# "Go Big or Go Home"



## JohnG (May 25, 2016)

Hi all,

I recently wrote on this forum, regarding a PC computer build, "go big or go home" which, after I thought about it, might have sounded a bit peremptory. That said, I do have a belief behind it, which I put as a question to myself:

_"Why would you devote so much time and, indirectly, tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in school fees, lost earnings, and so on, and then drive yourself crazy working around the shortcomings of your hardware?"_

Many here, including me, have spent years learning to play an instrument, studying scores, taking lessons of one sort or another. Some have mastered an instrument, some have poured their time into other musical pursuits.

Whether or not they are making a lot of money at it today, most who are trying to wrestle major libraries down are certainly trying to do something at a professional standard.

So, when I see someone trying to save $100, or even $1,000 on hardware or a sample library or something else, I think -- why? Why not get whatever you can possibly afford / borrow / reuse from pals to make your composing faster and better? Why postpone the fun (and hopefully profit) another day?

So, whenever I think "oh, that's expensive," I also think, "not as expensive as waiting another six months / years / decades to get where I want to be."


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## stonzthro (May 25, 2016)

Excellent point John.


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## chimuelo (May 25, 2016)

The quest for perfection drives a true artisan.
I saved for years for my boys college tuition.
Every red cent extra went into sounding better.
Hardware, software, whatever.
I drove a '78 3/4 ton F250 for 30 years and 420,000 miles.
The dark brown paint turned into a rainbow glaze from the Las Vegas sun.
Lived very lean in those years.
Just to buy Solaris I hung out in gay bars cause the drinks were free.


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## givemenoughrope (May 25, 2016)

chimuelo said:


> Just to buy Solaris I hung out in gay bars cause the drinks were free.



That's dedication.


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## rgames (May 25, 2016)

JohnG said:


> Why not get whatever you can possibly afford / borrow / reuse from pals to make your composing faster and better?


Well... there's nuance there in the form of opportunity cost.

First, does it *really* make your composing faster and better? If the answer is no then why spend the extra money? That's money that could be put to use elsewhere in your music business. Or in your kid's college fund. Or in your favorite charity.

Even if the answer is yes, how much is the "faster and better" worth to you? More to the point, how much is one increment of "faster and better" worth? Because even if it is "faster and better" you're going to hit diminishing returns at some point. If that extra $1000 gets you one more minute of music per year then is that expenditure really the best use of that money?

But this is the rational thought process of an engineer and not a musician. Alas.

(Ever notice that there are engineers all over the place in corporate offices but almost none in government offices? And there are lawyers all over the place in government offices but almost none in corporate offices?)

rgames


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## JohnG (May 25, 2016)

rgames said:


> lawyers all over the place in government offices but almost none in corporate offices?



Actually, entertainment companies have the highest ratio of lawyers to employees (except for law firms) because their business is intellectual property. But never mind. I like a lawyer joke as well as the next guy.


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## gsilbers (May 25, 2016)

one could argue that you could do amazing things with just vls basic special instruments. 

or one could just keep buying stuff until you have the most amazing studio but still the music is not that great.

the devil is in the details. to me its more of a self learning experience. 

i bought the axe fx2 because i just didnt want to deal with guitar plugins and getting emails saying the guitar sound is not there yet. so i researched and got the best that $$$ could buy that sounded awesome. that way i know for sure if it sucks its me and not the equipment. 

now, on the other side of my examples... i also bought the SSL waves bundle waaayyy back when it first came out and UAD card with plugins
so i could mix better. very expensive... turns out i could of just done about as well with stock plugins or a cheaper bundle.

in one example i am very happy i got the axefx2 and the other not too happy i got expensive plugins. 
or when i buy stuff for the hype like Edna from spitfire which for the price sucked big time. 

nowadays all these companies are just feeding off our desire to be composers and "make it" and suddenly we believe we should buy all this stuff when a lot of time its not necessary. all this culture of buy buy and the next prodcut will make you compose better. 

go big or go home like remote control studios?!? well , i tried the pro tools slave thing and the other stuff they do but it didnt work for me. sold my HD rig and adat interfaces. was much more confortable with one mighty mouse and simple controller and stems inside the DAW. keep it simple. 

so again, its more of a self learning thing. 

then there are neve and u87 clones.... now, that where the details get crazy and fisty.


