The watmm Anti-GAS thread

[Bubba69]

I think a happy medium exists. At least thats what I am trying to live by. I do get a little bogged down just staring at a computer screen, but at the same time it is hard to get a comprehensive set of hardware that actually allows you to create what you envision, so it ends up in this cycle of getting more gear. I have to stop myself a lot, keep my setup humble. I have no qualms with people that have a ton of gear either, I just don't have the space, nor the fortitude to deal with so much wiring and all that. I think it's fine though if you are into that.

On the subject of too much gear, watching loopops most recent video I was amazed by the technology but also I realized I never want to deal with that much gear unless I have a lot of space and it's my full time job or something.
 

 

[cern]

Nice topic about the feeling of wanting to have more gear: 
 

 

[psn]

Dorkiest synthfluencer? 

[cern]

On 9/5/2023 at 4:42 PM, psn said:

Dorkiest synthfluencer? 

I don't even understand people following Synth-Influencers.. This shit is so alien to me 

There is people literally getting free gear because they sitting on YouTube to promotes products. 
And people watching it like "Holy shit my synth-influencer boy is so good with this now I want to order that synth, I take 2 of them!" 

And the Youtube algorithm is only putting up comments That praises the Synth-Influencer!
"Oh wow new episode with my man synth-influcner who is gonna represent a new synth for a company, can't wait to buy it!"

[dcom]

10 minutes ago, cern said:

There is people literally getting free gear because they sitting on YouTube to promotes products. 

Do you research gear you're interested in, and if you do, how do you do it? How do you make the decision to buy something or not? How do you compare alternatives? (These are sincere questions, I really want to know what's your approach.)

[cern]

1 hour ago, dcom said:

Do you research gear you're interested in, and if you do, how do you do it? How do you make the decision to buy something or not? How do you compare alternatives? (These are sincere questions, I really want to know what's your approach.)

I usually go to the nearest Music store to try stuff out and even go to friends home for trying gear. 
There is a open minded community when I could say "Oh Im interested in a Octatrack" then I call a friend that says "Well come over to me and try it out first"

I have tried out so many different gear so I know how they are "acting". 
I had my hands and owned 909, 808, 2x303, 101, 202, MS-20, JX3P etc etc.. I know I never gonna go that road again specially not with vintage gear. 
This is what I want with this thread to chill with going these crazy roads. 

A friend of mine wanted to buy her first synthesizer, She was insecure of the purchase for over 2 years!
Videos just made her more confused with more unanswered questions until one day.
She went to the nearest Music Store and tried around 10 different synths for beginners and she felt for the MicroFreak. 

I think also those Synth-Youtubers are mostly doing their showoffs because they want to brag about gear they have
and they are available to build a castle of synths or a wall of Euroracks because it is important for them to show that they are doing better than you! 


 

[YEK]

1 hour ago, cern said:

I don't even understand people following Synth-Influencers.. This shit is so alien to me 

There is people literally getting free gear because they sitting on YouTube to promotes products. 
And people watching it like "Holy shit my synth-influencer boy is so good with this now I want to order that synth, I take 2 of them!" 

And the Youtube algorithm is only putting up comments That praises the Synth-Influencer!
"Oh wow new episode with my man synth-influcner who is gonna represent a new synth for a company, can't wait to buy it!"

What’s I find funny is that some of them don’t appear to make music. At least they don’t market their music. They just get sent the latest crap and are like oh this is very nice product.  

[cern]

Yes exactly and their approach the gear with a vey mysterious vibe! 
Like "welcome to this cabin of curiosity now Im about to give you an inside look of Company X's NEW secret weapon.."
All the synth-lovers becoming like "Oh wow what is he talking about now? Can not even control myself! I need to order it right away!"
It is just some crapy gear with 110% hype!

It is becoming ridiculous.. 

I just sold my Monomachine MK2+ and I feel very happy of doing it!
It is a very fun unique machine and love to jam on it. 
But I can not stand the headache if something happens and I can see other people having a better use of it. 
I got more than 3 times of the money I bought it for so that was nice but Im more happy to just get rid of stuff laying around.

Edited September 6, 2023 by cern

[th555]

It looks like pd has evolved quite a bit since I last tried it. I have all of this installed and working but not really played with it yet:

pd-ceammc: an external library and also a full distribution managed by some russian electroacoustic institute: https://ceammc.github.io/pd-help/help-en/ Has a lot of handy functions and even some nice data structures like dictionaries which are sorely lacking in vanilla..

