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Push 3 Standalone and Ableton Suite cured my GAS. I still have external synths, some im selling but others Iove to keep as an alternative to plugins, but seeing a new groovebox or a limited synth just doesnt get me anymore as Push 3 has everything you need. Max for live is incredible with so many devices that I just cant justify a hardware purchase unless its completely unique in its offering. Cheers

Let me begin my saying that I'm primarily a guitarist who enjoys creating and listening to my own music which is more about expression. After learning about eurorack and its evolving, dynamic nature with vasts configuration options, I saw the potential to create a backing band of sorts with my guitar. Its like having my own mini orchestra with a built in peddle fx board and complimenting analog and digital synth progressions. Before Eurorack, my first experience recording was with an IScarlett Solo interface and GarageBand followed by Ableton. It became clear that using a DAW was not my preferred method of recording as it took countless hours just to sample libraries and then tweak with what seemed like an endless list of plugins and VST options for each project. In short, it killed my creative mojo. Since using a 104HP modular skiff, an Arturia keystep and a Zoom recorder, I have now recorded hours of playlists every year and have enjoyed making them all. Its just feels like a more natural, organic process to pick up an instrument and play, mix and record than to building tracks and then splicing them into a project file. Now, I'm not creating for public consumption or use as mentioned and I do understand why a DAW is still a crucial step for professional recording artists but I must say its been wayyy more inspiring and productive for me. I have transposed a few recordings for Valhaller shimmers and other end of chain FXand compression but only in a few instances. Eurorack offers most of what I need. The Morpgagene Looper and Beads Granular processing modules provide great sound layering and an almost endless source of new soundscapes and modulations I would never have even thought of. So, I hope to enjoy many more opportunities explore this particular DAWless workflow.

You say no-one cares if you use loops, and that is true, but shouldn’t you care?

I have gear all over the place, and I am selling it. The sad thing is how much money we lose when re-selling modern gear. You are right; stay away from IG and TH-cam, News, Magazines, and Audio blogs...all they do is try to sell more useless crap.

Get that, although I do keep at least one pice of hardware and a guitar amp or pedal that I always use. For now is the Nord lead 2X and Sansamp GT2

Sold the cwejman after-all? Good video tho! Contemplating all the time if I should sell off all my modular or not

I regret the hell out of selling my Fantom 06 keyboard for a measly 700 dollars. I wish I would have never done that, because I also got rid of my 264 songs, instrumentals and cinematic music I had saved on it. It was a very stupid decision on my part, and I should not have done it.

Solid content, thanks for sharing.

Thank you for sharing. This has been very helpful for me. 😊

Not “ALL” … but “MOST”

Good points and wow what a nice studio you have :-) Is that a Dell screen you have and if so what model ?`:-)

100% truth. How do you like the Push? I've got my eye on one but sort of unconvinced at the moment...

Nice 1. Making music on hardware is not all the time that productive. It's more the joy of not being diriectly behind the computer and the fact that in a dawless approach one is guided by the sound that reaches the ears. It's advised to keep a small hardware setup. It's like you said, buying the hardware means nothing, it's learning the unit that eventually turns it in to a usable instruments.

I agree very much with what you say in this video. And on that note, I am on the verge or selling my DSI Tempest. the ROI of learning and mastering it, is just not there. And fun fact, I was surprised that you got the T1 because I just did the same thing and its waiting to be used as an addition. Anyway, making music in the box means a lot of thinking ahead and being able to make decision of different scopes. I am trying to get good at this. I like your channel. Thanks for sharing.

Well said Marius and I hope that folks need your advice as much possible..

Thanks for this video. I found it very interesting, honest and inspiring/ motivating.

Nice work Marius!

Do you. What works for you matters. Everyone has their thing. It wouldn't work for me.

🤘🏾

I think there's a compromise. Nothing really beats grabbing real tangible knobs and faders. It's easy to reamp into guitar pedals and live tweak controls to a rhythm for instance. But, yeah, I agree, less gear is more manageable and even more creative. Having said that I have far too many guitars!

