dedicated to it. Ihave a few friends who are the same way w guiatr and piano...they talk shop all day and noodle and are content.

Had a friend I used to jam with for years: he had both a classical music AND dj'ing background (2 things I lack) and I thought we had a killer combined skillset, with me being the buttons and knobs guy.

However, he had no interest in dj'ing out (the obvious way to start playing shows and get it out there) and in fact not much interest in songwriting. He would be content to sit there and noodle over a beat for 20 minutes and not edit it down into a song, while in turn I am all about the songwriting and the jams are just one way to get there.

In the end we stopped jamming a couple years ago, and while I miss some of the chemistry of a live session, I don't miss the frustration of being forced to deal with someone else's shortcomings. I don't think he ever realized why I split, why just jamming wasn't enough.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

[Genevieve]

You were.

This says more about you than it does about my post.

No it doesn't. As always, I invite you to join reality.

For starters, you could join the reality where you are a judgmental prick.

Is that the same reality where you try to involve me into your insecurities? Because I don't like that reality.

[nowaysj]

Someone's hit a nerve.

[nowaysj]

Had a friend I used to jam with for years: he had both a classical music AND dj'ing background (2 things I lack) and I thought we had a killer combined skillset, with me being the buttons and knobs guy.

However, he had no interest in dj'ing out (the obvious way to start playing shows and get it out there) and in fact not much interest in songwriting. He would be content to sit there and noodle over a beat for 20 minutes and not edit it down into a song, while in turn I am all about the songwriting and the jams are just one way to get there.

In the end we stopped jamming a couple years ago, and while I miss some of the chemistry of a live session, I don't miss the frustration of being forced to deal with someone else's shortcomings. I don't think he ever realized why I split, why just jamming wasn't enough.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

But it was your shortcoming wasn't it? If you are the songwriter of the duo, it is your job to capture those jams and craft them into songs. This is a very very difficult skill. What makes sense in free form often does not work in a rigid song structure, but that is where the craft, and ultimately art is at, no? But again, perhaps you found that process to onerous, so didn't engage in it?

Think of someone like Aphex, that dude probably has linear years worth of recorded bits, and probably could just go on forever making music but not making songs. I think it is fairly laudable, mostly because that is how I rolled for years but there is something to be said for developing that skill for hammering round pegs into square holes. And you know, you can do it on your own terms, the song writing. You can just clobber shit together, take it or leave it, if that is all you can handle.

That is the reality of your output. Forget staying in an imaginary place where things could be something, but if you don't have the skill or the moral drive to realize it, it is just fantasies, better to take it into reality, the reality of your skill and dedication. Take it or leave it, it is what it is, at least it is real.

The Round Pegs, that is a good name for a duo if I ever heard one.