Downsized and happier.

[howtobecalm]

i gave away my reason account ( for free ) with all my rack extensions , with reason intro , now all i have is reason 11 ( native stuff ) and moon echo audio refill bundle , i am never purchasing another thing , not going to use vst apart from one ( video player from polac ) and if i do get anything from now on its gonna be freeware , theres no point buying xamount of stuff its only gonna make u confused what to use , i have never been happier or working faster now minimilism really works !!

[MrFigg]

Back to this...been trying out a lot of stuff I haven't really given a proper look since getting. Last night...Kompulsion on a Kong. Man...just drawing in random stuff while the device was running. Could have sat there all night. Awesome.
Just installed Iris 2...got it for free ages ago but uninstalled it almost immediately due to high CPU hit. Been sitting here half an hour pushing buttons and twisting stuff and am loving it.
I am actually...freaks me out just to write it...on the verge of reading some instruction books.
Just an update

[Zac]

Back to this...been trying out a lot of stuff I haven't really given a proper look since getting. Last night...Kompulsion on a Kong. Man...just drawing in random stuff while the device was running. Could have sat there all night. Awesome.
Just installed Iris 2...got it for free ages ago but uninstalled it almost immediately due to high CPU hit. Been sitting here half an hour pushing buttons and twisting stuff and am loving it.
I am actually...freaks me out just to write it...on the verge of reading some instruction books.
Just an update

I've had a spare pc that needs a new psu which I've now ordered so I changed hardrive and converted this one for Elite Dangerous on steam. But I had serious pangs for Reason whilst waiting for the psu to arrive so I installed Reason but just with my REs, no VSTs or refills. It's been pretty inspiring so far. I rediscovered the excellent sounds from the big AMMO, I've no idea how it works but I love tweaking the patches. I think I will uninstall a lot of stuff when this psu comes.

[MrFigg]

Back to this...been trying out a lot of stuff I haven't really given a proper look since getting. Last night...Kompulsion on a Kong. Man...just drawing in random stuff while the device was running. Could have sat there all night. Awesome.
Just installed Iris 2...got it for free ages ago but uninstalled it almost immediately due to high CPU hit. Been sitting here half an hour pushing buttons and twisting stuff and am loving it.
I am actually...freaks me out just to write it...on the verge of reading some instruction books.
Just an update

I've had a spare pc that needs a new psu which I've now ordered so I changed hardrive and converted this one for Elite Dangerous on steam. But I had serious pangs for Reason whilst waiting for the psu to arrive so I installed Reason but just with my REs, no VSTs or refills. It's been pretty inspiring so far. I rediscovered the excellent sounds from the big AMMO, I've no idea how it works but I love tweaking the patches. I think I will uninstall a lot of stuff when this psu comes.

Good to hear you Zac. Hope you’re well and fine man

[WOO]

The best thing i did this year for my creative output was to read a book. I agree less can be more. All of my best stuff is created using some piano, bass and drum presets. I have a template setup with with different pianos with some real bass samples loaded into kontakt and reasons a list studio drummer or ujams vd solid or bm eden for the beat.

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[kuhliloach]

This thread is absolutely fascinating to me. I relate to this problem--the problem of being overwhelmed by a User Interface. You'd think we as humans could mastermind our own streamlining. But it's not that simple. Some of us get distracted so easily that too much visual stimulus interrupts our brain function. I use the Sync All feature and always add any freebies to my account. And now my Reason is even more littered with decisions than it was before. There must be a happy medium. Somewhere.

[DaveyG]

Less is definitely more. Listen to any top selling records, be they pop, rock, EDM, soul, whatever and you'll hear very few main instruments. Now imagine if you had hardware versions of every instrument and effect we have in Reason and VST. There is not a room big enough to house them and you'd have to employ someone just to keep them wired up and working and the music you made would not be any better, even assuming you could find room to sit down.

A friend of mine, with much more self discipline than me (and a more successful musician!), has a structured approach to writing a song. He chooses the instruments up front and rarely changes his mind. Choose one drum kit, one bass sound, one synth and make a song out of them. At the very end, when the song finished he might go back and add a couple of flourishes from other instruments but he usually does not. It's an approach I've tried and mostly failed with! It's too easy to get obsessed with sound rather than music.

[Zac]

Less is definitely more. Listen to any top selling records, be they pop, rock, EDM, soul, whatever and you'll hear very few main instruments. Now imagine if you had hardware versions of every instrument and effect we have in Reason and VST. There is not a room big enough to house them and you'd have to employ someone just to keep them wired up and working and the music you made would not be any better, even assuming you could find room to sit down.

A friend of mine, with much more self discipline than me (and a more successful musician!), has a structured approach to writing a song. He chooses the instruments up front and rarely changes his mind. Choose one drum kit, one bass sound, one synth and make a song out of them. At the very end, when the song finished he might go back and add a couple of flourishes from other instruments but he usually does not. It's an approach I've tried and mostly failed with! It's too easy to get obsessed with sound rather than music.

I can really relate to that last sentence. I get inspired by great sounds and often feed them some quickly come up with midi to tweak and expand the sounds. I can easily get stuck with some half arsed song writing if I'm not careful.

But it can also work the other way around. I come up with an inspiring progression and melody and feed them some quickly come up with sounds to develop them and I can then get stuck with inferior sounds.

The magic happens when I'm inspired by both.

[MrFigg]

Back on the downsize trail again. Never ending.

[demt]

Dam my good taste and scense I carnt throw away that many diamonds! Just kidding isle begin to prune later

[hurricane]

I disabled all VSTs from Reason a few months ago, and deleted all the REs I never used (basically all of them), and I've been really happy ever since.

And now just last night, in a move I thought I would never make, I disabled all my third party AU plugins in Logic, and have decided to go at it using only Logic's internal instruments and effects. I was drowning, man. I mean, it hasn't prevented me from making music, but I definitely noticed I was spending way too much time messing with so many options.

This WAS me:

"I really want to use my ArtsAcoustic reverb because I used to use it all the time and now I don't and I have so many presets for it"
"But wait, I just got R4 and I should try and see what that's about."
"Ooh wait, I remember that really cool trick you can do with Waves True Verb - yeah I should see what that sounds like again."
"My old copy of Ozone 5 has a reverb in it - I'm going to be cool and use it cuz no one else does. Maybe it sounds really good and no one knows it."
"The old IK reverbs got really good reviews though - I should put one of those on my sends."
"But the PSP reverb I just got for $29 has a really cool gated reverb preset and I should use it because I haven't so far."
"I have so many impulses of really iconic reverbs though - let me see which ones sound best."

And then I'd do the same thing with compressors, EQs, and delays.

I think I'm going to start all over, particularly in Logic. Logic's instruments and effects are really good. I'm not exactly downsizing, lol because I have my old Logic 8 manual and Apple devoted a whole book on just Logic's instruments and effects, and it's almost 700 pages thick.

Going back to basics though and I'm going to learn them really well. Then I'll start adding my 3rd party plugins back slowly and ONLY if they serve a few purposes (I'm still working these out):

1. They offer something I don't already have.
2. That I absolutley need the things they offer (from a production standpoint) that I don't already have.
3. And that I need those things because they will audibly enhance my musical output.
4. And that it would be difficult or a 'time suck' to recreate those things with the stuff I already have.

It's the start of my ANTI-GAS rules.
Cuz Black Friday is coming.
We should be prepared.