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## higgs (May 25, 2016)

JohnG said:


> Actually, entertainment companies have the highest ratio of lawyers to employees (except for law firms) because their business is intellectual property. But never mind. I like a lawyer joke as well as the next guy.


Okay, I'll bite:
Why are lawyers buried 12 feet deep when they die instead of the normal six feet? Because deep down they are really good people.


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## higgs (May 25, 2016)

Gabriel Oliveira said:


> exactly


And a +1 here - on a more sincere note.


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## chimuelo (May 25, 2016)

China has an entire political body made up of scientists and engineers.
Imagine where we would be if our engineers got to spend 13 Trillion.

But we have the richest lawyers......sorry.....politicians in the world....!!!


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## higgs (May 25, 2016)

chimuelo said:


> But we have the richest lawyers......sorry.....politicians in the world....!!!


Sing it, chimuelo! I _had_ started to articulate my feelings about the bloodsuckers more in this post, but they ain't worth the time. Bloodsuckers. See I did it anyhow. And I digress. 


In fairness, -and I will tie this into this thread's theme, so bear with me- I do like my business and entertainment lawyers. They just saved my ass on a nearly catastrophic job arrangement. Spending money on a good lawyer, at least until you are more familiarized and comfy with the lingo in 80-90% of the paperwork involved with this work is, in my humble, money well spent. To me a good lawyer is efficient and competent, so while their hourly might seem high, the good ones take less time and are more competent.

So yeah, perhaps another arena where cutting corners is not always the preferred move. See, I tied it in.


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## chimuelo (May 25, 2016)

Moral of the story.
Skimp on virtual instruments, not your attorneys.
The lawyers I despise cant cite case law and live off of tax payers.
My more successful friends say walk softly are carry a large law firm...


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## JohnG (May 25, 2016)

@gsilbers -- I partly agree; people wrote some pretty good music with EWQLSO and with Roland before that and.....and...

But the stuff I write now with _several_ very good string, brass, percussion, wind and synths available sounds 10x better. It has more lilt and nuance, more power where I want it and more transparency if that serves better.

Sure, I wasted a lot of money like everyone along the way. And sure, sometimes being constrained by money to nurse one's "habit" slowly means one learns to wring more out of each library. To that extent it's good I guess.

Even allowing for the worry that one can waste money and still write bad music, I still like to have overkill when it comes to computing power -- massive overkill. Never have to wonder if I need to start unloading stuff in the middle of a project. And I like to have a wide range of sound; exactly the short strings I want for the sound I want -- sometimes one library, sometimes another. It cost a lot and has taken a lot of time to sift through but is worth it to me.


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## Saxer (May 25, 2016)

It's always a balance thing.
Ok, CPU and RAM don't eat your time and in the end this is not a big cost factor.
But too much gear can prevent you from being effective too. Sometimes my day starts with one hour of updating stuff I didn't even use for a long time.

At the end it's just one question: how do I want to live? Is working at a high end level with hours of composed output in big projects all I want, and if so: what do I have to do to get there? Or do I just waste my time trying?
My personal answer for me is: It's about having fun and a good live. Do I need gear for that? No, but I have fun dealing with it. And I like if stuff sounds good. So it's much more a fun factor than something else. When the output is good you'll find people who want to pay for your work or work together with you. Some people create great output with a guitar and a sheet of paper. Just find your way.


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## owenave (May 26, 2016)

Yes you can write songs, score, or do arrangement with maybe 1 or 2 keyboards. BUT pretty soon everything starts sounding the same. It is like a graphic artist, do you want to paint with only 16 colors, or would you like to use Millions of Colors. Every Keyboard, Sample Library has things they are better at. So myself I like having lots of Audio Colors to use. But I agree never skimp on paying for a good attorney if you are signing paperwork.


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## rgames (May 26, 2016)

owenave said:


> BUT pretty soon everything starts sounding the same.


