We moved to a new apartment and I had to really downsize my setup. I used to have all my hardware setup for instance access. I now can only take one or two pieces and hook it up, record it, then pack it back.
I listened to alot of old tracks of mine made with the old setup. This really made me sad. The songs were funky, groovy, organic and were dripping of creativity. They had soul and a signature sound. The mixing was not as good as it is now, but the tracks are just so much better from a non technical, musical side.
Alot of people downsize and go itb, but I can’t wait to move to a bigger place again where I can set all my stuff up again. 100% itb is not for me.
Just thought I’d share as so many people move itb. Are there others that notice this when listening to tracks that were pre-itb?
I’m not sure this is necessarily due to in/out the box. But it makes sense that the quality of musical output suffers if one makes music in a situation that is uncomfortable (I experience this myself sometimes). For some, a tiny setup may be ideal, others may feel limited…
I play with several people, and the ones I have trouble to find a common ground are playing ITB. They are loud, everywhere, lifeless and hard to adapt.
In the contrary, I had a blast last weekend with someone playing Volca Keys and Beat, and someone on a modified Casio, while I was on DN + FX.
I’m not completely ITB, I’m still using my Lyra, but I’ve gone from lots of hardware to a laptop and one or two high quality bits of kit and I’ve never been happier with my setup.
Can’t speak for the quality of the music I’m making with it, but I’m definitely having more fun.
but there are solutions for smaller spaces/setups. you might benefit from using a (small/desktop) patchbay which enables you to setup thing more quickly.
Same as having all psu’s ready to go so you can again plug an go more quickly.
Other idea is getting into modular or adapting your eurorack to you space. you can have different voices and even synths in a small space and ready to record. If you’re having trouble to get into a more jam/multitrack kind of vibe.
what i’m trying to get as is that a new space always comes with challenges. You always need to get used to the space and try what works.
from a few months ago (top) till current day (bottom)
Two nights ago, my girlfriend came home as I was fiddling with stuff in my studio. She asked me, if you had to pick just two of your machines, and had to sell the rest, what would you keep. I looked around, and it didn’t take me long to decide. I said, “I think I’d be perfectly happy with just my Korg Kronos and Waldorf Iridium (and my Mac).”
To me this sounds like perhaps the main issue. For me at least immediacy is critical for making music, it’s great when you have everything set up just right and ready to start making sound within 0-20 seconds. It means you can get ideas and feelings down and evolving as soon as inspiration takes you, and it’s nice to be able to walk away for a meal or something, come back and get sound again immediately by hitting play or pushing up the faders.
I think having a spatial ‘room scale’ element to your interaction with sound and music is really important too, having controls physically seperated and spaced out means you can more easily utilise your muscle memory and work intuitively in my experience. You can definitely get the same kind of experience with a minimal setup like a synth/sequencer or two and some effects on a table, you might just miss the feeling of ‘piloting the spaceship’ that you had with a room full of cool controls.
Another way to think about a bigger hardware based setup is that you basically end up needing to dance with your whole body. You could think of your body as an integral part of what ‘computes’ the music in that sense, and why it probably sounds more groovy and creative.
The biggest issue with ITB is that the screen/Kb+M interface is a kind of bottleneck for your interaction with the system, and they’re not really that congruent with our natural abilities for dealing with the world that were evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. In general the more we can get away from staring at a screen and moving icons around with keyboard + mouse and instead interact with computers in a way that uses our spatial and haptic senses the better. If you can break out control of the ITB stuff to hardware so that you don’t really need to look at the screen much that helps a lot I think.
A bit off topic but this is a really good articulation on what is wrong with modern human/computer interaction that I highly recommend people watch if they’re interested in this kind of thing -
I’m kind of the opposite. I started making music ITB and I think some of that early stuff is better than what I can do now with hardware.
And I am coming to realize having everything connected only works well for me if there are small groupings, mini setups, making it up.
I’m moving to a smaller place soon too, so in anticipation have been making my setup more modular and it’s made working with hardware more focused. I’ve actually been more productive I think, and don’t get as bored or overwhelmed because it’s easy to switch things out to mix up the process.
But I can’t do fully ITB anymore, too much clicking and is more removed from the music.
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