I removed most of my plugins

[zerocrossing]

but isn't...
hey i got my apostrophe back

but "is not" removing vst plugins
hey i got my quotes back

but isn't removing vst plugins...
just like removing colors?

hey i got my question mark back

isn't removing vst plugins just like
vincent van gogh not using blue and yellow?

No. Removing VSTs isn't like removing colors, if we consider the spectrum of audio to be like the spectrum of light. It's more like removing different brush or canvas types.

[harryupbabble]

what if your genre is edm
and diva is what's being removed?
i have to admit, i know close to nothing about edm
what synth vst do most edmers use?

[martiu]

what synth vst do most edmers use?

Serum

[martiu]

quote from one of my fav music producers - Christoph De Babalon

Screenshot (1536).png

[funky lime]

These days I tend to buy things when they are on sale and sometimes I'll forget about them for months because I am busy with other things. When I finally get around to them, though, that's when I find new sounds that create new riffs that I can turn into new songs. The first song we wrote for out next album is a good example. I'd bought WaveOSC when it came out but we were in the middle of our last album and we already had all the songs so I put it aside and forgot about it (which is easy when it starts with a "W"). A few months ago I loaded it up to see how much it was like Union. Just in the effort of trying to recreate some of our Union patches in WaveOSC, I stumbled upon a sound that I liked and in playing around with it, I came up with a riff I really liked. 24 hours later I had a viable song.

Buying stuff gives me a dopamine hit (i.e. is potentially addictive), and buying digital stuff in particular has a dangerous component of instant gratification. So part of it, for me, is about fighting my addiction to buying new toys (i.e. GAS). If I rely on gear-novelty (new synths, new presets, new samples, etc) to spark new ideas, then that means I am conditioning my brain to chase gear-purchases as a reward—"feeling uncreative? buy, buy, buy new toys!" I am hoping to fight against that conditioning, and get my novelty fix from elsewhere in life besides my purchases. To boot, i do not earn much money at all in life, so buying new music stuff is almost always a terrible financial decision.

What I don't get with a lot of you guys is why you have to uninstall stuff to stop it being a distraction. Don't you have any self-discipline? I put things in folders, so my browser doesn't become cluttered and I'm not scrolling endlessly to find things, but the number of plugins I have installed isn't any kind of issue for me and I am 100% certain that culling them wouldn't help in the slightest.

Keeping a lean rig is just a different form of self-discipline. For me, shoving stuff into a folder doesn't reduce clutter, it merely displaces it.

However, i suppose in the end all I'm really doing is, instead of keeping those unused plugins in a folder on my computer, i'm keeping them on the server of the company i bought them from. Everything I've uninstalled is still just a few clicks away. It's like, i don't need to stock up on six thousand rolls of toilet paper; the store does that, and i just buy what i need when i run out.

But surely you used them at one time or another, so what if you want to revisit an old project? I've got around 300 plugins installed by more than half of them are for backwards-compatibility.

If that old project was worth finishing, I would have finished it. After a time (in my experience, 2-3 weeks), an unfinished project is a failed project, and I do not need backward compatibility with my failings.

Even when I was much more of a digital hoarder, with hundreds of old projects (and their required plugins), after 20 years I can count on one hand the number of times I have successfully revived an old project file into a finished song. Old ideas, sure i can try to cook them again with a completely new approach. I don't need old plugins to revisit a melody or a chord progression; the most basic piano patch will suffice, or even just a spoken/sung audio memo or a pencil and paper. But old, fully-loading project files which sound exactly as they did when they failed? Feels like refusing to flush a shit down the toilet just because I think fondly of the inciting meal. The hope (and in my experience, the result sometimes) is that a fresh approach from scratch doesn't lead to the same failure to launch.

[BONES]

If I rely on gear-novelty (new synths, new presets, new samples, etc) to spark new ideas, then that means I am conditioning my brain to chase gear-purchases as a reward—"feeling uncreative? buy, buy, buy new toys!"

That was definitely a problem 30 years ago when "new gear" meant spending thousands of dollars and, honestly, that is almost certainly why I could never afford to buy a house. But these days I can get as much out of a freebie as I can from anything else and I rarely spend more than $30 on a plugin. When I was spending $150-$200 a day to watch the cricket in Melbourne last week, $30 feels completely trivial, even now that I am only working two days a week and clearing less than US$500. I am barely earning more than the dole or a pension but I still don't see it as a problem.

If that old project was worth finishing, I would have finished it. After a time (in my experience, 2-3 weeks), an unfinished project is a failed project, and I do not need backward compatibility with my failings.

