Are you a gear freak? If somebody called me one I really couldn’t argue with them. It boggles my mind how much stuff I’ve accumulated in just the last year. In fact, it’s downright scary. But how much of this stuff do you REALLY use? Be honest now. Isn’t it but a fraction?
I open up Cubase 7 in the morning and bring up a VST. That process alone is mind boggling. When I first bought the DAW, the list of VSTs was maybe an inch or two long. There was very little there. Now, I can scroll for pages. It’s gotten to the point where I have to type in the name of the VST I’m looking for or I’ll be there forever.
Of course when you start doing that, especially when you’ve got hundreds of these things, there is no way you can possibly remember the name of each VST that you downloaded. Okay, I can’t. Maybe some braniac out there can. But for me, there’s a handful of VSTs that I can name off the top of my head and those are the ones that I pretty much use all the time.
In fact, here is the “short” list of my main synths.
Battery 4
ABSynth 5
FM 8
Massive
Synthmaster 2.6
Zebra 2
And then there is all the EWQL stuff which comes under the Play VST and all the Native Instrument stuff not already mentioned that comes under either Kontakt 5 or Reaktor 5.
That’s pretty much my meat and potatoes for music production. Yeah, I’ve got some odd ball synths and other VSTs for special use like Revitar 2.0 or Strum for guitars. And if I strained my brain I could probably think of maybe 20 more VSTs that I sometimes use, but for the most part, this is it. I could chuck just about everything else I own and probably wouldn’t miss it. Okay, maybe I’d miss my XWOF. That is one really cool soundscapes designer. But I digress.
And it doesn’t just end with the sound producers. There’s all the effects processors. I’ll be honest, I can’t even begin to tell you what I have as I use to little of it.
For the most part, I use Curve EQ, a compressor, QL Spaces for reverb, a delay, and that’s about it as far as on a regular basis. I don’t go overly crazy with effects and processing. Oh sure, every once in a while I’ll use a filter or some overdrive, especially on horns, and on the rare occasions that I do vocals I’ll use autotune, but my effects rack is woefully underused. And the list of things I have could also choke a horse.
Why do we do this? Is there a reason why we have so much stuff and yet use so little of it?
I have a few theories on this that I’d like to share in the hope that maybe we can break this cycle of insanity. It’s probably futile but if you don’t try, you never know.
Recently, I wrote an article “What To Do When The Novelty Wears Off” in which I talked about how we get bored and one of the things we do to try to alleviate that boredom is to buy new stuff. But you know what happens. Either the stuff gets old or it was never really any good to begin with and we go back to the stuff we used to use because it was just better.
I’m actually thinking of plunking down $100 for a limiter. Why? Because it can withstand an 8 db pump? Like I’m ever going to pump up my music THAT much? And you know what’s going to happen if and when I get it. I’m going to have to PROVE that it was worth the investment. So I’m going to start cranking up my music to the sky. It’s madness, pure madness. The limiter I have is fine. I don’t need a new one.
Another reason that we have so much stuff, besides boredom, is because we want to feel like we’re ready to handle any musical situation that might come up. We don’t want to be caught with our pants down. So by having all this stuff, it’s kind of like a security blanket. We’ll probably never use 90% of it, but it just makes us feel good knowing it’s there. Again, it’s pure madness.
Then of course there are those of us who are just gear freaks. We’re collectors. If it’s new, we have to have it. If it’s old and we don’t have it, we have to have it. If it hasn’t been invented yet, we’ll beg somebody to create it. I’m still waiting for a vocal box that, when you sing into it, it will reproduce your voice in the quality and tone of a chosen vocal performer. I’m still waiting for my Billy Joel in a box. There has got to be a way to do this with as far as technology has come. Really, we’re like crack addicts.
I’m trying to battle against all of these things. While I’m not in any way winning this war, I have gotten a little better. I don’t download stuff as regularly as I used to. It used to be a daily thing with me. Yes, daily. Now I’ll download something new maybe every 2 to 4 weeks or so. I’ve gotten a lot better.
Contrary to popular belief, he who dies with the most toys does NOT win. When we die, we all leave this world with nothing. So why the madness?
I want you to do me a favor. Actually, do yourself a favor. Go through all your stuff. If there’s anything in it that you really don’t need and know you’ll probably never use, get rid of it. I’ve already done this with a few of my VSTs that, quite honestly, sounded like crap.
You will feel a lot better about yourself and your stuff if you do. At the very least, it’ll be a lot easier to find things the next time you start working on a project and have to sift through a ton of sound generation modules.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim