As someone who enjoys making music, its so easy to fall into the trap of endlessly pursuing new equipment. “If only I had the Dave Smith Rackmount Poly Evolver, then my leads would really shine…” This sucky phenomenon is often referred to as “gear lust”.
As I started getting into music production, I pirated a copy of Ableton Live as well as some VSTs like Massive and Absynth, and started making… something. Almost entirely it sucked. But then, I figured I would wait until I got a midi keyboard, and then I would really be rocking. So I got the keyboard, and made some more music and it still was pretty awful. So then I waited until I got an LSDJ and a prosound-modded gameboy. And I still sucked. THEN, I found out about the Electribe Series from Korg, and the Kaossilator, and the Kaoss Pad, so I waited until I got all of those. And then I was getting better.
But it sure wasn’t the equipment that was helping. In fact, every time I got new equipment and VSTs, sure the sounds were original. But maybe that wasn’t what I was looking for. I honestly have no idea how to create patches from scratch on a 6 Oscillator synth. But using some free VSTs like the U-No-6 I am getting those oldschool house and techno sounds that I have been looking for for so long. I have sold off most of my equipment, and now just use my Arduinome and a midi-keyboard. Sure, a full-size midi keyboard would be nice, but for now, the limits I have are certainly improving my technique rather than restricting.
The incredible amount of electronic music out there uses few samples for a reason. Today we are spoiled by a seemingly infinite amount of instruments, and you can get amazing sounds out of modern VSTs with a single keypress. But now that I am working from the basics, my productions speak for themselves, and I can honestly say that it is me writing the music, not a sound designer from Native Instruments.
