#47

Yes. I’ve moved from/to many different types of setups. Software to modular (with monome gear) to Elektron-based to Maschine-based. I’ve also had various performance controllers, i.e.: Eigenharp, Linnstrument, Continuum.

I now use a Deluge and 2 iPads with various apps. Also a trusty Akai EWI.

For me it is about exploration, so I enjoy the changes.

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#48

I sold my euro set-up. At time I miss the open-ended fun of patching, but I feel like I’ve reclaimed huge amounts of time and head space - no more two hour modular grid sessions or countless hours of trawling B/S/T threads.

At this point my set up is a Nord Wave, OP1, El Capistan, and Ditto Looper. The siren song of new gear still calls, but I barely have time to use these effectively so I manage to ignore it. No regrets here!

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#49

This is exactly where I’m at. Thanks for pushing for over the edge. :wink:

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#51

So give it away instead? I fully support this approach, and my mailing address is available on request :wink:

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#53

I have, & have no regrets. two years ago I got rid of like 90% of my stuff: clothes, shoes, books, art supplies, film projectors, 8mm cameras, you name it. I gave it all away / recycled: to goodwill, the local recycling center (apparently art teachers are always looking for ‘stuff’) and some local libraries. shredded all notebooks, old sketches, painting drafts, CD, tapes, paperwork & files. gave away guitars and ukelele. after all that, was also able to donate a bunch of storage containers to the recycling place.

it took about 6 months. felt great once I started, still feels great. you have to keep an eye on it though, or you can start accumulating again.

kept: seasonal clothes, skates, xc skis, a silver flute, some wood flutes, and a theremin, and only my favorite books (about 50, down from several hundred). plus one box of souvenirs/knickknacks, and my 3 craziest burning man costumes (for future wall decorations).

my advice is, don’t start until you feel ready, or you’ll second-guess yourself all the way through and give up. you have to get into a ‘ruthless’ mindset about objects; but once you do, it works.

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#54

@otolythe it’s inspiring to see that it can be done

it’s a path i’ve been headed towards for a couple years now. one thing that really made me realize things had to go was making a spreadsheet for insurance purposes.

I made multiple sheets for guitars, pedals, amps and synths and added the current selling price. After I ran the SUM on all fields of all sheets, it became clear to me that some stuff had to go. Keeping in mind, this is hobby for me, if it was my career I think it’d actually be okay, but as a hobby, the sum was too large.

I’ve also committed to a depth year to try to figure out what else can go and where my strengths and interest really lie. This was mentioned by @standard_grey over in the GAS haiku thread

The only exclusion to the depth year is hopefully picking up a Norns in August, that’s mostly because I didn’t have the funds in order for the first batches.

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#55

@bookmil I went into my depth year with the caveat that if a Koma Field Kit came my way for a good price, then, well, you know.

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And then one did. :man_shrugging::wink: Not a sliver of regret. It’s a fun toy to have.

Re: the general thread-
I did a couple of purges moving cross-Canada a couple of times, and I sold off almost everything when I made the move to Japan 6 years ago, and I don’t regret it–mostly. I really enjoyed the clean slate for a few years- but I ended up slowly filling up the shelves again with books(Verso Books - darn you and your flash sales). Books that, due to my crazy work schedule and a slowly-eroding attention span, I keep trying to gently prod myself into maybe getting around to reading. Hence my current depth year.

To be completely honest, I really really reallllly miss my records. Been a vinyl lover/collector for most of my life, 30+ years and I still love to go digging- but after shipping crates of vinyl to and from Winnipeg/Vancouver and back again during the student years, I realised that shipping them across the ocean wasn’t really feasible at the time. I got rid of the lot, save for a box of ones I couldn’t bear to part with that I shipped to my mom’s house, and am relieved that some of them went to many good friends’ homes. I made a good buck for my moving fund, and while I like a fresh start and the thrill of rebuilding my collection —less quantity, more quality, use some self-discipline around the dollar bin---- I still get wistful for my old records; I even miss some of my CD’s! A hard drive full of files is lighter to move around, and I can pat myself on the back for being a good minimalist but it’s not as sexy as the physical recorded object sometimes, especially when certain labels & artists (Raster Noton, 12k, :Zoviet*France: to name a few) approach the materiality of physical media as art/design objects, or as simple containers of data…

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#56

Thank you both for sharing that article. I’ve been thinking about doing something like a depth year in the near future and having a concise article on the concept is helpful for me to reflect on what exactly I’d want my terms to be.

