Hah, good point. My natural response is to be a bit defensive, but responding with more grace is a good suggestion. 
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I use it to battle here in the Mission Briefs.
Its a war, and these are my weapons.
ā¦just kiddingā¦ I never winā¦ but its fun.
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To put it inversely, I care a lot about music and if I find out somebody Iāve met makes it, my immediate question Every. Single. Time. is āhow can I hear it?ā. Itās not because Iām grading them against any cornball standard Iāve invented, only because nobody in the world makes music quite like anybody else in the world and Iām genuinely curious.
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Yes. At first I thought I should finish tracks. Like you, there was my other hobby (in my case photography) that gave me some perspective. So whatever fragments or full tracks I make are to have fun and document my present. Sometimes I record and archive them as I do with my photos, which are fun to look at without having commited to making a cohesive body of work. I find this very liberating and this actually led to finishing more tracks.
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With OB Elektrons you can just dump all your stems into a DAW and make a track from there. At least thatās what I used to do with them.
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ā¦the essential questionā¦
consumer or creatorā¦?
a consumer is having fun with the given tools in front of him/herā¦
a creator is getting fun out of the tools in front of him/her by making them become truu instruments at his/her free disposal to create something new and for realā¦
beyond all fun, beyond their comfortzonesā¦
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The same here. I am also very intrigued by the books people read or the music they listen to. Iād love to talk people through my collections but usually nobody cares enough 
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HA! I know the feeling!
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This. If itās a necessity you will find a process to say what makes total sense to you. Experimenting is maybe a big part of that for you?
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First of all, thanks everyone for taking the time and sharing your thoughts.
The ābecoming betterā-aspect is somehow something that I never thought about, but its of course true, there are definitely learnings after all the time in front of the machines and also result sound better (at least sometimes :D)
I also started to post things on YouTube, to give everything a meaning, but recording and putting the videos together often feel more stressful, than I wish it would.
Anyway, it is definitely nice to have this āprivateā album of past creations.
After posting the original post, I was thinking about the question a bit more myself and in the end got to the point, where I was saying to myself, that I might want to give it another try to bring things into Ableton and earn some knowledge on the arranging stuff, too.
There are of course (also to me) fun aspects in moving samples around and refine those with fx and other layers.
Just, when I was doing this in the past, I would have rather been dialing in another new 64 stepsā¦
Iāll give it another try, I promise
I think the biggest pain for me is, that I donāt want to do anything, which feels rather like work than fun. And thatās the point where I am holding off from the next logical step towards a finished trackā¦
But moving to a new pattern and forgetting about the last one at a random point has as well something unfulfilling to me. This feeling caused my initial post.
ps. I might wanna search for someone, who hates being somewhat creative on synthesizers and just loves to arrange stuffā¦
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Publishing shouldnāt be stressful. It should rather be some kind of hygienic procedure.
Itās published, itās out of your mind - start something new.
I am trying to prevent to run in any over optimization.
Eventually helpful: consider how other (serious) artists (John Frusciante) are dealing with this topic: RHCPeppers Guitarist John Frusciante Uses Two Elektron Boxes to make latest albums - #5 by waftlord
Music is art - and freedom to do what YOU want to do!
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I use my Digitone to make samples. Iāll make a pattern or two. Iāll sequence my other synths from the MIDI tracks and Iāll record all that to my computer.
I use my Digitakt to actually put beats together. So Iāll take bits from the little jams that I recorded, chop them up, and put some drums under it. Sometimes Iāll sequence a bass or a lead line from the MIDI tracks.
Iāll also make beats the more old fashioned way. Chopping up samples from records. And Iāll do that with my Digitakt and sometimes my old Zoom Sampletrak.
Iāve got a little Novation Circuit Rhythm as well. Iāll also make beats with that but I tend to use it on its own. However, when I record it, Iāll record it through the Digitaktās compressor.
So yeah, I feel like I underutilize my Digitone because I donāt understand FM synthesis nearly as well as I should by now. But otherwise I feel like I know what everything is for. And Iām having fun.
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Hey haha
Today for example, Iām guilty of most of your football list, having travelled from York to Sheffield and back. But I havenāt touched a drop of alcohol all day!
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