Software Hoarding

[Michael L]

When I buy software faster than I can learn to use it expertly to express a specific musical idea *in that moment* then I know that I am hoarding and making a creative flow impossible

don't buy it then.

Well d’uh, Yoda

but buy, you will.
nothing can you be taught, till you are willing to learn, yes.

My point, you will never see,
Buying, it is not about.
But expertise, ideas!
Feed Your Flow.
$pend time.

[ROTMetro]

I wish that was true but it's not.

Of course it is. I'm not denying they do what they do, just that it's not some vast conspiracy, it's just business. It's no different to a cook (or a company) making their food as delicious as it can possibly be or tobacco companies putting cocaine into cigarettes (which they used to do when cocaine wasn't illegal). And if you think they weren't going just as hard at it before 2012, when Candy Crush was released, you're dreaming. King had developed literally hundreds of games before Candy Crush, their R&D was focused on FB and mobile because they were losing customers to those platforms, I doubt it had much to do with making their games as addictive as possible, they just wanted to compete. Focus groups have been around forever and they are often designed and supervised by psychologists or people working in that field. It's nothing new.

This is different than ever before in history. Companies weaponized their products not A/B tested/optimized, against users with the companies vast access to both hundred of millions of peoples information to the smallest detail along with the ability to constantly automatically adjust the weaponization. These are automated, continuous focus groups to the next level, running continuously and tailored to every person, not general 'do you like our new strawberry coffee pickle ice cream', though like I said even those approaches have been refined/made more efficient as a side effect of the hundreds of thousands of years of research. Again if you think it's still 1980 and it's just up to people to be stronger while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of human years of research into manipulating you are naive. To try and waive away my reasonable and fact based comment as a ridiculous conspiracy theory WHILE at the same time saying 'yeah, companies are doing it' is both logically inconsistent and a cheap shot not a rebuttal of what I said.

[BONES]

It's no more different than everything else. These are not simple times but, by the same token, we are not simple folk any more, either. Companies have to work harder to get one over on us, whereas in the old day sit was easy because people were ignorant and just as stupid as they are today.

[_leras]

Regarding hoarding music software, a while ago I got rid of 80% of my installed plugins and my productivity went up. It was a relief.

How can you do that? I have way too much on the go that removing that many plug ins would break loads of projects.

Are you really diligent about bouncing things down to audio?

My equivalent of this is I've got pretty good at choosing a set of tools for a project and building a drum kit or two. With this decided I also feel I get places faster. (But still have a bit of freedom to add a few things in later).

[sandandpaint]

I wish that was true but it's not.

Of course it is. I'm not denying they do what they do, just that it's not some vast conspiracy, it's just business. It's no different to a cook (or a company) making their food as delicious as it can possibly be or tobacco companies putting cocaine into cigarettes (which they used to do when cocaine wasn't illegal). And if you think they weren't going just as hard at it before 2012, when Candy Crush was released, you're dreaming. King had developed literally hundreds of games before Candy Crush, their R&D was focused on FB and mobile because they were losing customers to those platforms, I doubt it had much to do with making their games as addictive as possible, they just wanted to compete. Focus groups have been around forever and they are often designed and supervised by psychologists or people working in that field. It's nothing new.

This is different than ever before in history. Companies weaponized their products not A/B tested/optimized, against users with the companies vast access to both hundred of millions of peoples information to the smallest detail along with the ability to constantly automatically adjust the weaponization. These are automated, continuous focus groups to the next level, running continuously and tailored to every person, not general 'do you like our new strawberry coffee pickle ice cream', though like I said even those approaches have been refined/made more efficient as a side effect of the hundreds of thousands of years of research. Again if you think it's still 1980 and it's just up to people to be stronger while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of human years of research into manipulating you are naive. To try and waive away my reasonable and fact based comment as a ridiculous conspiracy theory WHILE at the same time saying 'yeah, companies are doing it' is both logically inconsistent and a cheap shot not a rebuttal of what I said.

100% correct ROTMetro. Nothing like this has happened before, the knowledge was not there, nor the mechanisms to deliver the sophisticated manipulation. Adam Curtis has a neat history of advertising in one of his docos that traces the very early start

[pdxindy]

Regarding hoarding music software, a while ago I got rid of 80% of my installed plugins and my productivity went up. It was a relief.

How can you do that? I have way too much on the go that removing that many plug ins would break loads of projects.

Are you really diligent about bouncing things down to audio?

Either bouncing tracks down to audio, or rendering the project and deleting it. I like deleting a project since then it is truly "done". (as in I cannot waste more time tweaking it)

It's the same for me with saving sounds as presets. In lots of projects, I don't save the sounds. I bounce to audio and the sound will never be repeated 100% again.

Embracing impermanence is a beautiful thing!

[jethrobull]

Regarding hoarding music software, a while ago I got rid of 80% of my installed plugins and my productivity went up. It was a relief.

How can you do that? I have way too much on the go that removing that many plug ins would break loads of projects.

Are you really diligent about bouncing things down to audio?

Either bouncing tracks down to audio, or rendering the project and deleting it. I like deleting a project since then it is truly "done". (as in I cannot waste more time tweaking it)

It's the same for me with saving sounds as presets. In lots of projects, I don't save the sounds. I bounce to audio and the sound will never be repeated 100% again.

Embracing impermanence is a beautiful thing!