Really? You never get to a point where you have a new plugin that you think will go perfectly with that old song? I am always updating songs with newer/better sounds, years after they were released on an album. I get better and better at this all the time, so something that I considered finished 20 years ago wouldn't make the grade today and, therefore, is a valid target for a freshen up. One day I would love to do an album of updated versions of old songs but I doubt we could get our label to release it.

Even when I was much more of a digital hoarder, with hundreds of old projects (and their required plugins), after 20 years I can count on one hand the number of times I have successfully revived an old project file into a finished song.

There is a song I originally made in 2002 that wasn't quite there and it took until 2020 to get it finished and onto an album. It's this one, in case you're interested. I had submitted it previously in the early days of One Synth Challenge, to demo the power of Junglist when it was first released -

[zerocrossing]

Why isn’t my PM box full of offers to take those annoying software licenses off your hands? Time’s a-wasting. Unless you’re chicken? Are you afraid? Bok bok bok.

[zerocrossing]

It's like, i don't need to stock up on six thousand rolls of toilet paper; the store does that, and i just buy what i need when i run out.

Pro tip: buy the new toilet paper right after you open your last roll. You never know when you’re going to go through an entire roll in a day. #TacoBell.

[jancivil]

I don't collect plugins (although I did install all of this Kilohearts free stuff, some of it looked unusual). I definitely am not the kind of person to have choice paralysis or need to narrow focus down by having a limited palette, so there'll be like two reasons to delete plugins:
1) they're taking up space I need on the drive. Most don't take much space at all so I haven't done this*
2) is like 1) except it's too much screen space/scrolling. CF: the Kilohearts which did get deleted.

(*: til last month. I was under what I deem acceptable empty drive space; and, looking for things to move or get rid of I noticed a size of "VST" (meaning vst2.4) folder in the gigabytes. I deleted all but two things I use that I have no other option (one being Absynth 5) for and one other, I'm forgetting my argument to myself for keeping that one. Then some days later I opened a project that isn't that old, I finished just over one year ago. And a couple or four plugins Cubase couldn't find! So I had to install them anew to get "VST" versions in there...

Sometimes I hear something that bugged me a little bit at the time I finished the thing, and later if everytime I hear it I cringe, I might want to fix that bit because I can. Maybe those of us who come from magnetic tape where an edit means a razor blade and a greasepaint pencil, and live with mistakes committed to for perpetuity think of this differently.

[zerocrossing]

quote from one of my fav music producers - Christoph De Babalon
Screenshot (1536).png

Do not try and delete the plugin. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no plugin. Then you'll see, that it is not the software that's deleted, it is only yourself.

[funky lime]

Really? You never get to a point where you have a new plugin that you think will go perfectly with that old song? I am always updating songs with newer/better sounds, years after they were released on an album. I get better and better at this all the time, so something that I considered finished 20 years ago wouldn't make the grade today and, therefore, is a valid target for a freshen up. One day I would love to do an album of updated versions of old songs but I doubt we could get our label to release it.

I think of how George Lucas went back to touch up the original Star Wars trilogy, adding really jarring CGI, making needless (and quite controversial) changes such as having Greedo shoot first instead of Han, and replacing the cool diegetic funk music in Jabba's Palace with perhaps the most cringe-inducing piece of "music" (and accompanying anachronistic CGI sequence) to ever grace the entire franchise.

Sure, these changes were all technical improvements. But they just did not fit at all... adding random bits of late-90s 3d animation to a 1977 film just did not work, even if it did demonstrate how far the technology and technique had come since then.

Ultimately they went on to just redo those movies entirely anyway, at least in spirit, with the sequel trilogy. Love it or hate it, I strongly prefer that approach, i.e. creating something new that is strongly inspired-by/based-on/"derivative," rather than simply updating parts of the original work. The few older tunes and ideas I've wanted to revisit, I rebuild them from scratch, and in the process, explore new ideas with them through my modern lens or whatever.

[jancivil]

The project I opened that had me reinstall something, I wanted to open at some version that has the MIDI which I didn't save as .mid. To poach, maybe. Probably not but I don't like it being borked completely. I did want to correct one rushed gesture that bugs me still a year later, if it was more or less in the same 'condition'. It isn't, that's a later version that won't open. C'est la vie. I don't "finish" a project that needs more or needs less, I actually know what I mean by finished.

[BONES]

I don't really think about "finished" or not finished, it's more that I know when it's good enough to go on an album. It's more of a "that'll do" than anything. But I know that a year later I won't be happy with it any more. That's just the way it goes.

I think of how George Lucas went back to touch up the original Star Wars trilogy, adding really jarring CGI, making needless (and quite controversial) changes such as having Greedo shoot first instead of Han, and replacing the cool diegetic funk music in Jabba's Palace with perhaps the most cringe-inducing piece of "music" (and accompanying anachronistic CGI sequence) to ever grace the entire franchise.

