No, I need him to buy gear so that he can sell or trade it to me later on… he’s my private taster. It’s in my interest to maintain his appetite.
6 Likes
Check out Drew Gooden’s video on it. I listened to and read these guys for a long time. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I appreciate them more than I dislike them, but it is too funny.
2 Likes
I tied up and neatened all my wires over the course of a few weeks in December.
Went through about 150 of these. Re-openable cable ties, best things ever! I screwed most of them in too.
It’s still messy, but everything is secure and nothing is tangled with anything else.
Without climbing all over behind things this one small area.
I actually added a couple of things (that I already owned to clarify) that need tied up since then 
12 Likes
I’m really glad you wrote this. I’ve been trying to order an Analog Cases case for my SP404, but they’ve been sold out in Japan. I checked Amazon right after seeing this and they happened to be in stock again. I hit buy and got the last one.
Omicron is picking here in Japan and in some cases if you (or even your family member) gets it they won’t let you quarantine at home it seems, and the rules aren’t clear. If I get stuck in some shitty hotel room for 10-14 days, I’m definitely going to want to have the SP and some headphones to keep me busy. I’m also tired of having to round up all the cables for it when I move about the house, so it’s going to be good to have. I’ve got one for my Zoom H6 and it’s pretty great for keeping everything together and tidy (although I wish the Zoom one had slightly more space for attachments).
3 Likes
There is only one thing that nips your spare time in the bud like your first child… the second one. Somehow, there seems to be an exponential rather than linear grow in logistics 
7 Likes
I’d also like to report some anti-GAS feelings. I’m definitely feeling like I barely have time to use what I have at the moment. I had three weeks off from my music lessons and didn’t practice once. I was cramming scales today, which is never ideal. It reminded me of how much I love taking lessons, but my time is so divided these days. Adding more just isn’t an option. I’m glad for this challenge at the moment.
As someone said above, the most GAS I have is when I’m not making music and just laying around. A drummer friend of mine said he never buys cymbals or anything when he’s gigging regularly, but as soon as he stops playing regularly he starts looking around at gear. One cure for GAS seems to be stay busy with music projects.
12 Likes
This is very true, especially at the point where they become toddlers, I’ve got a son aged 3 and an 18 month old daughter, boy is it tough sometimes, I love them both dearly though and wouldn’t change it for the world…
4 Likes
Learning and forward motion are the most essential thing it seems.
I’ve been binging Rick Beato’s and Eric Haugen’s videos a lot lately and yeah, I’m using some Steely Dan chords these days. That’s right. 
Music theory has always been hard for me but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t put in the hours and force myself to make progress, even more than people usually do, quite the opposite really. Somewhere along the way I’ve forgotten that you can actually learn at lot even in one day if you want. It’s time for some reprogramming and getting rid of faulty and crippling axioms and beliefs.
Been self-quarantining for the past 4 days bcs at my work place there have been many exposed people and my co-worker told me on wednesday that his spouse actually had corona atm.
Personally I’d like to get it now and move on.
It’s been time well spent but my screen time has skyrocketed. It’s always something isn’t it?
5 Likes
I know that for many NGNY is about trying to become more productive with what they already have, maybe even just simply using their freetime to PLAY and not BUY instruments.
For me it’s a bit different cos the past 1,5 years or so I’ve spent probably six nights on average every week playing. And I’ve got some shit done musically as well. Please note, this not to brag! Quite the opposite actually. Being a father of three (our oldest just turned 10) with a fairly energy-consuming dayjob, my music making time starts around 9pm when the kids go to bed and usually doesn’t stop before 11 or 12 pm. That means I regularly get way too little sleep AND, considering I don’t make music professionally, tend to think about music a bit too much. In turn, that means during the day I continuously think about my music, how I can make it better, maybe more versatile and interesting. I also find myself thinking that since I spend ”so much time playing”, I can keep buying synths as well cos they’re not only collecting dust on the shelves.