I would argue that's the fault of the music.

The vast majority of the world's most beloved music - classical, jazz, pop, whatever - is presented using a relatively small pallette of standard sounds like violin, guitar, piano, etc.

If the music is good then it'll still sound good in piano reduction: a single sound.


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## Ozymandias (May 26, 2016)

I don't "go big" because my ability to compose hinges almost entirely on my well-being. For me, more RAM or sample libraries are - at best - a small bump on the graph.


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## Ashermusic (May 26, 2016)

The key sentence, John, is "whatever you can possibly afford / borrow / reuse from pals". If you are young and single it is one thing. If you have a family, it is another, as you know.


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## JohnG (May 26, 2016)

rgames said:


> If the music is good then it'll still sound good in piano reduction: a single sound.



I get your point and partly agree, but I think your assertion is overly broad. There's plenty of music that is primarily textural, or relies for its effect on non-pitched sounds, or is not well tempered, or simply evolves gradually without changing radically its tonal centre or even chord. Spitfire have been releasing some interesting stuff like this lately.

I know you know this, Richard, but other timbral differences are crucial as well; the sound you want when writing short string notes to accompany a gentle scene with a child by a lake in summer is of course radically different from a scene of Impending Doom. There aren't too many (any?) libraries that really deliver both.


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## stigc56 (May 26, 2016)

To me there is a difference between instruments and gear regarding the way it can improve your writing/composing. 4 years ago I had some unpleasant experiences with my heart, that later proved to be harmless. It made me think about my dream to have a Steinway. I have been playing the piano since I was 5 years old and made a living for more than 30 years as a pianist and musical director so down to Hamburg I went, and visited the Steinway factory. Now I have this wonderfull Steinway A in my studio, and it is an inspiration to play on it. I still spend a lot of time with libraries and Plug-ins, but I have get used to compose at my grand and produce in my studio. 
To me there is no doubt that getting the Steinway has been an ispiration, that can't be compared to buying OT BWW  or complete VSL, so if inspiration is a need in your work, your money might be spend better on buying the sublime instrument first.


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## ghostnote (May 26, 2016)

Frankly, I never understood the concept of huge templates and slaves. Many of you, I'm sure, are good musicians - unlike me - who can score the basics of a scene with piano, pen and paper. Yet you all seem to need the newest libraries and plugins... over and over again... I know you guys have to work fast and stay competitive and no library is perfect, but in the end it's all just samples (...ow, how can he say this? Blasphemy!), they'll never sound perfect. How old is Symphobia? Most of it still sounds very nice in comparison with newer stuff!

Here's the deal: The second you open up a new kontakt instance opens up a million of new possibilities. Isn't that much more fun than having everything loaded at once and knowing that you'll use this library just for the trills even if it maybe has a patch that sounds very interesting in a different context? Templates and big setups are great to stay on the safe side, but sometimes you need a void project or a smaller template to come up with something new.


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## Ashermusic (May 26, 2016)

Michael Chrostek said:


> Frankly, I never understood the concept of huge templates and slaves. Many of you, I'm sure, are good musicians - unlike me - who can score the basics of a scene with piano, pen and paper. Yet you all seem to need the newest libraries and plugins... over and over again... I know you guys have to work fast and stay competitive and no library is perfect, but in the end it's all just samples (...ow, how can he say this? Blasphemy!), they'll never sound perfect. How old is Symphobia? Most of it still sounds very nice in comparison with newer stuff!
> 
> Here's the deal: The second you open up a new kontakt instance opens up a million of new possibilities. Isn't that much more fun than having everything loaded at once and knowing that you'll use this library just for the trills even if it maybe has a patch that sound very interesting in a different context? Templates and big setups are great to stay on the safe side, but sometimes you need a void project or a smaller template to come up with something new.



Which is why some of us create project specific templates. There is no limit, it's just hard drive space and hard drives are cheap.

I recently did the music for the BluRay release of "Love And Mercy", two featurettes. I had to do Beach Boys type tracks, so my orchestral templates of various sizes were useless. So I created a VE Pro template with all my favorite sampled guitars, bases, keyboards, drums and male vox and a corresponding Logic Pro X template to connect to it, and I was good to go.

