Miserable Git 0 - 1 Eurorack

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

So a lot of you might have noticed I’ve put all my Euro gear up for sale, some of you have been interested enough to ask what the fuck I’m up to, given the apparent success I thought I’d made of it.

Well, the short answer is that owning Eurorack made me lose my mind. The long answer is that I already lost my mind a long time ago and Eurorack was just part of a wider set of problems.

To explain, I need to take you all back 20 years or more, to my late teens/early 20’s. I was a complete mess, full on self destruction. Drinking, fighting, risky behaviour, crazy spending binges, you name it. Smarter and more qualified people than me have told me my behaviour was indicative of bipolar, but I never got any sort of formal diagnosis (because I’ve seen too many times what our Nation Health Service does to people with mental health issues). So far so boo hoo, right?

It didn’t really matter when I was just hurting myself, but I was really hurting my girlfriend (now wife), so I decided to sort myself out. I figured out that the best way to deal with my instability was not to deal with the lows, but cut off the highs (and oh what glorious highs they were, I’ve done a fair amount of MDMA in my time and it doesn’t even come close to the joy my own brain was capable of giving me). So, along with the usual stuff like practicing mindfulness, meditating, exercise and whatever, I had a set of rituals designed to bring me back down when I felt myself ramping up. The main one was to find an excuse to go out in the car on my own, put some sad music on and think about how it would sound at me or my wife’s funeral. Worked a treat.

The unfortunate byproduct of all of this is that it has largely made me a bit of a misery guts. But I’ll take misery guts over Lithium zombie.

So fastforward 20 years and here I am sat at home all day with the kids; no time for mindfulness, no time for exercise, no time for driving around planning funerals, so I gradually started ramping up. It started out great, a real nice creative purple patch, music just falling out of me. Brilliant. Along side this, my wife has had a really hard year dealing with and eventually cutting off her psychopathic parents, so I’ve been absorbing a lot of her pain too, which has been feeding the beast all year.

Then I got into Eurorack, more music, brilliant. But then I started to get obsessive (my wife thinks I’m autistic too, she might be right, after all, she is basically an expert in autism). Day and night on modular grid, planning, buying, shifting around modules. Gradually, I slowly started to lose the ability to get in “the zone” making music and felt less and less joy, but at the same time felt more and more need to obsess about modules.

I was constantly distracted from my day to day and racking up debt buying shit it turns out I really didn’t need. I’ve always found I work best within limitations. Take the Digitakt, for example. A limited machine that requires creative thinking to break through and make something excellent. With Eurorack, whenever you come up against a limitation, you can just buy your way out of it, so that’s what I did, I turned a therapeutic hobby into a mental health destroying spending binge.

It’s ok, don’t feel sorry for me, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed, my kids aren’t going to starve or anything, but buying the Pro 2 made me realise that I was throwing endless amounts of money at something that was making me ill (that and a pretty stern reality check from my wife). Seriously, a synth from years ago can do everything I was trying to achieve spending thousands on Eurorack. I’d told myself I was doing the Eurorack to chase a specific sound. In reality I was just spending money for the sake of it, which is a bloody dangerous game where I’m concerned.

At the end of the day, I’m just another burned out Eurocrack sob story, my problems are not caused by Eurorack, but my problems definitely latched on to it. Part of me getting myself sorted is to return to making music for fun, for the distraction, rather than some endless unachievable mission that sucked a lot of the joy out of it.

Don’t let my story put you off getting into Euro if that’s what you want, just don’t be mental while you’re doing it, it probably won’t end well.

Now go here and buy my shit.*

*I know what you’re thinking, best stealth advert ever, right?

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Looking to expand my setup
#2

Can relate to far too much of this. Thanks for posting Fin. Here’s to a simpler more fun life with your pro 2 - I’m looking forward to hearing what you make with it!

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#3

Was going to do a nice supportive reply but i seem to think you’d appreciate a blunt honest one instead

You have a supportive wife who knows your issues and helps you deal with them. You have kids and a family and a home and your pain is buying gear to make music. I think millions would take that life in a heartbeat.