I would say this cycle hasn’t been beneficial for my general well-being. I think it has overheated the ”music side” of my brain and made me behave in a way that borders on obsession. Which is not usually a good thing. Like I said, I’m happy with what I’ve managed to do musically but this past week I’ve only played like two nights and instead spent some time reading and going out for a walk/run. In the long run that’ll probably mean I get less music done but I’ll have to come to terms with the fact that while music is my beloved hobby, it can’t be the only thing I do in my freetime.
So what I think I’m trying to say, the ultimate goal of NGNY for me is to find the right balance on things.
13 Likes
This rings true with me fella, I’ve had the same kind of experience, there was a time in the summer when a couple of projects became all consuming and like you I’m a working dad and make nothing from the music I make, after I’d finished the last one I think a switch flicked for me and I had a good 3 months of fallow time where I couldn’t get the inspiration flowing…
I think maybe I burnt myself out a little, devoting too much time and effort to what essentially is a hobby and too little time to self care and family, lesson learned though and this thread and selling a few things has helped massively…
3 Likes
Do you want to be noted for a January Sin, or just removed from the list?
1 Like
ME! This happens so much to me, and results in a lot of modulargrid, forums roaming, looking for articles and blogs about the process of making music or production techniques, lots of gear comparing, a bit of note taking too and daydreaming, but not a lot of this results in music making. Which is frustrating.
4 Likes
Been thinking about this a lot lately. It seems to me that the more everybody know about music making and production, the more similar (boring) everyone sounds.
Obviously there is a balance there and you’d better know the basics but in terms of fun and expressiveness I’d have to quote Crowley here. “The key to joy is disobedience” 
I’m certainly going to pay more attention to separating my stuff from what’s going on around me as much as possible this year to see what happens.
5 Likes
I’ve read somewhere a pretty basic rule that any hobby should be focused a lot more on practicing and doing than on looking for information and knowledge. They gave an arbitrary division of 80/20% but I think it was more meant as a reference. Anyway, I’m definitely on the side of information hoarding and I think that past a certain amount, as you say, it is more detrimental than anything else. You get to learn a lot more about yourself by practicing and I think it is BIG part of any creative practice that I am neglecting a lot.
6 Likes
Wow, thanks for the list and keeping track of everything. I just noticed that I didn’t say any location. You can write: physical location Bremen, Germany. Spiritual home: Perú. And maybe a little suggestion: can you put numbers to the participants in the first post? Thank you and have a nice day you’all
1 Like
I could not disagree more. While I agree, that reading about gear, is not gonna get you anywhere, the, strangely widespread, idea, that music theory will hinder free creativity, is like saying that learning a language, will hinder your ability to express yourself in it. In my opinion.
6 Likes
Maybe I was a bit unclear about what I mean, which is that for example ppl reading and talking about the methods used by artists like AFX, BoC and Ae are in many (if not most) cases diminishing their own inner voice.
The same goes with precisely emulating other peoples style of mixing and producing their music. Thousands of meek carbon copies are made that way.
I didn’t mean that one shouldn’t learn the fundamentals but that imitating someone else rarely makes anyone original or interesting.
edit: I definitely was unclear and no wonder you’d disagree. It’s cool if you still do too.
3 Likes
Hmm, I’ve seen that you were very active in the MPC thread for a while. What made you sell the MPC? (Curious for the reasons as I sold mine too last year)
It just felt like there was too much friction there from a creative standpoint for my tastes, it was the second modern mpc I owned having previously had a an original live, I got some decent results from both units but it always felt harder work than it needed to be if that makes sense…
1 Like
Yeah, that makes perfectly sense. I used a Live I for a year of two and after that a MPC One as well. I switched to the One for the extra buttons which helped but I still found that the MPC OS makes simple trivial things so much harder than it should be.
Two Elektons (DN+DT) and Ableton Live for preparing samples + post production is for me now the way to go. This year for sure as it is NGNY '22