De-Studio-ing the Home Office
I am doing a major drawdown of gear in my home office.
I'm getting realistic with myself about what I use and what I have time to learn. Professionally, things have never been busier. DJ'ing is great. I have enough bass gigs just with Buckdancer's Choice, the Dead cover band, and synth live is totally covered with Daphne Falls. (And that rig is the MPC Key 37 and the SP-404MKII.)
I bought the MPC used, cheap, for 500 bucks. I've had it probably about a year, and I'm going deep with the MPC Bible 3. I just like it more every day. I don't think there are any soft synths that sound better than what they do with their plug-ins, and the SP-404 is legendary. I think I may have been the first person in Austin to have the Mark II version, as I borrowed a friend's SX for a really long time (and he wanted it back).
I've been debating with myself whether to sell the Grandmother or the Matriarch, but in reality, the Matriarch's too much for me. So I'm gonna keep the Minitaur and the Grandmother, and my Alpha Juno, and sell the rest of the synths. Sell a couple guitars, sell a bass, sell a bunch of effects, and then see how I feel.
I'm just in a bit of a zone. My shit isowning me, so if it's not working/ @ work, it's gotta go.
That being said, the Gen 2 version of the MPC Key 37 came out last week. They upgraded the guts and kept the unit visually the same, except for changing the color. I think this was the right move. You've gotta respect Akai's commitment to their form factors. The newer models released earlier this year are not for me-they're ugly. If I was to do anything and re-gear, it would be that MPC One Gen 2. I like the blue, but I don't need it. It's a nice to have upgrade, but that's it.
USB-C, again, nice to have, but I can take care of all of that with the SP-404, and linking these two together is amazing.
But kind of what this has brought up with me is that every video you watch on the new stuff is basically sponsored content. Any reviews are sponsored content. The Internet and YouTube have really gone from a helpful place to weeding through pages of paid-for advocates, and these guys who say that no money changed hands or whatever, but also in some cases are doing videos for MPC. It's just ridiculous. And then if you watch those, the ads start coming out on your socials.
So one of the great things about de-gearing for me, and a kind of huge side benefit, is that I can't watch any of it. I can't be on Instagram or Facebook, because it's literally 80% ads at this point. And it's ridiculous.
I think the best way to review something nowadays is to go read the manuals, download them, and see what's going on.
Again, to Akai's benefit, the old stuff works with the new software just fine. It's a little slower, but my rig needs to be optimized for the stage. So it's going to be low CPU anyway. I'll also be bouncing everything to the SP just in case. So the rig, in a way, is its own backup, which is crazy.
All of this is to say that I think if I have the stress removed of having to learn the stuff that I'm not using, there will be a musical benefit. I'm so lucky in that I have a lot to do, and barely enough time to do it. I'm in this really focused zone of kind of making my music count, making my music time count.
And if anything, I'd say I need more farting-around time, which feels to me like the opposite of the world right now. But I think I'll get it back due to not shopping. And you can call it research. You can call it checking it out. You can call it whatever you want, but when you're on the Internet, it's basically shopping if we're being honest with ourselves.
So we'll see what the tightening does.
Crossing my fingers.