Automatonism:https://www.automatonism.com/the-software  a bunch of high level modules implemented in vanilla pd that you can patch just like any pd stuff.

Context sequencer: https://contextsequencer.wordpress.com/features/ this one looks really nice, you can build sequencers as a sort of hierarchy, but the guy doesn't seem too dismissive of just using it in a linear way too which is what I'd want to do if I'm ever going to make a full track in pd.

Also it seems like pd-extended is dead but now you can simply install externals from the pd window itself...

[ignatius]

On 9/6/2023 at 7:14 AM, YEK said:

What’s I find funny is that some of them don’t appear to make music.

they make videos and say "check out my latest video" and "i have a video coming about that". 

yeah.. i've heard bits of their music and it's usually awful. like just so basic it hurts. they're experts at knowing what is available and how to hook things up and that's mostly what they're interested in doing. but whatever.. people hanging out in their home studios stuffed with gear noodling isn't the worst life i can imagine but i guess it only works as long as the algorithm doesn't shit on them. 

there's a couple who are good if you're researching gear and don't have access to a store and don't feel like reading a manual etc. sometimes they'll go through the gear pretty deeply and offer criticisms or "this is cool" etc. 

but, it's become a weird ecosystem that feeds on itself. the recent hysteria over the plug in that baby audio made with andrew huang is a good example. so many of these gear daw plug in channels just went balls deep on it with all the praise and "best plug in ever". it was everywhere for a minute. 

i find the alias/artist names used to be pretty funny. "hi it's me bob.. aka hypertechaliendrops.. back with another video".. but it seems it's all as important as ever for the gear/software industry and is essential marketing. people are getting paid. 

 

 

[Taupe Beats]

On 9/2/2023 at 5:03 PM, cern said:

Very nice words from dcom and I hope you finding a solution that fits you most. Im also the one that sees volcas etc more or less as toys. 
It is better to have some real machines in that case. 

Sequencer addiction is a rough one!  
I think you can write down some of what is bad and good with your sequencers, what you are more prioritizing and looking for. 
Then maybe later when you are ready ofc you can question yourself if it's worth having around. 
I can get annoyed at gear I never using.. Would someone come up to me and say "Hey can I buy your Volca FM for 10€?" I would say yes 
 

I think the Volca FM is a bad example for this sentiment. It can literally load Yamaha DX7 patches. The DX7 is one of the most omnipresent synthesizers ever. Used on thousands of recordings by just as many talented people. The Volca FM is also no harder to program than the DX7. I would certainly not pick that out of the Volca line to classify as a toy (not any of them really, tbh). 

Tangentially, on toys, it's interesting contextually to consider the "G" in GAS here. Many toys are somewhat unique source sounds that aren't easily replicated. Practically everyone has a DAW now, or can get one easily. Same goes for a usable microphone. That pretty easily turns the toy into "gear". So an alternative and less-expensive way to look at GAS, I guess.

[cern]

43 minutes ago, Taupe Beats said:

I think the Volca FM is a bad example for this sentiment. It can literally load Yamaha DX7 patches. The DX7 is one of the most omnipresent synthesizers ever. Used on thousands of recordings by just as many talented people. The Volca FM is also no harder to program than the DX7. I would certainly not pick that out of the Volca line to classify as a toy (not any of them really, tbh). 

Tangentially, on toys, it's interesting contextually to consider the "G" in GAS here. Many toys are somewhat unique source sounds that aren't easily replicated. Practically everyone has a DAW now, or can get one easily. Same goes for a usable microphone. That pretty easily turns the toy into "gear". So an alternative and less-expensive way to look at GAS, I guess.

Yeah ok I was a little bit harsh. The Volcas are cool but the sizes and the plastic small knobs etc screams toyish.. But they sell it like hot cookies.  
I think also with Volcas it teases the users to crave for more, bigger and better gear.. This is my speculations only. 
When it comes to FM and DX-Synths there are som good alternatives out there. I personally enjoying the KQ Dixie on Ipad.. It stores DX7 patches and can even send patches to Volca FM. 

Honestly I don't want to bash on gear or people with gear. I just want to encourage people to chill with the consumption maybe and go for the gear you already have. 
When something new is coming out maybe take a break, reflect and don't try to be carried away like so many people already doing. Maybe have a year or 2 with not buying anything? Or maybe sell 2-4 gears and buy 1. 

