Anyone have the feeling that your best productions ever was made with minimal gear?

[excuse me please]

Basically I only listen to how something sounds as a whole. So I can have an interesting idea, however when I am mixing I can hear a better sound appearing at some point. The lucky coincedences. Which usually leads to a compromise. The context changes completely. I drop the original idea. Then again, I could work on another track and work out the original idea in another context at some point.

[NiElsir]

I always found that having little resources meant that or even, demanded that you knew how to use what you had extremely well - to the level where you know little tweaks, nuances, and "Advanced" tips you could probably add to the user manual if asked.
I think that being limited extremely forces you down a route that you may not usually think of, or you end up with accidental results.
The process, likely having been complicated and hard to replicate drives you to finish up the work as fast as you can because you can't save it or reproduce it - so you end up with unique work that is finished work. I am sure we all have lots of potentially fantastic pieces of music sat on hard drives 70% completed for years gone and potentially forever due to having endless options and no issues saving the project and recalling "later".

[GaryG]

I've certainly a couple of old tracks (90s) that are just sci pro-one and boss drum machine played into a fostex 4track that have more going on than my modern attempts at the same genre (minimal ambient techno i guess). Think mainly due to the fact they were played, recorded and that was it. If they sucked you deleted them, little room to endlessly revisit them.

[jonalyn]

oh yes, i have some of the best Vsti in term of synth, but in the end, fabfilter one is the only one left on every track.
then in term of fx, i have a huge choice, but i always go to Valhalla, Tsar and Voxengo...

[Passing Bye]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO17-t__kLo

[fese]

No. I started with a Tascam Portastudio 01, one microphone, a guitar and (later) an Alesis Microverb. The results were horrible. Which was mostly related to my lack of talent. Nowadays, I at least have the possibility to mask my lack of talent with technology

[Scotty]

No. My best productions have been realized with a lot of gear, layered tracks, overdubs etc. My best music was composed simply on my instruments that I could play from beginning to end. Even simple stripped down music that you hear on the radio often has a deceptively involved production that you can't easily achieve with a couple of pieces of gear. But the best songs? a simple phone recorder, a guitar and pad of paper will get you there. It takes so much work to bring something up to professional production levels I want to have faith that I have a song that is going to be worth the effort.To get the song, I go to another room and grab my guitar or piano and work it until I have a solid idea worth the hours I am going to spend to make it sound like a professional bit of work in the studio.

[Scotty]

double post. Not sure why but it happened again.

[Scotty]

No. My best productions have been realized with a lot of gear, layered tracks, overdubs etc. My best music was composed simply on my instruments that I could play from beginning to end. Even simple stripped down music that you hear on the radio often has a deceptively involved production that you can't easily achieve with a couple of pieces of gear. But the best songs? a simple phone recorder, a guitar and pad of paper will get you there. It takes so much work to bring something up to professional production levels I want to have faith that I have a song that is going to be worth the effort.To get the song, I go to another room and grab my guitar or piano and work it until I have a solid idea with good structure that may be worth the hours I am going to spend to make it sound like a professional bit of work in the studio.

[jancivil]

"I am sure we all have lots of potentially fantastic pieces of music sat on hard drives 70% completed for years gone"
in fact I finish what I start. I've had such high inspiration at times there was plenty overflow, but things can be simply dropped, I don't run out of ideas. Sorry, there is no "70% completed" here.

I can make something happen in real time on one instrument or not even an instrument, the whole argument for having reduced capability is lost on me. Not sure what I did before working in a modern DAW should be considered "productions" anyway, certainly 4-track cassette projects are not *my* best production, and those are long lost anyway. I sure had fun, but there is literally no advantage in that situation beyond having that Walkman Pro to grab field recordings, and there's better tech for that anyway.
I do have unfinished projects from recording studio efforts, where there wasn't the money to finish, rough mixes, maybe even the original multitrack someone has in a basement somewhere that would need baking to recover. Probably my entire setup cost about what that one record will have to mix properly.

I thought KVR functioned in favor of buying stuff, what is this subversion?

[codec_spurt]

//

[BONES]

I'll take a different tack here. I had been at this game for more than 10 years before I ever produced a song I was happy with, much less proud of. I wrote a lot of songs I was really proud of in my first few years of getting serious about it but it took a very long time for the technology to evolve to a point where I could be happy with the recorded result.

Some of that technology was mine but it also applied to studios, in that the kinds of studios I could afford in 1985 weren't really up to the task of what I was wanting to do. By 1995 an ADAT equipped studio with a good quality desk and plenty of effects units was in my price range - $500 a day, with engineer - so I could afford to finally produce songs to the standard I had been striving for.

From there things kind of took off. The technology got better in leaps and bounds and by the turn of the Century I was able to do "studio quality" work at home with the hardware I owned, taking as much time as I needed to get it right. Then we moved to software and produced our first NOVAkILL album in 2003, completely ITB and mostly using Orion's own instruments and effects. By our standards that was a complex production but compared to what we used on our last (5th) album, it was positively bare-bones. Still, even that last effort is still very simple when I look at the convoluted shit I see in most YouTube videos, so it's all relative.

However, in the last year or so I have gone back to a far more stripped-down approach. I still have over 300 VST/VSTi installed, I just try not to use any more than is absolutely essential. I avoid using effects unless it's absolutely necessary, preferring to tweak an instrument to make it fit in a mix, as well as relying on on-board effects for things like delay and reverb. Working like this has brought an amazing clarity to my mixes without compromising the intensity of our sound. It's been a true revelation for me and I am extremely keen to see how it goes when we start working on our next album, later this year.

I'd be really keen to formalise that approach and get rid of 90% of my plugins. Unfortunately, my bandmate loves using every stupid plugin in creation, which forces me to keep it all installed. Of course, it doesn't stop me from stripping all the cruft out of his mixes so I can (and will) apply my new regime, I just need to keep all the krap around so I can hear what he's getting at when he sends me something to work on. (It seems the polite thing to do.)

[dfraze]

Usually limitations encourage creativity

But motivation is also important

A motivated person can create an awesome song with just what's available around at the time

[jancivil]

to be clear, I don't want to be dismissive, I just have quite different predilections

limited extremely forces you down a route that you may not usually think of, or you end up with accidental results.

with you so far, albeit I don't like being forced usually. but I design certain things to create error or surprise.

The process, likely having been complicated and hard to replicate drives you to finish up the work as fast as you can because you can't save it or reproduce it - so you end up with unique work that is finished work. I am sure we all have lots of potentially fantastic pieces of music sat on hard drives 70% completed for years gone and potentially forever due to having endless options and no issues saving the project and recalling "later".

I'm sure this is true, and useful. The second sentence asserts choice paralysis, though, which isn't me.

[BONES]

I actually have no half-finished songs lying around anywhere. I had one thing I had started in 2004 that I finally finished in 2018. It's the last song on our most recent album and it leaves me with a clean slate. I used to have a folder full of "ideas" but they were all terrible ideas so I deleted the whole folder a few years ago. I will either turn an idea into a song within a few days or abandon it altogether and move on to something else/better.