Now, if another similar project comes my way, I am good to go again as I have the templates.


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## JohnG (May 26, 2016)

Having a large template doesn't rule out novelty; it's not one or the other. The whole point of extra computer resources is that you don't have to compromise -- you can have a big template and still go "off road."


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## kitekrazy (May 26, 2016)

owenave said:


> Yes you can write songs, score, or do arrangement with maybe 1 or 2 keyboards. *BUT pretty soon everything starts sounding the same.* It is like a graphic artist, do you want to paint with only 16 colors, or would you like to use Millions of Colors. Every Keyboard, Sample Library has things they are better at. So myself I like having lots of Audio Colors to use. But I agree never skimp on paying for a good attorney if you are signing paperwork.



I don't know if Eddie Van Halen got or missed that message. Great artists have what is called a signature sound and many people like to duplicate it.


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## kitekrazy (May 26, 2016)

JohnG said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I recently wrote on this forum, regarding a PC computer build, "go big or go home" which, after I thought about it, might have sounded a bit peremptory. That said, I do have a belief behind it, which I put as a question to myself:
> 
> ...



I would prefer to reach something called contentment which is very hard to do. I seem to have that down with real instruments but not the virtual ones.


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## dgburns (May 26, 2016)

Throwing the kitchen sink into every production don't make the muzak better.

too many choices can be a bad thing.there was a study that concluded that the optimal amount of choice was between three to five selections.Any more and people got frustrated,any less then three,and people found no satisfaction.Check out the restaurant menus,choice limited for a reason.

reduce your options and it's easier to get creative.unless you're a slave to the sample library rat race.no happiness to be found there.But by all means buy what you need,for sure.

creating a vast template,and you tend to fall victim to your own cleverness.(i must use this patch because i went through the trouble to include it in my "template").Better still if you're clever enough to hype it to the director,who'll raise his left ,or was that right eyebrow,as he thinks to himself,"ouch,I gotta get back to the video edit suite real fast,this muso is talking that martian talk again"


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## higgs (May 26, 2016)

dgburns said:


> there was a study that concluded that the optimal amount of choice was between three to five selections.Any more and people got frustrated,any less then three,and people found no satisfaction.Check out the restaurant menus,choice limited for a reason.



Errmmm, uhhh... You're speaking of the "Paradox of Choice," which resonates with me to a great degree. But that was more of a study done in service of fast food and grocery stores to make sense of how many hot sauces or types of cereal they should offer to optimize profits. There was an issue for a while that these stores ran into where if they offered too few choices no one would buy, or if they offered too many choices then no one would buy. So, how many hot sauces _should_ you offer to sell hot sauce? Yep, it's three to five. While I agree that too many choices can be a bad thing, I mostly agree with that when it comes to making mundane choices, like "which hot sauce should I buy?" Or "which of these 25 omelets will make my day the least terrible?"

If I need a really playable flute with a sweet tone and convincing legato, I'm not going to lean into Era II's flutes and expect it to deliver all that, but I also wouldn't take Passion Flute and put it into a medieval thing that required a flute to back off from the spotlight. Maybe not the best and most objective/widely applicable example but the point is hopefully there. I'm happy that I have those options, and I'm happy that I know when, where, and how those things wil shine. Without those options, and more importantly the knowledge of how those options apply to address real world requests, I might not be able to write a piece that calls for that...one flute... You get it, I'm sure. 

You do have to know a lot about your options and how to best exploit them in order to make a choice with a large selection. That's something I'm just not as likely to take the time to figure out when it comes to large selections of hot sauce - who has the time? And it gets all over the keys..?!


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## jononotbono (May 26, 2016)

The only limit is imagination. Having a template isn't limiting. It gives freedom. Unless technology gets in the way... And then you upgrade so tech doesn't hinder freedom or Creativity.

