#195

The Hainbach video was entirely charming.

10 Likes
#196

synthfluencer barrage meme aside, they are all very very good at what they do :slightly_smiling_face:

12 Likes
#197

It’s pretty easy to rag on Make Noise for having a very specific kind of sound that their demos tend to cover (though it is also worth noting their more recent material has been more diverse), so I appreciate having people whose work I am familiar with readily provinding insight into something new. Each of them does very different stuff, so seeing each of them work with it definitely helps make sense of whether and how it might fit in a given workflow.

6 Likes
#198

All of this marketing, including the week-long build up, at a time when too many are struggling and to a community known for GAS felt kinda icky to me.

I didn’t wanna wet blanket people’s fun while trying to solve it, but I’m more comfortable saying it now.

Maybe I’m looking too hard for an issue (I am fortunate enough not to be one of those struggling financially) - if so, I’m fine being told so.

18 Likes
#199

Yeah, it occured to me some time ago that basically my youtube feed was almost constant stream of new gear videos/hardware focused with single videos about making music sprinkled here and there (and I got into hardware to make more music - oh the irony) I decided to unfollow almost every channel. It sucks because some of youtubers seem like genuinely nice people (like for example Hainbach and Andrew Huang) but I decided that it was probably better for my problem with GAS to visit synth related channels manually and leave my subscriptions to music releases/music making theory etc. I still follow some of these channels on Instagram but I visit it much less often (like once in a week) so it is no as problematic as with youtube for me.

11 Likes
#200

There’s an app I like called Kawara which I’ve been using recently to deal with this. You can input a link and tell it how often you want to see it (e.g. you don’t need Hainbach’s videos on your feed but maybe you want to check in a few times a year; an instagram channel you want to see once a week etc). iOS only. There’s a website I came across that does something similar. It’s an interesting approach to dealing with not only GAS/marketing related internet sites, but interacting with the internet/social media in general.

3 Likes
#201

I know that feeling very well. I stopped watching TV and listening to the radio completely a few years ago because I desperately wanted out of the onslaught of ads and constant money-grubbing, only to realize that I’m now actively exposing myself to an army of Youtube channels and personae instead that get paid for trying to sell me stuff too. Maybe I’ve been ignoring it before, but I still feel like all of that marketing stuff is a recent development for many of these channels and just slowly and subtly crept into my feed. Look at Hainbach. His videos used to be these charming explorations of tape recording techniques and other quirky niche-stuff, but nowadays most of them feel like amorphous, 30-minute blobs of name-dropping and product placement. The actual content and all of what used to attract me to his channel and others is lost along the way. Maybe unfollowing them all is the healthiest alternative.

9 Likes
#202

They’re not trying to make you feel bad or capitalize on you misfortune. They’re a tiny company that designs and sells tools. Like everyone else, they’re trying to do the best they can under the same trying circumstances we’re all facing. There’s an optimistic aspect to it, too.

34 Likes
#203

I don’t knock them for developing and selling their product, but gimmicky marketing at this moment feels a bit tone deaf to me.

Again, acknowledging that I could be off base. Just expressing how this felt to me.

5 Likes
#204

FWIW I can sympathise with both opinions here.

It’s a shame the synthfluencer (hadn’t heard that unitl yesterday - lol) crowd are so tied to product launches etc. They clearly all have so much to share on technique and process, but are clearly tied in to so much product stuff. It does feel too much sometimes. I peek at it occasionally…

4 Likes
#205

“gimmicky marketing” is redundant. Let’s not exaggerate, though, this is a very very small pond. Make Noise is not engaged in a tone deaf commercial play that detracts from a “war effort”, they’re just seeking some community joy in the launch of a product they’ve put months of work into that will sell in the hundreds of units.

I think what you’re really feeling is an appreciation that what happens around here—however humanistic, however commercial—is, from one perspective, inessential in the face of public crisis. You may just not be in the mood for all this right now, in which case, detach for a while. That’s perfectly fine.

But that is not the only perspective.

19 Likes
#206

Trying to figure out what they might design has been a genuine pleasure for me over the past week. A silly riddle to solve. It’s stupid, but it was helpful for me to add some levity to what is otherwise a really monotonous day to day with a lot of difficult news to make sense of. I appreciate acknowledging that it feels like business as usual in an unusual time, but it felt to me like they put extra work into the reveal for levity. (Formally acknowledging that I don’t expect this can or should be everyone’s experience, just my little slice.)

19 Likes
#207

If we accept these videos at face value - these are advertisements - it remains up to us how we are going to engage with that.

The synthfluencers have partnerships with manufacturers to get gear for their videos at launch. We know these aren’t “reviews”, it’s just ad time. They get shiny new gear to drive up views, the manufacturers get great ad space.