Really? I watched the remastered Star Wars, the only one of those films I can stomach, and thought it was a great improvement over the original. But then, it's my industry so I tend to notice the technical stuff a lot more than most people. But if he'd really wanted to make them better, he should have completely remade them, hiring someone who can write dialogue and someone else who can direct actors. George Lucas is the biggest problem with all those films.

Sure, these changes were all technical improvements. But they just did not fit at all... adding random bits of late-90s 3d animation to a 1977 film just did not work, even if it did demonstrate how far the technology and technique had come since then.

They were pretty ordinary films to start with, basically just a fairy tale in space, but it shows the difference between a product and art. There are only two people who can decide if an update to a NOVAkILL song makes it better or worse and that's Craig, my bandmate, and me. As John Watts from Fischer Z once said, "our only obligation to our fans is to be good", or words to that effect. We don't want to mollycoddle our audience, we don't want our gigs to be anybody's "safe space". We want to challenge/confront them.

We're lucky, we don't have many fans so nobody notices when we make changes (or when I forget the lyrics and sing the same verse three times). We can do whatever the f**k we like and nobody notices or cares. But they notice when you're shit.

The other side of that coin is that new fans don't know how the old songs used to sound, they only know how they sound now. So if you keep improving them, you're more likely to grow your fanbase. You just have to hope they aren't too disappointed if/when they start looking at your back-catalogue.

Ultimately they went on to just redo those movies entirely anyway

That's called running out of ideas but having a commercial imperative to put something out anyway.

[audiojunkie]

I don't really think about "finished" or not finished, it's more that I know when it's good enough to go on an album. It's more of a "that'll do" than anything. But I know that a year later I won't be happy with it any more. That's just the way it goes.

I think of how George Lucas went back to touch up the original Star Wars trilogy, adding really jarring CGI, making needless (and quite controversial) changes such as having Greedo shoot first instead of Han, and replacing the cool diegetic funk music in Jabba's Palace with perhaps the most cringe-inducing piece of "music" (and accompanying anachronistic CGI sequence) to ever grace the entire franchise.

Really? I watched the remastered Star Wars, the only one of those films I can stomach, and thought it was a great improvement over the original. But then, it's my industry so I tend to notice the technical stuff a lot more than most people. But if he'd really wanted to make them better, he should have completely remade them, hiring someone who can write dialogue and someone else who can direct actors. George Lucas is the biggest problem with all those films.

Sure, these changes were all technical improvements. But they just did not fit at all... adding random bits of late-90s 3d animation to a 1977 film just did not work, even if it did demonstrate how far the technology and technique had come since then.

They were pretty ordinary films to start with, basically just a fairy tale in space, but it shows the difference between a product and art. There are only two people who can decide if an update to a NOVAkILL song makes it better or worse and that's Craig, my bandmate, and me. As John Watts from Fischer Z once said, "our only obligation to our fans is to be good", or words to that effect. We don't want to mollycoddle our audience, we don't want our gigs to be anybody's "safe space". We want to challenge/confront them.

We're lucky, we don't have many fans so nobody notices when we make changes (or when I forget the lyrics and sing the same verse three times). We can do whatever the f**k we like and nobody notices or cares. But they notice when you're shit.

The other side of that coin is that new fans don't know how the old songs used to sound, they only know how they sound now. So if you keep improving them, you're more likely to grow your fanbase. You just have to hope they aren't too disappointed if/when they start looking at your back-catalogue.

Ultimately they went on to just redo those movies entirely anyway

That's called running out of ideas but having a commercial imperative to put something out anyway.

This is absolutely true! I largely got over my stage fright through this. I used to obsessively worry myself sick until my bandmates pointed something out that stuck with me. To paraphrase, they said, don’t worry if you forget the lyrics or play a wrong note or sing off key. The audience won’t even notice most of the time. Instead of freezing up, keep going! Keep singing! Make crap up! Just keep giving the audience a good show. There were times when I forgot the lyrics and just made crap up that didn’t make any sense. Or, I would encourage the audience to sing along. Or I would do something silly to make the audience laugh—I gave them a good show. I had several times where I thought I had done my worst show ever, only to have audience members come up to me later and gush about how great the show was. This convinced me of the truth and did wonders for my confidence!

[havran]

I don't really think about "finished" or not finished, it's more that I know when it's good enough to go on an album. It's more of a "that'll do" than anything. But I know that a year later I won't be happy with it any more. That's just the way it goes.

Makes a lot of sense to me from my days as a young poet (never a "journal poet" btw) -- one is not necessarily putting out "the last word" about any topic, but rather an artifact for contemplation or (one might imagine) even stimulation.