Has this guy’s channel been shared yet?
17:23…”Why does life have to be this hard…why suffer?” Lol.
He purposefully poopoos the ‘hardware is better’ discourse and even punches back a bit later in the video about YouTube influencers.
I don’t totally agree with him but I have to say I like his attitude!
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Ah, where would we be without “lifehacks” from Influencers that explain to us that garageband exists 
All joking aside (and at least he covers the features and functionality of both in relation to GB), the better part of hardware is integration, workflow, and owning a small computer with a dedicated tactile interface but doesn’t make us think of the computers in our hands 24/7 or the computers we use at home, work, and home-work.
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What suprised me about this one is that he mentions that he toured with a small eurorack setup alongside his usual gear, something for high hat duties specifically.
He’s the personification of the “you dont need gear” ethos and created its most notable meme… but yet is sucked into this stuff just like the rest of us. He didn’t “need” it, knew he didn’t “need” it, but went for it anyways. There is a genuine danger of materialist traps with gear now a days, sure. But Im not content to label all this stuff as a capitalist soul suck and dismiss it all out of hand. Maybe these things will never have proper answers, but why is this stuff so “addictively” appealing in the first place? If the “you dont need gear” guy even folds to it, there has to be something more than just materialist shallowness at play.
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DMR
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I believe he mentioned in the interview that part of the reason he brought a modular on tour was because it looked cool / interesting to an audience, even if it wasn’t doing very much.
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I want to emphasize that I am not posting this pejoratively:
We are, most of us (? | ,) haptic creatures who like to try stuff out with our bodies, our fingers, our ears. I don’t feel that this impulse needs to be coupled with any Veblen sense of keeping up with the neighbors.
When I see new gear, I get twitchy fingers; some Homer Simpsonian part of my hindbrain wonders how much fun could be had messing with it.
My large, unwieldy synth amounts to a Busy Bath. For me, Max/Msp is a Busy Bath. These ludic impulses are ok! Humans are creatures who want to play. It gets complicated, to say the least, within the context of late capitalism, within the context of what percentage of humans are where on Maslow’s pyramid. But: I can empathize with itchy fingers.
This is all apart from discourses around: what is art, what is breaking new ground, what is music, what do we need, what do we deserve, what do we owe one another.
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I think I may just be more tactile and physical and less likely to build a complete model in my head, I start losing interest if I get too detached from an instrument.
I can still sequence a bit in Ableton though it’s not as engaging to me as devices, but the devices I’m less likely to record with!
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I am increasingly convinced that a great deal of the GAS floating around in our collective atmospheres is the product of just how isolated and globally distributed a lot of us are. If I could just pop over to a fellow synthesist’s apartment and try out a new module or two, and get a chance to vibe with some of this technology without having to own it, I would. If we could form more casual attachments to synthesizers, rather than the dead-serious attachment that is high cost ownership (especially, as @EurekaQQN and @Szuumm note, we’re so broke that most of these purchases are way out of our league), I wonder how things would be different, GAS-wise.
Put differently: I find myself wanting to purchase gear less when my friends own it, not because the novelty or the allure isn’t there, but because, well, it already exists in my orbit and surely I could borrow it for some time, or could hang out with it and explore it without having to buy it myself.
Yet I only have two or three friends who are musicians, and even fewer who dabble in synthesis — so if I want to really connect with a piece of gear (and not just demo it at the few lovely music shops we have in my city) I need to buy it. Most of the equipment that has passed through my home was essentially a mid- to long-term rental, because purchasing and then reselling it was the only way I could really interact with it. If only there was a synth co-op around!
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Yes, and if we could only stop internet from existing it would also help a lot IMHO.
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Portland, Oregon has a “synth library” and I believe one just opened in NYC recently. Try using that as a search term for your town, maybe you have one!