It's amazing as a professional of decades to see this transformation to computer based replacements of all of this hardware. For Ex., I recently purchase the Rhodes Music Mark 8 Pro plug in made by Rhodes Music. I loaded it up and it sounded just like Rhodes Music new $10,000 electric piano. In fact the only improvement in the actual physical instrument is the effects section when ABing. Where the hardware is nice is in the physical control aspect especially if you are a trained keyboardist, or classical pianist. We expect playable keyboard to execute parts. For example, we need an 88 note weighted controller for playing piano sample. I like the Kawai VPC-1 triple strike keyboard. (Nord uses it in their keyboards I believe and Kawaii sells them). For synth action I like the Nord Wave 2 waterfall keyboard for it fast action for synth part playing and for its waterfall keyboard for organ parts.

Ok you say plenty of positive things here, and give some very good advice. Also people like you admitting that hardware was more of a burden than anything, will help at least soften the massive synth market crash that's just round the corner. But.... I have big questions... You started making music 12 years ago or so. What in hell possessed you to get into real gear? Did you at least try to use plugins at all? I'm confused because the style of music you obviously are trying to do is not gear friendly at all. You make straightforward, accessible EDM that relies heavily on tight productions, everything in side chains, no experiments there. It's clear what style you had in mind. Gear is for dirt, happy accidents and all the fun that comes with it. Clearly you were on the hype train and the warnings you issue about "magic dust" and many other points you went through yourself. Also why the hell did you get into modular?? Did you need it for your music? No, it was just vanity. And the Cirklon.. what the... anyway. Clearly you're someone who had money to burn. I've been buying gear since 1996, and most probably at your height I didn't have as much gear you had. I never sold a single piece of gear. During the VST hype in the early 2000s when everyone from Trent Reznor to Alexander Robotnick sold all their gear, I was BUYING good stuff. The early 2000s VSTs were absolute garbage! NIN albums from that time? Garbage! Digital distortions, that's it. And with the end of the 00s the great gear hype train arrived, just when VSTs were getting good, that's when I got into VSTs, multisampling and all that stuff, while occasionally buying some more hardware. I have some vintage bits, a 303, a 909, a DX7 (if you can call that vintage since it's not priced like a kidney, which is what most people think vintage is about) and a few other nice bits but I've never owned a Juno, or a Minimoog, even though I could afford them. Because I KNOW I have an addictive personality and I KNOW when that starts to tingle something fecky's going on. And that's the first reason I will never get into modular. The very close second is that it's a waste of money. Overpriced blinkies and you can't save anything. Whatever. You ain't foolin me, €500 oscillator I can do nothing with but shove up a cow's ass and record it. Fuck that shit. I bought a Behringer 2600 for that price and I have all the modules I need to do amazing things. Or screw it, give me a menu-diving hellhole I can sysex dump to the project file any day. Point is, I appreciate what you said, but frankly you're a noob and thinking everyone is in your situation is very naiive. A bit of self reflection is in order I think.

I will often start with a sound, say making a sound on my Hydrasynth until i have something cool. then figure out how to make a piece around the cool sound. If I'm working on a bass, I'll come up with the line on the sequencer that I like and then mess with the bass until I have the sound I want playing the line. so I totally agree with you, It's better to get the song itself down first, then figure out what sounds you want playing the different parts in the song. nice.

Nothing could interest me less!

I go through phases where I need to delete the TH-cam App on every mobile device I own…hmm…I guess I’ll see ya later.

You should probably take “Ableton live” out of the title. This is sage wisdom for any creative music process. You’d probably get a lot more hits, since many people don’t use Ableton, and indeed, like myself, some peop7are turned off by it.

Thank you so much! You don’t no how badly I needed to hear this. May be the best advice I’ve ever received.

I found that a big mistake is people start mixing their song before they finished arranging. That will stop you from finishing songs every time.

Plugins good for the home guy, hardware for the studio. It’s more inspiring to have physical gear and a good marketing tool

I only keep things that can’t be emulated in the box. Moogerfoogers, tx802, Dfam etc etc

Totally agree, I just save some tutorials in my watch later to later evaluate whether I really want to consume that content or not. Sometimes I do even summarize them with AI. The bonus tip is something I really vibe with.

Agree 100% I work with a lot of artists, typically electronic, and at different stages, confidence, some have releases some have not. Your tips are exactly what i would say, especially tip 1, but all tips are bang on. I think computers have been hugely influential on jumping from idea to idea and not going through the whole process. When i switched from hardware as a teen i really struggled to finish anything. With the previous hardware setup i had to finish tracks as the studio was already being used, no big save button like in a DAW. As you recently started focusing in the box more, did you find this happened to you? Subbed and keen to watch how your channel develops.