Good stuff I do exactly the same. All tracks are rendered to wav. The master bus changes a lot tho

[BONES]

Either bouncing tracks down to audio, or rendering the project and deleting it. I like deleting a project since then it is truly "done". (as in I cannot waste more time tweaking it)

That's just crazy! Is what you do so worthless to you than you just get rid of it when it's done? I've still got every project I've ever worked on lying around on backup drives. I can go back to anything I've ever bothered to save and start up on it again at any time. There was a song on our 2020 album that I had started working on in 2004.. It was always missing that little something to get it across the line and I didn't look at it for 10 or 12 years but one day I was a bit bored so I trotted it out again and had it working a treat in an evening or two.

Embracing impermanence is a beautiful thing!

I think it is quite sad. I don't often listen to any of our music once it's done but I always keep the projects around so I can pull them out and work on them, to keep them up to the same standard as everything else, as technology improves and we get better4 at what we do. In 2022 we did two EPs of updated versions of songs from our first two albums. They sound way better than the originals, as you'd expect with another 20 years of experience under our belts, so why would you want to condemn your stuff to sounding only as good as it could at the time?

[mjolnir]

I finally got my collection of synths down to a more manageable size. I still have maybe too many effects, but that's not as difficult for me to handle.
Here's what my instruments list looks like:

This is a rare glimpse into my arsenal of synths...
I'm really happy with this collection.



I still gotta delete some of the duplicates. I have too many u-He formats, for example.
Of course, I could just leave them there too. I'm not yet sure which formats are most reliable.

All of my drums come from freeware samples.
I still need to sort them better. Right now they're all unsorted and with generic names (drum_001, drum_002, etc...)

[whassup]

Regarding hoarding music software, a while ago I got rid of 80% of my installed plugins and my productivity went up. It was a relief.

How can you do that? I have way too much on the go that removing that many plug ins would break loads of projects.

Are you really diligent about bouncing things down to audio?

Either bouncing tracks down to audio, or rendering the project and deleting it. I like deleting a project since then it is truly "done". (as in I cannot waste more time tweaking it)

It's the same for me with saving sounds as presets. In lots of projects, I don't save the sounds. I bounce to audio and the sound will never be repeated 100% again.

Embracing impermanence is a beautiful thing!

Cool way of doing that. This is what you HAD to do decades ago. Because you didn't own a studio with all the millionaires gear.
Today where you can get tons of super awesome software for free or dirt cheap it boils down to rather having a computer that is fast enough to run it all. But even that got so cheap these days.
The chances of having all those tools "within reach" come with new challenges.

I wish that I would have old tracks still available. Not deleted. Not lost. Not deprecated because I lost old plugin and old audio tracks.
So I am thinking about a workflow change of committing to audio tracks and to keep them. Just in case a certain software will not work anymore tommorrow and I want to make a remix or new mix.

[whassup]

It bugged me for years that I still have thousands of presets in synths and FX that I never even checked out once.
Now I think that this is value that I can explore freshly if I want to in the future.

[Michael L]

There are advantages to printing a midi track and then working with the audio — like cpu, latency, alignment, small adjustments in pitch & time,

[pdxindy]

So I am thinking about a workflow change of committing to audio tracks and to keep them. Just in case a certain software will not work anymore tommorrow and I want to make a remix or new mix.

Of course it's different for different people, but I find the whole effort of making everything forever perfectly editable/repeatable a burden that sucks the fun out. Having to keep all plugins/DAWs ever used, old computers to run some of those plugins/DAWs. No thanks.

Bouncing to audio is a relief. It frees one up to stay in the present.

[IvyBirds]

Either bouncing tracks down to audio, or rendering the project and deleting it. I like deleting a project since then it is truly "done". (as in I cannot waste more time tweaking it)

That's just crazy! Is what you do so worthless to you than you just get rid of it when it's done? I've still got every project I've ever worked on lying around on backup drives. I can go back to anything I've ever bothered to save and start up on it again at any time. There was a song on our 2020 album that I had started working on in 2004.. It was always missing that little something to get it across the line and I didn't look at it for 10 or 12 years but one day I was a bit bored so I trotted it out again and had it working a treat in an evening or two.

What is stopping anyone from revisiting something they did in the past if they don't have the entire DAW file, stems, and MIDI? The entire purpose of going back to rework something is to make changes anyway

When it comes to old projects every single tool I was using has been upgraded or swapped out for something else from DAWs, to sequencers, to hardware, Outboard, and plugins

All I need is the audio files or even just notes written on staff paper or chords on a lead sheet

If I started something in 1984, 1994, 2004, 2014, or 2024 and didn't finish it, it was either because I lacked the tools to bring it to a conclusion, the skills to do so, or it just wasn't a good idea in the first place

So in 2025 if I want to revisit those projects I first need to determine if it's a good musical idea or not. If it is then the tools and the skills I have now are always going to be an improvement over what I have then so it's usually easier and produces better results if I take that same musical idea and start over using current tools and skills, rather than rehash the things that caused me to abandon it in the first place

Commercial projects are different of course as you are working on what the client wants, so saving those files is saving a snap shot of what the client wanted even then if they want to revisit something from 5+ years ago it's a really simple conversation to explain how the technology has moved on since you recorded that and how you suggest we start over. You can probably make more money doing that anyway

[audiojunkie]

I finally got my collection of synths down to a more manageable size. I still have maybe too many effects, but that's not as difficult for me to handle.
Here's what my instruments list looks like:

This is a rare glimpse into my arsenal of synths...
I'm really happy with this collection.



I still gotta delete some of the duplicates. I have too many u-He formats, for example.
Of course, I could just leave them there too. I'm not yet sure which formats are most reliable.

All of my drums come from freeware samples.
I still need to sort them better. Right now they're all unsorted and with generic names (drum_001, drum_002, etc...)

Looks good!