The real cost I see are channels like Loopop, who used to put out engaging and interesting material and now is basically ads all of the time. Loopop, Red Means Recording, and many others… are for the most part lost to ads.

10 Likes
#208

Hey there, I definitely feel all the perspectives being expressed here, and I’m not going to argue against anybody.

Our plan was to release the 0-CTRL in February, and forces beyond our control prevented that. We have had to rein everything in during the COVID crisis and we couldn’t do much in the meantime beyond continue creating content for the new release and prepare to get word out about it as broadly as possible when it was finally ready, so that we can continue doing what we do. To generate excitement about creativity is ALWAYS our primary goal.

I personally make videos for the YouTube channel and I felt it was very important to focus on general creativity exercises with existing and even “old” modules over the past couple months. I should say, it was important to me personally, and I hope that people watching out there felt some of that passion for creativity that was not tied to “gear acquisition.”

I’m going to leave this thread alone now. I hope you are all safe and are able to find time to make music :slight_smile:

91 Likes
#209

The thing that Make Noise excels at compared to other synth companies is education. Instead of releasing a product and leaving it up to the synthfluencers to write the manuals for them, @walker produces a lot of videos doing deep dives on individual modules along with their role in a system.

I did this a few months ago as well. I realized that I was subscribed to advertising channels instead of education channels. My gear purchases tanked after doing that, which felt great. I then went to Reddit and unsubscribed from every hobby and deals subreddit (especially video games!). Suddenly, my gaming purchases dropped off as well.

Lines is one of the last forums I still regularly go to, and I’ve had to unsubscribe from a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of counter-GAS here, which is great, but there’s also a lot of pressure to fit. I still stick around, though, because of excellent creativity-focused ventures like the @disquiet Junto and the new norns circle project. I think these types of threads focusing on intellectual and creative capital benefit the community as a whole much more than the endless “shut up and take my money” posts.

33 Likes
#210

I always appreciate how educational your videos are and some of the ideas even become a regular part of my patching practice. Particularly this video where you use gates to modulate the waveshaper of the DPO for pulsing rhythmic effects.

5 Likes
#211

I can see all sides here but I need some levity as well and I enjoy these product releases, they are fun for me. We all know what’s happening in the world right now, I don’t at all think their approach is ‘tone deaf’, maybe more like ‘tone def’! Ha.

In regards to Youtube or any social media, it’s a free product, but there has to be a revenue stream obviously, so don’t use it if it’s fueling your GAS I guess. Though it is funny, I’ll watch one video about woodworking or big wave surfing and then my whole feed is inundated with those vids.

And yeah, influencer culture is kinda gnarly, but I don’t have anything against guys like Hainbach, he’s pretty honestly presenting the product. And he’s really transparent about it. Plus he’s a creative just like all of us and he’s doing his best to actually try to make a living from said creative pursuits, unlike a lot of us, to which this is probably just a hobby.

Regarding the 0-Cntrl, I think it’s a pretty rad piece of gear. I was looking to grab an SQ-1 again, and I use my Pressure Points quite a bit, and this seems to be a good combo. I like the fact that it sits outside the rack. I was actually thinking of mounting my pressure points outside of the rack anyway, so it’s closer to my hands, and to save rack space bit now I don’t need to. I think envelope out and timing row really make this a unique piece of gear. With all that said, I wish it had a simple quantizer though. I don’t need, as I have one in the rack, it but it would be nice to built it.

5 Likes
#212

I did not meant to sound as bashing anyone because as I said I think most of them are cool people/companies who are just doing their job and the root problem is in my own behaviour. When seeing next gear I too often think that I want it and what I could do with it instead of thinking how I can I use what I already have to make music the music that I like.
Another problem I guess is that synth music is so often connected to the gear that it is hard to create instructional video without inflicting GAS on anyone. For example if you use new synth which is available on market the people might want to buy it, and if you use some cool vintage gear that might inflict GAS on other people. I mean you could probably do intructional videos in pure data but this might alienate some other groups of people.
Just a side note english is not my first language and I often feel like my posts are misunderstood so if someone could give me few pointers how I could voice my previous post differently to not sound so harsh I would be grateful.

4 Likes
#213

A fun game is to watch the product announcements and then devise ways to accomplish the same thing—or something better, or something preferable—from the tools you already have at hand.

Semi-related: @hermbot was bemoaning, above, that Loopop mostly (not entirely) does (sponsored) product reviews these days. We all have to eat. Moreover, what I love about his product reviews—his 0-Control review included—is that he almost always comes up with insightful strategies to bend them to less obvious purposes. I find this sort of analysis the most valuable, regardless of whether I would ever purchase the product.

22 Likes
#214

As a GAS killer I have setup recently pure data on computer without internet connection and without apps for distraction. Just me, pure data and few pdfs :stuck_out_tongue: hopefully I will stick to it and come up with new music in the end :slight_smile:

11 Likes