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#57

cool. raptitude has some great advice, thanks for the link! :slight_smile:

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#58

Gonna be 59 in September, I feel this more all the time

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#59

I had a depth year a few years ago, which was more a cutting out non essential consumption year entirely… it worked but I have scaled back to a sustainable level now. Been meaning to post on here about it for a while… maybe the Life-improvement advice for the privileged is the best place for it…

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#60

Not quite sure about everything (that would be very hard), but I have sold a lot of my personal belongings over the last few years. The main area of my life where I still have “stuff” is music, but even there I went down from a whole lot of different instruments to a modular synth, a stage piano, a guitar, a bunch of monome-things as well as a desktop computer (I’d still like to convert that to a laptop at some point). The modular sometimes still feels like a lot and could be broken down, but I’m enjoying it too much for that right now.

As for other things, I got rid of all non-cloud data storage I owned (books, records, cds, dvds, cassettes, photo albums and so on) and replaced it with a select few electronic devices and online services - spotify, kindle, dropbox, et cetera. I minimized furniture, tools and appliances to the point where there is nothing non-essential in my rooms anymore. I broke my clothing down to simple things that I can buy in bulk. Overall it lead to a whole lot more space (which I left open or filled with plants) as well as a previously unimaginable ease of cleaning (that was most noticeable thing I didn’t think about before doing this - it’s so easy to keep things clean and tidy when you don’t have a lot of things :smiley:)

I found it very interesting how much mental energy is freed up by removing choices in so many things. Things like shopping or packing for a trip become so much easier and once one gets acclimatized to the idea that for example clothes aren’t a thing to think about anymore, a whole lot of thought patterns that I had previously just went away for good. Similarly, I’m finally pretty much free of GAS (with some particularly wonderful things like norns being the exception).

Although I’ll have to admit that to some extent, the obsession I had with buying things got replaced by the obsession to remove things, if that makes any sense. It was pretty bad for a while, where I iterated over all the things I still had again and again and tried to find ways to get rid of more things. It’s slowly dying down now that there isn’t all that much left, but I certainly noticed that there was a similarity in the connected thought patterns - when I thought about it, how it felt to think about it and so on. It seemed very much like a way to scratch the same itch as consumption.

Oh, and I forgot: No regrets, none at all.

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#61

This makes totally sense to me aka sounds so familiar :joy:.
Got rid of a lot of things the last year and there was hardly a moment I missed something…

It‘s amazing how decluttering physical things also declutters the brain!
Life becomes much easier if you have less things to care about!

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#62

I just read about the Depth Year and I’m totally onboard and it’s exactly what I’m needing in my life right now!

For my year I am not going to make any new musical instrument purchases for the entire year (my bank account is going to love me) and I’m going to dive into what I own, which is more than enough to create whatever I can imagine creating. Nothing else out there will accomplish what I want to accomplish any more than what I already have.

I’m excited and thanks everyone for sharing this concept with the community!

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#63

i sold almost everything when i exited professional music.

some of it was rare or unique,
much of it was not—the biggest piece was a 1965 hammond b3 with leslie 122 that had been completely tricked out by the ultimate guru of vintage keyboard.

i held onto my 64, my 256, and an old german-made warwick fretless bass which was my first real instrument. my only purchase since has been norns, and that has allowed me to get rid of my old laptop.

i don’t regret it one bit—now that i’m playing for fun again, it feels like a clean slate.

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#64

After several years of not paying attention to gear, getting into modular dragged me into a black hole of endless ModularGrid scrolling, and making less music as a result. I’ve put the modular in the cupboard to take a break from it, and considering selling it off.

Otherwise, I have a couple of standalone kits on the way, and a circuit-bending tape player idea brewing. Beyond that, if I spot something I’m interested in, I’m going to prototype it in Max first. Hopefully that’ll help me focus on the sounds I want to make, rather than pretty lights and buttons…

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#65

I can totally related this. I’ve boxes up what’s left of my modular and trying to sell off the case to get out of it finally. I waste way too much time and energy thinking about my modular and planning on the grid. Kria and ansible keep me hesitant to get out of it completely, I really love that sequencer.

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#66

I’m hoping that kria and meadowphysics will be ported over to Norns, I’m still holding on to a small system with one voice until tha happens.

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#67

Im hoping that too. With midi out control :smiley:

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#68

More agreeable words have never been spoken…

1 Like