Renoise has menus for inserting commands so you can learn progressively without a manual:
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Thankyou muchly, that will be rather helpful.
During the preparation for the challenge and wanting to dive deeper into my gear, I realised how important preparation is to ensure that nothing gets in the way of making music. As mentioned above, I have everything wired up so that three switches has me ready to make music. But I’ve gone one step further. I’m sacking off Bitwig – too many distractions and potential computer issues to resolve. Now I have it so that my three sound sources are permanently plugged into the OT and I have my template set up so that sampling any one of them is a single button combo away. I’ve also set everything up so that I can only monitor the OT via my handheld recorder. If the recorder isn’t on and armed to record, I can’t hear anything. In this way, recording whatever I happen to be doing is one button push away from being permanently recorded at any given time. Something interesting happening while noodling? Hit record, jam for 5-10 minutes, move on. Another something something happening later on? Same deal. From now on Bitwig will only be used for mastering the stereo recordings I make each night. As a result, I resisted upgrading my Bitwig license. It already does more than I could possibly want anyway 
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My disks have slipped multiple times now… I feel you man. Been in bed for half a year to heal up. Pain so bad that I froze once when walking to the bathroom…I couldn’t take a step either direction, not sit down or anything. Had to hold on to my wife and the door until it subsided a little to move again.
Take it slow, don’t push your back with lifting and yes, light exercise 
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Another tip: reread the threads for your own gear. Currently, I’m reading the whole 900-plus-post thread about OT tips, tricks, and uses on Lines. I just got to the stage where people are losing their minds over the 1.40 update. It’s helpful to realise what makes your gear exciting in the first place and to get tips about different techniques or use cases.
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More anti-GAS tips: Spend some quality time with just one piece of gear.
I’ve been watching my friend’s cat while he’s out of town, and whenever I go to his apartment to check on her, I throw a synth or drum machine in my bag to jam with while I’m over there. It’s been a great way to focus and push myself to the make the most of one instrument.
I brought the Rytm over yesterday and whipped up a bunch of patterns. These machines are so deep that you can put all your attention into them and still barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. Definitely helps remind me why I don’t need any more gear around here.
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Last minute update: just ordered two JMT noize synths (TVCO-2 and DNVO-1) and a Meris Polymoon to round out the year. I spent some time with the Strega/0-Ctrl combo and decided it wasn’t ideal soundwise… too dependent on clock noise and a delay that was a bit too lofi for my use. The JMT stuff is like a cross between the Lyra and Landscape Stereo Field, huge frequency range but somewhat out of control. The Polymoon is meant for the Blofeld but can patch the JMTs or modules into it as needed.
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For those wanting to go deeper not wider with samplers, try taking one short sample, copy it to each available audio channel, and then create a full track or loop from there. It really helps you push things as far as they can go. My tips would be to create tiny loops for tones, downtuning notes to reveal beats, and using plenty of high resonance filtering to pull out the most usable aspects of the sample for different parts of the frequency spectrum. Resampling can also be very helpful.
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These, plus this thread, going to be my only bookmarked/notifying topics for 2022.
Luckily because I have GAS so bad, I have quite a lot of “own gear” by this point 
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This sounds like a great thing to try with my new SP…
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Exactly. Do that a few times with an open mind and you’ll have gone into all the corners of the SP to force things to be kicks, bass, percussion, hats, tones, and so on. Then when you integrate more regular loops and synths, you’ll have all these extra tricks to pull out of the bag whenever needed 
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this is my kind of gear purchase.
Which reminds me: The Digitakt has a “only sine” pattern in the preset project. It only uses a single cycle sine sample and it sounds very awesome and can be helpful for inspiration (and that pattern doesn’t even use the 2nd LFO yet!).
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Is no gear new year kinda like no nut November 
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I am not really sure what my favorite food is. I go back and forth between pizza, as generic as it sounds, or just a good cheeseburger and fries. Though my favorite foods are generic, I have no problems trying out foods from around the world and I’ll try most things. I bought an OB6. The only thing I just can’t stomach is octopus. Something about the texture and physical appearance, I simply just can’t do it. I’ve also never tried escargot, which also seems like something I won’t be able to stomach.
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bot an interesting observation
Really interesting to read this, Craig… I’ve been thinking along the same lines (how to make the main focus be making music) but came to the opposite conclusion… with some similarities though.
I’m looking at basing my main set up around Ableton, but I’ve started taking advantage of the labelling system in Live to categorise my VSTi’s, plug-ins, samples, etc, to stop the option paralysis and keep me focussed on what I know/use most.
Last night I sat down, away from my computer and gear, with a pad and pen, and sketched out 2 separate setups that I plan to work with in 2022. One being the aforementioned Ableton rig (with a KeyStep, Push 2 and some other bits) and one based around my MPC Live 2.
Seeing them on paper made me see how little I actually need for both systems to be really powerful, and the idea of being focussed makes it seem way less stressful.
So I’m also looking to make 2022 a year of selling, not just not buying.
I’m going to start by listing the gear that’s not in my permanent 2 setups that I do really like and appreciate having… then start selling everything else.
Zen like minimalism here I come. 
(Not really, that’s a long way off, but the intention is there…)
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Allright, so it’s the 30th and I have no pending orders so I guess it’s time for a recap.
Current gear list:
- iPad loaded with tons of great apps
- TR-8S
- DFAM
- Digitakt
- Digitone
- Torso T-1
- LaunchControl XL
- TD-3
- Blackbox
- Bluebox
- Model:Cycles
- LXR-02
- Micromonsta 2
- Eurorack with lots of modules (Noise Engineering,
- A few volcas
- PC with lots of software (Bitwig, renoise…)
Obviously there is no need for anything else. That’s already way too much and I may sell a few things. I may break my vow for a microphone though… we’ll see.
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Hmm, I think you need a Synth with at least a 3-octave keybed. 