Blank panels or cardboard [whatever] to fill holes of a rack with a bus board is a good idea. You have exposed points and if a lose patch touched some power, you may fry something. Floating bus my not be as risky, if it’s hanging outta the way.
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Agree plus artwork spices up a modular system at less cost than modules.
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I LOVE this, especially the spirit behind its creation. Beautiful!
The poison is the antidote?
A premise which I’m playing with and reflecting on.
The compulsion to do something, to have something, to be something (in this case GAS) is simply a gross level manifestation of the creative process of becoming which is none other than the pulse of my aliveness emanating from the irrefutable fact that I am here, I exist, I AM.
GAS is really just the narrow end of a process, which is marked by a sense of density in which the level of choice is reduced to “I need to do this thing in order to experience this thing in order to be this thing”. There is very little leverage when I am operating at this gross level and followed through to its conclusion I know where it leads.
It’s as if the mind interrupts the creative pulse of becoming and imposes a narrative which dictates what must be done with it…perhaps the mind even finds the creative pulse uncomfortable and too big and wide, so it has to funnel it into a process of action.
By simply pausing and noticing the machinations of the mind and its tendency to move towards narrow outcomes, I give myself an opportunity to slow down the process and turn back the other way and experience the raw creative pulse, I can acknowledge the mind’s attempts to deal with this through its proposed process of action, whilst making space for more creative manifestations which are not marked by such a narrow sense of grasping…something more like spontaneous action.
It just occurred to me that even this post could be representative of the mind’s attempt to articulate what is ultimately beyond articulation. To funnel it into a nutshell that I think I can crack.
I’m still trying to get there (that place where the guru floats on the notebook cover above)…
ho ho ho!
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I think a lot of people here would benefit from therapy and meditation.
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Fixed it, now it looks less like snark 
(which I’m sure you didn’t mean it to be.)
EDIT: not that I don’t agree, but, you know, if people are in need of help, making them feel somehow deficient because they need help is a pretty poor strategy. Everyone is broken to some degree. Find me a room full of people who don’t need some kind of help?
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@Martebar you are awefull quiet… how are you doing and how are you coping with the situation. Let me hear how you feel now.
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I bought a Digitone on the 26th December.
It wasn’t planned, as the money was unexpected, and it arrived before Jan 1st. So I didn’t break any promises/pledges. But as I sat there looking at it, alongside my Mpc Live and Op-1s, I just felt overwhelmed having it. That it would spread my limited time and energy too thinly.
So back to the shop it goes.
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I’m hoping to make some posts like this this year. I have too much of everything and not enough knowledge of it all. If I was being brutal/logical about it, I have an MPC Live II and there is literally no need for anything else to make music these days. So that’s one extreme, and keeping everything I have would be the other.
I want to land somewhere in between these in 12 months time. No idea which end I will be near, but thanks to this thread and all the people doing this, it won’t be beyond one end!
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One of the strategies suggested earlier was to look into YouTube videos on your current gear. I rewatched one by Oscillator Sink, that explains how to incorporate trigless (lock) trigs and to trigger sounds outside of the sequencer to create evolving soundscapes.
This inspired me to do this jam:
I keep falling in love with the Digitakt. It was my first Elektron love and I will cherish it forever 
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Thank you for your concern!
No purchase since my distress signal (in fact since the 25th november), but still a lot more time than I’d like spent on modulargrid, but overall the answers convinced me to not click on the dreaded button.
Thanks to everyone who answered, this group is solid!
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something that may help folks is to come up with a little project for yourself. this morning while whipping up something for jamuary, i spent a few minutes watching videos on new jack swing production styles. i’d really like to work on some stuff like that. it’s a nostalgic time for me… that music takes me back. jamuary itself is a great challenge, too. the exercise isn’t so much “going deep,” but more like getting proficient enough to bang out music quickly, whether it’s good/polished or not.
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You might say it’s easier to spend time lusting over gear than it is to make music
You [not you personally, but the GASer] struggles making a tune. Looks for a reason why that is. “Perhaps it’s the gear. This new gear will do it for me”. Finds that’s not it, it’s gotta be this piece of gear instead. THAT will do it.
etc etc…
While in GAS mode…how much time has been spent pinning over videos, manuals, the internet searching gear. How much time has been spent “reimagining” the studios layout. How much time has been spent learning yet another piece of gear to find out, this basically werks like the last piece of gear….
Rather than actually using the gear in front of you. 
I see curbing GAS to, in some cases, be as difficult as quitting smoking. I quit drinking to support a buddy who feared he may be alcoholic. It was to be a one year commitment. We ended up doing it for two years. It felt similar. I wasn’t dependent, so it most certainly wasn’t as difficult for someone who is. But, it felt the same as when I initially decided that the gear I have is more than enough to make a tune. And since that decision…I have 0 GAS. And I enjoy the stuff I have more now. I still suck. But I have more fun with the gear.
Been clean since March 2021. STAY STRONG.
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Quite true. Same with any relationship i guess. Pornography for example.
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This thread is kinda forcing me to accept that buying new gear constantly is and has been a huge problem I’ve been partially able to mask with all kinds of self deceiving BS. I guess it’s partly bcs it is somewhat common for electronic musicians to have a “command center” or a “space ship” but as fun as it can be for a while to just keep getting new toys, there is a price to it.
Before a wrist obliterating accident with a skateboard I was playing my telecaster all day every day. I never wished to have more guitars when I got frustrated but instead I put more hours in and felt that I achieved something by doing that. I haven’t had that feeling in a long time TBH, at least not that strongly.
I was extremely happy with that and often times wonder why it’s so hard to get into that situation with synths. In my defence I knew absolutely nothing about synths before 2014 and there has been quite a market for new stuff on that front since then, so I guess that’s part of the problem but it’s not the main reason.
Some time ago I watched a documentary about Edward Bernays and that really put some things about consumerism into perspective, but not enough to make me stop buying stuff I don’t need or have the money for tho. 
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You will all fail
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No.
love love love New Jack Swing! Can’t wait to hear what you come up with.
Fitting for this thread?
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Don’t worry gals and guys. @ghostbuddy is a fellow Finn and that’s just a common optimistic Finnish way of saying ”good luck, everybody, you can do it!”
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