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Hexxi
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It’s funny, my gas went away with the lockdowns. Music + instruments was a pretty social thing for me so it felt pointless getting more gear without playing with others in the same room. I can see your point about being able to share gear with friends though I had the opposite happen, less interaction with my local synth community helped do away with the gas as it was kind of a feedback loop of seeing trying out new gear all the time and wanting it for a setup. Must have been some sort of mimetic desire going on.
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Public libraries are also starting to have musical instrument collections:
https://aadl.org/search/catalog/callnums:"Music%20Tools"
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Being reminded of Kieran Hebden yesterday I went out running with another podcast. Tiga’s Last party on earth which also featured Hebden as a guest: Tiga Presents: First/Last Party On Earth: Four Tet's First/Last Party on Earth on Apple Podcasts
GAS-related: What struck about his story was that he got successful early on with next to no gear. His first Four Tet-album was recorded on a pc with the first crack-copy of a music program he ever got (from his school-mates in Simian Mobile Disco).
I’m thinking. If you experience success using next to nothing, it’s probably easier to come to the conclusion that gear has little to do with it.
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No doubt. But do we need toys to play? And a stream of new, different toys? What is novelty’s relationship to play? How much if any novelty is essential to that experience?
Synths and laptops are actually not very haptic. Especially compared to graphite wearing against the tooth of paper, or slicing a lemon. Synths rarely vibrate and the texture of knurled plastic/smooth aluminum is relatively homogenous. And many module manufacturers are also using the same components, at that!
I wonder if the acquisitiveness associated w gear for many is that the haptic ludic experience is actually not sufficiently nourishing.
I know when I eat a bag of Doritos, I just want another bag. Until I feel sick.
[skips off to spread jam on synth knobs and replace faceplates w scrap leather]
I read a book on finances I liked called “Going Broke.” One of the author’s suggestions to avoid spending needlessly is limiting exposure to advertising.
Despite its psychologically compelling and nearly irresistable temptations, sometimes there are choices we can make that help us steer clear of ads (both formal and informal). The catch is we may have to make perceived sacrifices and tolerate our urges without acting on them.
I noticed a thread running through a lot of these posts re: the implicit social aspect of gear. Maybe that’s part of what drives the acquisitiveness.
“Click ‘add to cart’ in case of loneliness”?
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This is a really thoughtful podcast that discusses the importance of play, starting with the concept and introduction of Kindergarten and its relationship to Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright, abstract painting and art and design in general.
I wanted to share it here because it highlights that importance of play. While it doesn’t directly discuss GAS, I think we can all agree: turning knobs, pushing buttons, actions and reactions, exploring new sounds. You know how to play. And play is a good thing.
Look around you, grab something you already have, and play.
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Oh nice! An old buddy used to work producing that podcast. All the more reason to give it a listen.
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parsec
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Now I want to sample that SO BAD
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perfect for no-input mixing 
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This is a great observation. Back in the “good old days” I would visit a guitar store, try guitars and pedals, see other people do the same, talk with the owners and the personnel who were always in some kind of band, share our passion and experience for all things guitar-wise. Since the beginning of the big online music shops, it was obvious that these little shops couldn’t survive simply cause they cannot beat the prices of a mega-store and because the consumers (yes, we!) are not conscious at all. Our decision to buy cheaper means that we will have to spent much more money just to “try stuff out”. And I don’t even mention the time you have to lose packing/unpacking/sending boxes, the effect on the environment etc. We’ve lost that connection with a community that was that music shop. It wasn’t just a shop. But hey, we make this world all together, right? And we gotta take the responsibility when all goes to shit.
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This is true, but it’s also somewhat reductive. It’s not just about isolation; it’s also about a weird form of instant-gratification consumerism. We associate buying more gear with having more options or even with making progress because the change is palpably immediate: we get a new toy to put our grubby mitts on.
That said, the lack of engagement brought about by isolation is a real problem. It’s not even that we don’t have music shops anymore—it’s that no one talks about anything productive. A good amount of online gear discussion is nothing more than enabling or commiserating about having GAS. The discussions about how to use and explore gear are far fewer (or maybe they just get fewer eyes on them).
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