I pretty much stopped. If I look back it was definitely a period that began, peaked, and then trailed off. I could keep doing it. But if I’m honest about it, I don’t make much music at all at the moment. So thousands of dollars on single boxes can’t really be justified, outside of just carelessly blowing cash on toys. The other thing you can do is you’re saying to yourself ‘I’m buying all this gear so when I finally have some time I’ll have the perfect setup’, but that time never arrives. Not to be bleak, it’s of course different for everyone. Luckily for me I’ve never been too attracted to monstrous multi-timbral / $5k+ synths, so I’ve never been that deep. Mostly I hang around the single box that does a couple things well with a simple UI. Depending what Ableton do tho a Push 3 could be tempting, because Live is always there and can personally cover pretty much everything I need.
It’s weird but sometimes there’s like this thing, like, you have subpar equipment, and you’re really creative on it, but once you get the good stuff for some reason the creativity goes away. Like you think higher quality gear will make what you’re doing better, yet somehow that purchase just makes the creativity go away. I remember when I never had a computer I used to do whatever I could to get on one and do projects - school, the library, borrow them, but a friend who owned a Mac tower just never did anything with it.
There’s often a lot of talk about limitations, but this is often spoken of in regards to open ended architectures, like DAW’s vs single pieces of kit. But, if you think about desire, it’s kindve bounded up in whatever your vision is of your higher self. You’re projecting you’re a performer on a stage somewhere, so you buy an Octatrack. But thinking about limitation in terms of restriction, like, holding that desire but using it for creative purpose. That frustration of not having a thing can get you poking around in VCV or doing some weird routing with your setup. There really is a lot to be said for buying nothing, but I’m not sure if that results in some outcome that cultivates creativity.
I always say it but I think creativity blooms best in relationship to other folks. It’s sort of about mates, being competitive, wanting to impress someone, contributing to a community, that kind of thing. Purchases are in some cases perhaps mis-directed energy. But there is obviously often a lot of cases where the right tool is needed for the job.
It’s all up to the individual. Making music may not matter, a collection of shiny things on the shelf might actually be the desire. If there are obstacles getting in the way of outcomes though then that’s up to each person to do the work and figure out what that is.