GAS is a real feeling and it can be damn strong and for me personal I feel much better of taking control of it and even sell gear. It is a better feeling than obtained to turn to the gear you already have than buying new shit.. 

This Is just my opinon 

[Taupe Beats]

23 hours ago, cern said:

Yeah ok I was a little bit harsh. The Volcas are cool but the sizes and the plastic small knobs etc screams toyish.. But they sell it like hot cookies.  
I think also with Volcas it teases the users to crave for more, bigger and better gear.. This is my speculations only. 
When it comes to FM and DX-Synths there are som good alternatives out there. I personally enjoying the KQ Dixie on Ipad.. It stores DX7 patches and can even send patches to Volca FM. 

Honestly I don't want to bash on gear or people with gear. I just want to encourage people to chill with the consumption maybe and go for the gear you already have. 
When something new is coming out maybe take a break, reflect and don't try to be carried away like so many people already doing. Maybe have a year or 2 with not buying anything? Or maybe sell 2-4 gears and buy 1. 

GAS is a real feeling and it can be damn strong and for me personal I feel much better of taking control of it and even sell gear. It is a better feeling than obtained to turn to the gear you already have than buying new shit.. 

This Is just my opinon 

I agree with the general sentiment behind this. And I want to stress that the following is a general interest in the tangents surrounding this topic, rather than surface contrarianism.

Overconsumption can lead to a host of pitfalls. But not necessarily. It's realistic questions of conditioning on 2 levels here:  the capitalist consumer, and the electronic music fan. The former is conditioned to support their surroundings and enrich themselves through purchase. The latter is conditioned to largely (some heavy lifting with that word, don't want to get too long-winded) expect futurism/innovation. These two conditions usually coexist in the same person.

Would it not be more reasonable to ask manufacturers to themselves "take a break" in this situation? It's an easier argument in relation to capitalism. I'd be surprised if there's not major oversaturation in the market of synths/etc over the last 5-10 years. Regarding innovation, that is an unavoidable nature of this world. Your comparison of the Volca FM to KQ Dixie (which rules, good shout) demonstrates this. 

The innovation part is why I still think referring to the Volcas and instruments like them as toys is largely misguided. Part of innovation is being able to make technology more affordable and accessible. The Volcas are one of the greatest achievements to that goal. But an even *bigger* advantage is MIDI. MIDI makes the idea of its physical components largely moot, imo. Going back to my first post, most can access a DAW. Not too hard (or expensive) to get that to open up deep capabilities in the Volca FM (for instance). 

I honestly wish there was more focus on comprehensive MIDI (really MIDI 2.0 but hell I'm already old) in compact gear coming out. Best of both worlds, less need for physical resource, blah blah blah. Thanks to anyone who read all this.

[cern]

On 9/8/2023 at 11:10 PM, Taupe Beats said:

I agree with the general sentiment behind this. And I want to stress that the following is a general interest in the tangents surrounding this topic, rather than surface contrarianism.

Overconsumption can lead to a host of pitfalls. But not necessarily. It's realistic questions of conditioning on 2 levels here:  the capitalist consumer, and the electronic music fan. The former is conditioned to support their surroundings and enrich themselves through purchase. The latter is conditioned to largely (some heavy lifting with that word, don't want to get too long-winded) expect futurism/innovation. These two conditions usually coexist in the same person.

Would it not be more reasonable to ask manufacturers to themselves "take a break" in this situation? It's an easier argument in relation to capitalism. I'd be surprised if there's not major oversaturation in the market of synths/etc over the last 5-10 years. Regarding innovation, that is an unavoidable nature of this world. Your comparison of the Volca FM to KQ Dixie (which rules, good shout) demonstrates this. 

The innovation part is why I still think referring to the Volcas and instruments like them as toys is largely misguided. Part of innovation is being able to make technology more affordable and accessible. The Volcas are one of the greatest achievements to that goal. But an even *bigger* advantage is MIDI. MIDI makes the idea of its physical components largely moot, imo. Going back to my first post, most can access a DAW. Not too hard (or expensive) to get that to open up deep capabilities in the Volca FM (for instance). 

I honestly wish there was more focus on comprehensive MIDI (really MIDI 2.0 but hell I'm already old) in compact gear coming out. Best of both worlds, less need for physical resource, blah blah blah. Thanks to anyone who read all this.

Yes, Interesting view you have thank you. 