The thought, for example, of having to set up the entirety of 8Dio Adagio Strings, with VSS2 for panning and then the correct Reverbs every single time I want to write some String parts is limiting. I don't want to spend all my time setting stuff up. Whether you create a huge template, or a modular type of template with VEPro, you can add or subtract anything you want, when you want.

I just wrote a piece that I'm hope will go into a library and I wrote it in a template of 800+ tracks. I didn't use ANY of those tracks and just wrote from scratch. All the template is foldered in Cubase so if I don't want to use it, I won't. But I know that Adagio is ready to go anytime I want, if I want.



Michael Chrostek said:


> Isn't that much more fun than having everything loaded at once and knowing that you'll use this library just for the trills



Sometimes I love having instant access to Trills and sending them through Sound Toys Plugins (just as an example) and making those trills sound nothing like trills. The less time setting stuff up and the more time creating Music is what works for me!


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## dgburns (May 26, 2016)

higgs said:


> Errmmm, uhhh... You're speaking of the "Paradox of Choice," which resonates with me to a great degree. But that was more of a study done in service of fast food and grocery stores to make sense of how many hot sauces or types of cereal they should offer to optimize profits. There was an issue for a while that these stores ran into where if they offered too few choices no one would buy, or if they offered too many choices then no one would buy. So, how many hot sauces _should_ you offer to sell hot sauce? Yep, it's three to five. While I agree that too many choices can be a bad thing, I mostly agree with that when it comes to making mundane choices, like "which hot sauce should I buy?" Or "which of these 25 omelets will make my day the least terrible?"
> 
> If I need a really playable flute with a sweet tone and convincing legato, I'm not going to lean into Era II's flutes and expect it to deliver all that, but I also wouldn't take Passion Flute and put it into a medieval thing that required a flute to back off from the spotlight. Maybe not the best and most objective/widely applicable example but the point is hopefully there. I'm happy that I have those options, and I'm happy that I know when, where, and how those things wil shine. Without those options, and more importantly the knowledge of how those options apply to address real world requests, I might not be able to write a piece that calls for that...one flute... You get it, I'm sure.
> 
> You do have to know a lot about your options and how to best exploit them in order to make a choice with a large selection. That's something I'm just not as likely to take the time to figure out when it comes to large selections of hot sauce - who has the time? And it gets all over the keys..?!


yeah,but you're smart,and you just destroyed the "go big or go home" thing anyway.right on with the whole flute thing( which is why I bought a whack of flutes btw)..I'm just a bit anti "big template" these days cause it's bandied about like some kind of trophy.

Just read Gerhard's post about falling down with Cubase and his 500 + tracks of misery on win10.


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## higgs (May 26, 2016)

dgburns said:


> yeah,but you're smart,and you just destroyed the "go big or go home" thing anyway.


Not exactly sure how to interpret that. I'm an advocate for the go-big approach. I've only recently embraced that level of setup - only 'recently' because I didn't know that it could be done, or how to do it before I joined VI. I'm still setting up a template and honing it as I go, constantly making lighter Kontakt patches so I can have more instrument options and squeeze as much as possible out of my available RAM. I've learned a heap from the process already, and I'm better for it.



dgburns said:


> read Gerhard's post about falling down with Cubase and his 500 + tracks of misery on win10.


I don't need to read it - seems like the Cliff Notes are in the title. For me, the misery would start and end with me staring down the barrel of Windows. We never got along after XP... '98 really. The forum is better off without me using Windows - well, I'd get banned (for incessant whining), so the forum being "better off" is open to interpretation.

Pastor higgs, out.


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## higgs (May 26, 2016)

Actually, one more thing: I'm advocate for creative processes. Whatever it takes to get more music out there is okay by me.


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## NYC Composer (May 26, 2016)

JohnG said:


> the sound you want when writing short string notes to accompany a gentle scene with a child by a lake in summer is of course radically different from a scene of Impending Doom



Personally, I think gentle scenes of children by the lake should be scored by Charlie Clouser's more terrifying work from the Saw series, but I'm oppositional by nature.


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## Prockamanisc (May 27, 2016)

JohnG said:


> So, whenever I think "oh, that's expensive," I also think, "not as expensive as waiting another six months / years / decades to get where I want to be."