So yeah, sell that shit, go enjoy the pro 2 and your family and get that roof fixed :wink:

Honestly though i hope selling up and redirecting your focus brings positive results

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#4

And I totally get the eurorack pain and joy. I have been lusting shit I can’t afford all year and modulargrid is like a pushy grug dealer selling me the next buzz

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#5

I can relate … I was very close doing that as well … now I’m fine with all the other expensive gear and not getting into the zone (even my other excuse of not having a tidy studio is not valid since everything is clean). I now think lobotomy is the only way to get back into the zone.

:100:

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#6

Absolutely, I’m definitely not after sympathy, I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

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#7

Totally understand … just keep it simple , free up that space both fysical as mental , de-clutter and focus on the important stuff . I’ve been using the DFAM as a sample source for my Digitakt for about 3 years now , and it is becoming really hard to squeeze out a sound that i didn’t hear before yet . But when i do it is so much more rewarding than just buy this or that to get there quick .

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#8

Definitely can relate, sometimes gear can be stress inducing, it can be a struggle to get the balance right.

No need to justify it to yourself or others, sometimes honesty is the hardest thing to realise, and the route to creative balance is probably the trickiest thing to manage. A while back I applauded your focussed set up, but nothing is set in stone and perfection can be a mirage, or at least a temporary state.

It takes a lot of mental effort to go so far down a path to then realise you are on the wrong path, but I think it is just part of the process for most people.

“Hack away at the unessential”

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#9

I‘ve sold mine as well. The time you loose while thinking about the perfect skiff is worse than spending the money. I realized it quickly after the first row of modules. Too much time on modulargrid.

Same with other gear though. Most of the week I‘m thinking about my setup before I fall asleep in the evening :upside_down_face: These 3 boxes, or these 4 boxes… should I get a proper poly…
Problem with eurorack is, the choices are multiplied, so the time of choosing is multiplied

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#10

Thanks for sharing and I really enjoyed reading the slice of your life. I haven’t take the Eurorack plunge, not least because I am a tight-fisted bastard who sells stuff on a whim because I’d rather see the value sitting in an account than on my desk. But on a sidenote, once you get the roof sorted and have a bit of spare cash, you should check out the Pulsar-23. You’re first on my list should I choose to sell mine, but I’m having a blast with it at the moment. So many modules for the money but more than that, a complete creative ecosystem which provides seemingly endless joy.

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#11

Also you might look at it like:

Miserable Git 1 - Eurorack 0

:wink:

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#13

Gear addiction is real and it can be absolutely paralysing for ones musical output.

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#14

Can totally empathise. Not about eurorack, but I’ve been through this cycle several times with various hobbies, and only just coming to the realisation that it IS a repeating pattern and I need to do my best to recognise it and nip it in the bud. I’m getting better. The cycle for me goes

  • I want to do X
  • to do X I need a solution to problem Y
  • what’s the best possible solution to problem Y

(Notice in the last phase, X, my original objective, has completely disappeared).

@Fin25 I realise there’s a lot more to it in your story, but for me at least that adequately sums up the pattern.

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#15

Thanks for sharing dude. It’s the eurocrack thing. I briefly went for eurorack, build my own case as well. But realized I was set for the path you describe here. The time spent in planning and researching was time not spend making music so I ditched the stuff.

Hope you find the joy in music making soon again. I’m sure you will :slight_smile:

#16

Thanks for sharing your story.

FWIW I really like the you that I read on these forums, and whose music I listen to. Doesn’t mean we’d get along IRL, but your input to the forum, and your music, are really valuable to me (dunno why I felt the need to say that, but since you are being honest, why not?!)

I am undergoing an autism diagnosis at present, my son’s autism is so obviouslly similar to my own behaviour and rituals that my wife has steadily pushed harder and harder these last 10 years for me to seek a diagnosis.

I am sure you will sell all your stuff, enjoy the pro 2 and the renewed minimalism and focus. Blessings to your wife, she sounds like a wonderful person.

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#17

This is true

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#18

There is great wisdom in knowing when to say “zorro”.

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#19

Yeah this is really what it is :slight_smile:

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#20

Writing it down and share it with this Community is already a huge step in the right direction. You have guts. I love you man. And I’m sure a lot of people here can relate to your (our) story.

Tchu

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#21

Cheers, I’ve been told my personality in real life is a bit of an acquired taste, which is the politest way of saying I’m a c#*t.

In my subjective and very anecdotal experience working with autistic people, you almost always see it in one or the other parent too.

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