Deepmind was the first synth I returned to the store for a refund - did not care for that workflow at all. At the time it was a compelling feature set for the price, but there are so many more options now.

I hear a lot of good things about Pigments, but it’s a tough sell when Vital does most of the same things for free.

Arturia is doing a sale on their software synths. I’m resisting the temptation to add to my collection, but I figure someone here might be interested.

Sounds annoying indeed. I don’t have any firsthand experience with pedals, but I see Strymon Bigsky recommended a lot.

Edit: Oops, forgot you said you already picked something.

Just in case you aren’t already aware, installing the drivers for your audio interface and making sure you’re using ASIO can make a huge difference for latency. With everything set up right, it’s low enough that I don’t notice any difference between listening to synths directly via their headphone jack vs through my DAW.

If you’re planning on running it through a PC, you can get reverb plugins for cheaper than hardware. Valhalla Supermassive is free, for example. Personally, I use Raum a lot - I got it during a promotion where it was also free, but it’s normally $50 and sometimes goes on sale.

I’ve been hit hard by the GAS. I have too many synths already, and I’m always tempted to buy more. It’s an obsession - every single night I’m looking at synths on my iPad in bed. I spend way more time staring at synths I want than actually playing the synths I own.

Yeah, it’s not good.

Part of the problem is every time I realize I’ve gone overboard, thinking about scaling back and selling synths gets me back into over-analytical comparison shopping mode. I’m trying to figure out what’s the best possible combination of just a few synths to keep, and then I think “hey, this new thing could replace 3 of my other synths.” Except in practice, usually the new thing isn’t as great as I thought, and it becomes more difficult to decide what to keep and what to sell. I don’t want to make that mistake again.

Maybe I’ll sell some things later, but for now the important thing is I have everything I need to make the music I want to make. That’s what I should be spending my time and energy on instead of making databases to compare and rank synthesizers. (Yes, I’ve actually done that.)

I know what you mean about that intense youtuber vibe. I think it’s something that developed gradually over time and you might enjoy his older videos more. I’ve actually mostly stopped watching his new stuff.

I like the idea. I probably won’t have time for it every week, but sometimes.

It seems like a common problem that it’s easy to come up with short ideas/loops but hard to develop them into full-length songs. Suddenly I’m wondering how much the step limits of most sequencers are contributing to that. For instance, every time I sketch out an idea on my SH-4D I’m limited to 64 steps… a short loop that I can’t extend unless I recreate it in a DAW and continue from there.

Even with the MPC Live 2, which can create full length songs, the workflow seems designed for working on one loop at a time in isolation. Now that I think about it, that’s why I don’t get along with clip-based workflows in DAWs either. If I’m dealing in isolated units like that it seems harder to naturally transition and from one part to the next and arrange a coherent song.

I’m curious if anyone has noticed these things making it harder to get past that one first loop. Or maybe I’m just imagining problems that don’t exist.

1. I started improv singing when I was a small child, did school chorus for a several years, then got sick of blending into the group. I wanted to make my own music with the focus on my voice, so I started experimenting with recording and layering things. That was about 20 years ago. I haven’t been at all consistent about it - sometimes I’d go for months without working on music at all. Then there was one year I made a finished song every month and some of it was the best I ever made.

2. I listen to lots of genres, but most often some form of electronic - downtempo, synthpop, modern EDM, etc. I tend to favor music with atmospheric layers and a hint of mystery, but different moods call for different kinds of music. What I make is hard to classify, but definitely still some form of electronic.

3. Artists: Pair of Arrows, Rufus du Sol, Metric, Robyn, Zhu… if I try to describe why I love them I’ll be typing way too long so I’ll just leave this one for now.

4. I learned a lot of synth basics from Sonic State’s reviews - often with detailed demonstrations feature by feature, sometimes with tips on how/why you might use that feature. Some channels for more general music composition and production stuff: James Nathan Jones, Venus Theory, Benn Jordan, Andrew Huang

I’ve got them too, and they’re definitely not up to the quality of other studio headphones I’ve used. Still, I’d use them a lot more if they weren’t just a little bit annoying to turn on and off. Having to hold the power button for different amounts of time for the headband vs the transmitter always throws me off.

I think it would’ve made more sense to start with something all-digital. Instead they decided to invent their own analog oscillator design on top of everything else novel they were trying to do. Maybe it does have something unique and special to offer, but I haven’t found it yet.

It doesn’t have to have some profound message to be “you.” Your taste in what sounds good or not, and the choices you make are still a reflection of your unique personality. It’s also completely normal for it to take time to figure yourself out and decide what it is you want to say to the world. Or, if you just want to have fun and leave it at that, that’s perfectly valid too.

why people even do music these days

For me, I guess it’s about self expression. I can’t convey the deepest parts of who I am in words alone - I need music for that. I want to be seen and appreciated for what makes me unique, and not just be another arbitrary person surviving in society. I may never have much of an audience, but it’s better to feel understood by a few people than none at all.

I want to love Nina (the synth with motorized knobs.) On paper, it’s amazing - a 12 voice analog polysynth, plus a wavetable oscillator and digital effects when I want them. The motorized knobs really are a game-changer for modulation and multiple timbres.

But every SINGLE time I sit down to actually spend time with this synth, something goes wrong and I spend my time writing up a bug report instead of making music. The worst part is I don’t even know if I’ll like the synth when all the bugs are fixed. Even when I make simple, basic analog sounds I don’t really care for the tone. FM using the digital oscillator as a mod source seems broken, but I’m not sure if it’s a bug or just the best they can do with the hardware design they shipped. I know the hardware signal path is why they’re stuck with effects being applied to the final mix instead of per-timbre.

They’ve done some brilliant things with this synth and I want it to succeed, but at the same time I feel like buying one was probably a mistake. Now I’m just hoping they follow through on the promise of open-sourcing it so I can try tinkering with it myself and see what improvements I can make.

I work mostly by improvising until I find something I like, and then refining it from there. It may help to focus on just the chords first - find the next chord that feels “right” after the A section, and then what feels right after that, and so on. Once you have a chord progression, try to figure out a melody that fits on top of it.

Sometimes it helps to have a story or subject in mind - what do the A and B sections represent? I.e. if it’s about triumphing over struggle, the A section might represent the struggle and the B section might represent the triumph. Then you have specific feelings you’re trying to convey with each, to help guide you. The listener might never know what it’s about, but knowing it yourself can help focus your creativity.

When I get stuck, sometimes I go back through old unfinished projects to look for something that feels similar to what I’m working on now, and repurpose those old melodies and chord progressions, usually with some changes to fit the new piece better.

First off, instead of one loop I try to have two main loops/themes/ideas that I alternate between, often called A and B sections. Think of it like the verse and chorus in a pop or rock song - usually different melodies and chord progressions, but they need to feel like one follows logically from the other. I’ll also usually have a “bridge” section - something different that only happens once.

Each time I repeat the A or B section, I try to change it up a bit. One strategy I’m trying lately is to use different synth sounds for each repetition, and then make subtle changes to better fit the new sound. I.e. I might change from short staccato notes to more sustained notes, but following the same general up and down path.

Adding or changing harmonies is another good strategy. For a dramatic shift, change the key from minor to major, or maybe just transpose everything up by a fifth. There are more advanced techniques for reharmonizing that I don’t understand well enough to describe.

I use it as a master effect to improve my final mix. I don’t fully understand how it works, but it basically increases clarity while reducing harshness.

I’m mostly a hardware guy but I do use a few plugins:

• Omnisphere (Spectrasonics)
• Super VHS (Baby Audio)
• Raum (Native Instruments)
• Gulfoss (Soundtheory)