I’ve not made music for years. I’ve not finished a track in like 4. I’ve got a desk sitting beside my work PC with $1000s worth of equipment taunting me every day as I don’t even wanna turn it on and start something.
How do you deal with this? Thinking of selling it all and getting a push3 as I’m an “Ableton user” with too much hardware that uses Ableton more as a multitrack recorder now.
Uhhhhhgggh
If any of your gear is a groove box, consider putting everything else away in boxes, and just focus on that one piece of gear. Keep your expectations low, just to have fun.
I drifted away from making music for a while. What brought me back in was deciding to teach myself to play the ukulele – it was always sitting in my living room so I saw it every time I plopped down on my couch. No updates to apply, no speaker to plug in, no FX to twiddle, no manual to read. Very immediate…
This. Box up all your gear and keep out the most capable solo box. Just mess around with it and explore like a kid. No pressure or obligation for it to be quality. Just have fun.
Wish I had an answer for you. In much the same position here.
I wouldn’t sell or buy anything until you’re sure you even want to get back into this. You have gear so use it. Let the process inform you.
This really is the answer.
No computer, no other gear. Just 1 instrument and enjoy twisting knobs.
Sell it all and join a barbershop quartet….
I agree with the suggestion of packing away your gear. Over time you will see what is important to you and what you will sell.
But before you do that, you should have some fun and try making a game of it. Crack a beer or make a cup of coffee, then set a one-hour timer. That is how long you have to make a track. Who knows, maybe the urgency and excitement will awaken something within.
I’m not trying to be contrary, but do you even want to make music anymore? If the answer is yes, there’s always a way and you just need a window into what it is that’s holding you back, be it mentally drained, creatively dejected by some failure or lack of inspiration, whatever.
If the answer is no, or not really sure, probably time to assess why the ambiguity. If you don’t want to create right now, don’t force yourself. Good time to take stock of what you need and what you don’t, sometimes a push to sell things is all it takes to remind us of how we don’t want to sell this stuff because we love it and it will catapult you back into what you fell in love with in the first place.
If music doesn’t have a place in your heart right now, maybe try what Pmags did, shift your paradigm. Buy an instrument totally foreign to you and just see what you can do. I hadn’t given up on music, but I just wanted to see it differently and I bought a couple of yamaha recorders (wind instrument), so that was my ukelele.
Still can’t play the recorder for shit, but I’ve been able to sample the few good toots I occasionally make, and can use it in tracks occasionally. Just finding inspiration to be in the same room with your own aspirations can be enough to get you aligned with them. If you can’t be in the room with your aspirations because you’re ashamed of gear you own and don’t use, that’s a good time to look for an answer as to what it is that’s keeping you from doing something about it.
Sell it all.
Spend the money on an Audi.
Park where you like.
Stop with the A4 GAS already.
I’d sell most of it personally.
I’m a demon for selling my stuff tho.
simply love to sell my stuff.
A4 sheets of paper with an elektron A4 in an A4 quattro wearing A4 apparel? A 4 that.
A+ in fact.
Keep it light and fun, do games, learn your instruments (try learning every feature from the manual you actually care about), try learning to play a track live.
Fuckin’ A
Some great suggestions here. Just FFS don’t try to solve the problem by buying more gear
I sold or gave away a ton of gear when I left Seattle for the SF Bay area, a decade or so ago. I kept the MD, MnM and OT because they pack up and travel well. That turns out to have been an extremely wise decision in hindsight.
After a few years of not doing much with sound, I got back into the game in 2019. I’m not finishing many tracks either, but that’s not my goal. My goal is to have fun and I’m crushing it.
There is normally a reason outside of music - regarding life - that blocks creativity or the flow of finishing things.
Maybe check in with someone who knows you very well (from a phase where you made music carefree) and investigate together what is on your mind if you are not able to figure it out alone.
For example I tend to put too much pressure on myself when I have unfinished business in my life outside of music - and that jumps back on me and my creativity in a bad way and blocks me.
Close friends then tell me to get my shit straight and sort the unfinished stuff out and - bam - magically I can create again most of the time.
At the moment I have to do grief work over a loss and I accepted that it will block me for a while and some day I can transform the energy back into the music in a good way.
Took me while to accept it tho. Suffered quite a bit until I realized.