I just get an idea, get my phone out, record and upload.One take and all mistakes added.More time playing and enjoying music.Subbed mate

In the 80's, when a lot of this stuff was NEW, I remember my garage band's keyboardist was only in BECAUSE she had the 106 which rich daddy indulged his darling princess with, she couldn't find middle C on it to save her immortal soul. As I sit with my guitar synth charging, I would sell all but the 106; use it as a controller and keep the classic. A lot of what I see today is superfluousness, hype, and planned obsolescence. I'd keep the classic.😊

The real trap is thinking you need to do this or that before you actually create. Thinking you need to sell all your shit before you can be more creative is part of that. After you sell all your gear, there will be something else - even if you are inspirited for a bit. You're focused because you just put energy into making a change. This is known as Resistance, and it comes in many forms. After a while, you'll buy a synth again, and the cycle will continue. I wanted to give you a hug after watching your video, because you seem like an artist trapped in this cycle. The real answer to enjoy every part of the creative process. Getting and learning a new machine can bring the same level of joy to an artist as releasing new material and getting great feedback from your fans. If you feel you need to be more prolific to be happy, then do it. If you want to write more music, do it. Having hardware doesn't have to impede that, only if you let it. Videos like these are a symptom of the Spotify driven fallacy that every musician needs to make 1000 tracks a month or risk being irrelevant. We panic at a subconscious level and sell all our shit. Screw that noise. Give me a Juno 106 and a dope drum machine any day of the week.

Good stuff - wish me luck 😄

Tip 2: Work FAST is a good one, not always very easy depending on your music style. I’d add another related one: Don’t have any qualms about starting again, especially if you hit a block or move away from your intended style. I constantly waste a lot of my time trying to improve things that just go nowhere, whereas the good stuff often comes in no time.

😂😂😂😂😂

Bought myself a launchkey 37 for Xmas, perfect time to stumble across your channel!

Yeah the audio resolution is such that the emulations sound as good as the "real" synth but without the impact on the environment.

Sounds like a rainy robotic day. ; D

I've had a couple of friends go through exactly the same journey (to working pretty much only ITB). From my own experiences, and seeing those of others, my opinion is that a large majority of the people who claim that they could never give up their hardware are deceiving themselves. I was exactly the same way with books and e-readers: I stoutly refused the notion of giving up the touch, the smell, and the physical interaction of turning paper pages for an electronic device for years. That is, until someone bought me a Kindle. The same applies to vinyl enthusiasts and film camera users. You can digtially replicate the "vinyl sound" (hint: it's just saturation) (disclaimer: a very, very small set of vinyl records are mastered differently than their CD counterpart, but this is the exception rather than the rule), and you can digitally manufacture any film effects. Objectively, with a modern computer you can get anything you had with analogue in the digital space. Any reasoning to stay with the old is therefore not logical, but emotional. I suspect that many can't admit to themselves that they simply don't want to learn or acclimatise themselves to something new. Many are also emotionally party to a sunk-cost fallacy (if you already have $10,000 vinyl record collection and a $10,000 turntable + stylus setup, going digital effectively makes it all worth $0 _to you_, even though you can sell the equipment on). I'm more than happy with all the extra space I have from going digital everywhere - no more turntables, vinyls, books, retro-consoles, synths, etc. cluttering up my living room - but as is with clothing brands, I think a lot of people need this "clutter" around to impress their "identity" upon the world (...not that I would ever tell them so brutally, otherwise I wouldn't have any friends left!). Now... about the number of colleagues who seem to have accidently angled their webcams directly towards the shelves full of books that they'll never read a second time...

No never stop buying cool stuff! 😂😂

You can't get good at something if you don't do it. Get to know how your instruments work. Never delete any idea, if you get stuck come back to it later. My final and best advice is have an idea of what you want to achieve.

I was doing exactly the things you said not to do. Thanks for the tips!

I hope you kept a few favorites.

The tip about not watching TH-cam should have been the last one,. You could have also said at the beginning that the last tip is the best one so watch till the end. Seriously, I have restricted my TH-cam usage to coffee breaks and whilst I'm cooking dinner. Gotta go. Potatoes nearly finished.

solid advice, thanks!

hahaha dude!, i have that same fuzz aldrin print in my kitchen. nice! 😻

That cirklon is not leaving ha, I use it with ableton really, not selling it, not selling my MAM either, the rest is midi controllers from now on I think. Being conditioned by the gear you chose is really limiting really.