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.

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.)

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

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'm glad someone (@ChappIO@waveform.social ?) found a way to automate this. I forgot last week and probably would have forgotten again.

I'd start by reading the manual and experimenting with things as you go. When you read about the oscillator parameters, try them out and listen to what happens. If you stumble upon something interesting, save it, and then experiment with other changes. See if it sounds better with chorus, reverb, maybe some additional modulation, etc.

I learned mostly from experimentation and youtube videos. A lot of synth reviews include tips for interesting things you can do on that synth, and Ricky Tinez in particular has a lot of videos about the Peak.

Looping isn't necessarily the only answer. I really liked Dune 2's approach - basically shuffling through a pool of chill music when nothing much is happening, and then interrupting with one of a few "attack" tracks when combat starts. I think it kinda depends on how long levels/missions are - one looped track will eventually get old no matter how careful you are to avoid distracting/annoying parts.

Maybe I should call this a "Weekly" discussion instead of a specific day of the week. It always felt odd to me to post in the "Friday hangout" after Friday, but I know some people did.

I'm curious about your thoughts on the SH-4D. Guitar Center talked me into buying one because they didn't have it on display and "you can just try it at home and return it if you don't like it", but with the end of the return window coming up I'm struggling to make a decision.

I've gotten some really satisfying sounds out of it, but it's disappointing that some of the oscillator models don't let you modulate most of the parameters, and the list of samples in the PCM model is surprisingly short. Those aren't necessarily dealbreakers, but I guess I'm still trying to figure out if it's really adding enough that isn't covered by my other synths.

What barrier to entry? I followed the link from Reddit, filled in a very simple sign up form, and here I am.

I already did a long-winded post talking about all my synths so I'll just stick to a list here: Nord Wave 2, Nord Lead 4, Nina, Prophet 12, Peak, Modwave, SH-4D, and Prologue.

I won't go into a retrospective on what I started with because I've sold all the early stuff, and a lot more since. It's been a long road to figuring out what I actually want and need in a synth.

Some other gear I use:

• LUMI Keys - Not the greatest build quality, but it's so convenient to have an MPE controller I can just put wherever I need and use wirelessly.
• Zoom Livetrak L-8 - I regret not going for a bigger model, but it does the job well as a mixer / audio interface that lets you record each track separately in a DAW (or directly to an SD card.) Also convenient to have multiple submixes so I can switch between hearing just my DAW or hearing my synths directly when the DAW isn't running.
• Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro - The best headphones I've used so far.
• Tourbox - Not specifically music gear, but it's a real game-changer if you use multiple DAWs and struggle to remember which keyboard shortcuts to use for which. Now I have a consistent set of controls no matter what software I'm using.