Even if volcas are super inventions (You better buy all of them, or else your life is not complete) they are not the answer to the whole picture of creating.. It is just some tools. 
That gadget world is so ridiculous, just look at Teenage Engineer with their "super modern" Apple style fancy gadgets and pocket sized instrument. 
Like you are not fulfilled in this life unless you have our beautiful designed $2.000 slim packed pocket piss thing in your hands. 
This is the kind of business going from creating tools to just doing thoughtful advertising about the idea of fulfilling your needs with their product is the main goal in life.

If we are willing to create sounds and doing music etc we can at least half the total consumption of gear. 
Yes I really think so! maybe even more. 

We are also always speaking about the horrors of climate changes etc.. How can mass consumption of gear solve this? 
When I talk about mass consumption I don't talk about a single individual buying alot of gear. I talk about more and more people having a lot of gear. 

Midi 2.0 would be amazing tho.. There we talk a real invention.

[Bubba69]

I feel like GAS for me all stems from having a certain artistic vision in my head, along with a set of sounds and tools I know, and a set of sounds and tools I would like to start using without making my life a headache. Part of this is also a desire to encorporate hardware into my setup, which I successfully did, but it took years to get comfortable with. I've sold almost as many things as I've purchased after realizing something isn't helping what I thought it would be helping. I'm still trying to sell a couple things but it's seemingly hard to do in this market, so I might keep it and make it work for me. Doesn't help that the market is inflated in price and choice, nobody wants anything like slightly imperfect gear from a few years ago, too much other shiny new shit. When I can reduce my gear, it often feels like a win. Right now my interface can fit all of my devices, and it's quite a nice feeling and ends up being sort of the filter that stops me from expanding (or mixer channels as I've been doing live mixed jams up until recently).

I do lust after certain analog and digital sounds, I bought quite a few plugins in the last year or so. I still feel like the character of the ms-20 and the ob-6 are hard to match in a plugin so it's easy for me to justify keeping those as they make up a huge core of my sound that I identify with currently as an artist. I think thats what is important. I see so many demos for new gear and I'm like, this sounds like every other boutique analog thing I've ever heard, why would I want this? Oh it has it's own unique take on a sequencer? Who gives a shit, I don't use internal sequencers on most gear. And everyone demoing things sounds like shit, like the same basic four chord pattern with basic beat loops arps and synthwave stabs or some shit like I thought this was supposed to be about art and innovating and not trying to recreate the same sound we've already been able to make for the last 20 years in a slightly different way. I have no idea what a piece of gear will even do until I spend weeks with it and really get to know it. I've only seen a handful of people do anything remotely interesting with say, the analog 4, cirklon, or octatrack on these youtube "influencer" or content-creator pages (yet I continue to watch them).  Theres been a few exceptions, but for example, I had to buy the Hapax pretty much based on the manual because all of the demo videos sound like basic grooves or ambient jams and like something I could do on any basic techno sequencer, but where it actually shines is it's great piano roll implementation and ability to quickly expand tracks and select columns of notes and copy paste them around and transpose selections and make these super long and elaborate patterns and zoom in super far past the typical 64 steps/4 bars. and it's instrument definition system which makes it super easy to plug in an automate hardware with templated parameters that just work, and automation system. People touch on things and then don't go into depth really doing something that would be hard to do on other pieces of gear. 

[zero]

On 9/9/2023 at 5:30 PM, cern said:

Even if volcas are super inventions (You better buy all of them, or else your life is not complete) they are not the answer to the whole picture of creating.. It is just some tools. 
That gadget world is so ridiculous, just look at Teenage Engineer with their "super modern" Apple style fancy gadgets and pocket sized instrument. 
Like you are not fulfilled in this life unless you have our beautiful designed $2.000 slim packed pocket piss thing in your hands. 
This is the kind of business going from creating tools to just doing thoughtful advertising about the idea of fulfilling your needs with their product is the main goal in life.

If we are willing to create sounds and doing music etc we can at least half the total consumption of gear. 
Yes I really think so! maybe even more. 

just wanted to say, you seem to be making a lot of assumptions on what other people want to do with their "toys." it seems there's a stereotype of a certain type of bedroom producer out there you are thinking of when you say all this? the stereotypical hipster I think? like just taking pics/vids of their set up all for the 'gram, and not learning them? I honestly don't know, because I don't go on social media at all, or talk to any other IRL music producers. not everyone who buys some of these gadgets thinks this way, of course. 

there's also the affordability factor on all these little mini synth devices. y'all know very well the gear world can get crazy expensive, and if someone wants to dabble into electronic music making with hardware, then I say better to let them start out with some of the entry level gear (e.g. Volca's), then heading straight into the lion's den. that's why Behringer/Korg, etc. rolled these mini products out, right? to try and get more electronic music making gear into people's hands, who may have been intimidated by the hefty price tags on older beast synths. yeah I guess I can see another argument here that they've made it too easy to make music with these mini products, and then the world will become oversaturated with unoriginal crap tunes. but, uh, I think we've way passed that point by now lol.