I figure this: Let's say something costs $10,000, and it costs you 3 years to earn $10,000. You can either A) wait 3 years and save up money and buy it, or B) buy it when it's on sale for 20% off (saving $2,000), and pay it off over 3 years, and paying something in interest (probably less than $2000). In the case of B, YOU ACTUALLY OWN THE THING FOR 3 MORE YEARS, and you get to play with it and learn how to use it.


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## Prockamanisc (May 27, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> The less time setting stuff up and the more time creating Music is what works for me!


That sums it up for me. Ironically I spent about 8 months building and setting up a computer so that I could "save time". But now I'm set up with a 875 track template and I have everything I need at my fingertips, I don't have to set anything up from here on out.

But once I set up my slave at my studio I missed having that kind of power at my home setup, so I built a much smaller slave for it. So that should solve this dispute, I went big _and_ went home.


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## Ashermusic (May 27, 2016)

Yes, spending time on the front end saves time on the back end when maybe you are looking at a hard deadline.


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## kitekrazy (May 27, 2016)

dgburns said:


> Throwing the kitchen sink into every production don't make the muzak better.
> 
> too many choices can be a bad thing.there was a study that concluded that the optimal amount of choice was between three to five selections.Any more and people got frustrated,any less then three,and people found no satisfaction.Check out the restaurant menus,choice limited for a reason.
> 
> ...



Sometimes that's what I admire about Reason but then again....it doesn't take long to miss Kontakt or other obvious things in most DAWs.


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## dgburns (May 27, 2016)

Love how they kept developing Reason,I've been absent from it for a few years.Pleasant surprise when I fired it up.But it'll always be a side show to my daw for sure.

@JohnG ,not sure what exactly you're driving at with your argument.Are you advocating setting up a monster rig in the hopes of getting better gigs?

I view my relationship with my gear as a personal one.Gear is in my room if I have a personal connection to it,or if it brings me something I deem of value-or it simply makes me happy.If something isn't used in 6 months,it gets put away.In a few years,and it goes away.I'll always be connected to how the industry wants me to work,if that means Protools and whatever else,fine.The rest is all up to you.
Sure,I like my "hunting and gathering" adventures as much as the next guy.I do find a certain enjoyment in seeking out and staying up to date on what's new and out there.I like my mini excursions to the music stores(there should be a cruise ship for this sort of thing).
I'm constantly trying to decide if something is a must have or whatever.It's a big part of this whole making music thing.And it's fun.I still get a certain guilty feeling coming over me when I buy stuff,just because I've bought so much crap over the years.(what is it with cables,I've got more than I need,but they are all busted when I pull one out,boxes of cables that go on forever)


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## Ashermusic (May 27, 2016)

To me they are all just tools, not emotionally involved with any of them, although I like the ones I regularly use. Take them all away and give me some time with others and I would be fine.


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## AllanH (May 27, 2016)

I'm DONE buying cheap stuff that looks like it's "good enough". There is nothing more frustrating that having a PC that's too slow or has insufficient specs, or instrument without all the microphones or articulations. My time has value, too, and frustration of having a sub-par setup is not worth the "savings". When I look at what I don't use, it's almost entirely the inexpensive stuff, which in the end was of low value, too.

These days where e.g. EW Hollywood Orchestra/Diamond can be had for $600, it's easy to get started with quality.


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## dgburns (May 29, 2016)

AllanH said:


> I'm DONE buying cheap stuff that looks like it's "good enough". There is nothing more frustrating that having a PC that's too slow or has insufficient specs, or instrument without all the microphones or articulations. My time has value, too, and frustration of having a sub-par setup is not worth the "savings". When I look at what I don't use, it's almost entirely the inexpensive stuff, which in the end was of low value, too.
> 
> These days where e.g. EW Hollywood Orchestra/Diamond can be had for $600, it's easy to get started with quality.



Sorry,when I said I've bought a lot of crap over the years,I mean stuff,as in quality stuff,just alot if it.Enough to buy a house or so,a good one.Thankfully I bought one of those too.  (I went big and went home)


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