Equipment is no substitution for vision and you cannot buy happiness. You either have good ideas or you’re looking for them. Proper tools can help facilitate the execution of a project but their absence shouldn’t be an excuse to not produce. That said, I have found that some tools spur inspiration. Many of the people around here seem to have a sort of creative wanderlust; the kind that enjoy the process of exploration, and I feel that Elektron excels in enabling this.
If you’re inspired playing a monosynth or a flute for the rest of your life, so be it. When it comes down to it, you do not need anything and it’s folly to keep chasing purchases.
I had trouble making music with software so then I moved to Elektrons to think I can magically make a lot of tracks with. To this day, I still have a hard time making music, only to realize that it was me that doesn’t know how to make music and not the gear itself!!
he CAN never dive a single menu again, because he’s already the star, and people happily will listen to whatever he releases and rate it 5 stars. this is how show business works.
but that’s social engineering, not technology
For me it is important in the sense that the machines need to be well laid out and accessible since i do everything live on the fly… so certain types of gear are more important to me than others depending on how well they translate to a live situation .
For me the equipment is extremely important for a few reasons.
immediacy
workflow
sound quality / character
For older equipment , the sound quality could definitely be there, but a lot of it just requires tons of menu diving or has a clunky interface (dx7, old samplers, etc…) I dislike software based synths because I never found them to have the same sonic quality as a lot of hardware, though I could he wrong nowadays. Haven’t used a softsynth in about 5 years.
There is hardware today that can help you flesh out ideas for songs in a much more efficient way than 20 years ago, though it all relies on the user’s vision / talent at the end of the day.
We have discovered the brain is more “plastic” thsn we previously thought.
As we age, not only is it important that we maintain skills, from a neurological standpoint, but learn new ones to maintain a sort of “youth” and flexibility in the brain. It seems part of our evolution to desire discovery.
So, tools matter… if not necessarily to possess, but at least learn new methods. We have seen even with the option of producing entirely by laptop or iPad, people tend towards having a tactil experience with an object, an instrument.
We see and learn with our hands as much as our eyes.
Funny thing about that, at no point ever during my years of playing shows, did anyone show interest in the laptop on stage. However, lots of people, musicians and non-musicians alike, asked to play my synths.
I’ve been using only Ableton Live these past few days and have come up with better/more elaborate compositions than I’ve ever come up with just using my modular system or Elektron boxes.
I haven’t been as “into” making it though, whereas when I get into a groove with an Elektron box (or boxes) or my modular, I can often sometimes just sink completely into the sound and be completely in a world of my own. That’s an immersion I haven’t gotten from just using software.
I could perfectly well make much better tracks with only Live, but it just wouldn’t be as relaxing/immersive/meditative. I’m trying a dual approach now, combining the best of the two worlds. Getting into a groove with the hardware, then moving on to software to sequence it.
My buddy just sent me his latest EP - it’s made only using found sounds and Ableton Live - it’s better than anything I’d ever come even close to making myself - I put that down to his sense of musicality. If you’re musical and creative you can make great music with very basic tools - fancy expensive equipment don’t matter much at all.
I’m 100% sure a really good producer could make the shittiest of VSTs sound better in a track than the most expensive of Moogs (or whatever) in the hands of an amateur.
It just made me think of saying something absolute in a crass response, like,
“Nobody wants to see someone do a techno set on acoustic home made instruments with no PA.”
Thing is, there’s probably a lot of people who would like to see that, is it really Techno tho?
Ultimately the essence of the original post has a desire to homogenize everything.
If I did it this way, and so and so did it this way, then why dont we all do it this way.
Sure you can create with what you have on hand, and that can be great work.
I’m not really gonna say much else that hasn’t already been said.