I've always held the mantra that you need to get good first on the cheap stuff, before you can move up to the next quality level of instrument. I never thought it was right to go out and buy a Les Paul first, before first making your fingers bleed on a cheap knock off fender strat. at least that's how I see these mini synths, as learning tools to start on before moving up. I don't think they should be entirely bashed.

[zlemflolia]

i hate synthesizers, i hate looking at things, i hate computers, i hate typing, i hate clicking mouse, i want the music to come right out of my brain into the speakers, ill settle for nothing less

[xox]

 

[TubularCorporation]

On 9/11/2023 at 2:36 PM, zero said:

that's why Behringer/Korg, etc. rolled these mini products out, right? to try and get more electronic music making gear into people's hands

[zero]

2 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

was I too idealistic? the right answer should have been making more $$$$$$$$

[Freak of the week]

On 9/11/2023 at 8:51 PM, zlemflolia said:

i want the music to come right out of my brain into the speakers, ill settle for nothing less

soon

[hoggy]

31 minutes ago, Freak of the week said:

soon

and it will all suck (in general, not aimed at zlem)

Edited September 13, 2023 by hoggy

[Bubba69]

I feel like the last post I made in this thread was cringe and wanted to apologize for it. I was in a really negative mood.

[BlockUser]

On 9/2/2023 at 6:46 PM, th555 said:

To stick to the topic however, every couple of years I get the idea to try out puredata and try to do whole tracks in it but it's always the sequencing that trips me up.

What is it about the sequencing that is tripping you up? Is it getting stuff to run in sync? pD is great, but I never got over windows, I am a ThinkPad lover. pd works best on unix systems. There are many externals that are incredible, you're also mentioning ceammc in a later post. But it kept crashing on win for me. Same with the else external which is incredible work, but just not made for windows. I eventually went on to Max, which was a massive qol upgrade, with optional global clock, and it's just stable and running a lot more smoothly (GUI eats a lot of cpu though).

In the beginning, I didn't know what to do with pd, but then I just started chaining up simple counters with metros, and having them run independently from each other, then sending this to hardware synths. Seeing that I am not constrained by a global bpm, but that I could have as many bpms as I wanted simultaneously was a massive lightbulb moment (not bpm anymore but you get the picture). Time isn't bound to grids anymore. pd and Max, and Supercollider, too, allow you to build incredible stuff, from very simple bits and pieces. But it's best to explore them with curiosity, instead of wanting them to do something for you. It's incredibly time-consuming to learn them, but I went to art academy where I could spend 5 years doing nothing else but this.

My "tracks" in pd/Max are always just multiple patches running, playing with them in the moment, trying things out, seeing how patches relate to each other. So it's become much more of a live thing. I saw that trying to rebuild stuff that exists already in grid-based seqs doesn't do a lot for me. Letting those number streams loose, on the other hand, is a whole world of fun! It's fucking beautiful how simple it is to make things communicate with each other in these environments. I stopped buying gear a long time ago, sold a lot, and gave some more to a very good friend of mine. All because of pd. Can't be arsed with Ableton any longer. It's like my ideas just don't fit that environment any more.

But for jamming with other people, hardware has always worked best for me, just sync up(by midi or by hand) and have fun. And just jamming away on a good drum machine is nice and relaxing after a long day. Still, none of this will make music for you. I found the worst enemy of creativity is anxiety and overthinking, not a lack of instruments.

[cern]

14 minutes ago, Bubba69 said:

I feel like the last post I made in this thread was cringe and wanted to apologize for it. I was in a really negative mood.

I think it was interesting 
I can sound like a cringe person who hates on everything and specially gear but It is quite opposite in fact.

I love electronic music and gear also but for a long time ago it was a privilege to own a decent set of gear. 
I just think we need to have lots of more respect for the tools you own and use it for creating and set the music and sounds in focus. Not Gasing for more gear.. 

I have seen people buying and craving for more and more including me. I just think we can all go very far with a handful amount of instruments.