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A couple months in my modular journey, I have some thoughts to share on the matter. This won't be a post about the way I use certain gear to make music, but more about the way certain gear helps me get in a good disposition to make music. I can understand how that wouldn't be some people's cup of tea.
A little bit about me before getting into the subject. I am a 30 year old teacher and I have been making music since I was 4. I've gone through a lot of styles, doing classical flute as a child to rock guitar in my teens, to jazz guitar in my 20's and weird synth music today. I am definitely privileged in the fact I have a good job that allows me to afford gear. That being said, the main thing holding me back in music all my life has been perfectionism. I always have a clear idea in my head of what I would like to make, yet the act of practicing to get there paralyses me with anxiety. I have used various coping mechanisms throughout the years, trying to learn new theory or buy new gear to bypass my problems, but in the end I usually gave up for a little while and switched to something new. Once again, I felt competent in the beginning, but once I failed to reach the idea I had in mind, I would get too anxious and take avoid it for a while. This phenomenon doesn't only happen in the context of making music. I used to draw a lot as a child and would face the same problems and writing my master's thesis is a real chore because I can stare blankly at a page as the fear of failure slowly creeps in.
Another thing holding me back was the excuses. I didn't have enough time with work and my social life, so it was comforting to tell myself that of course I wasn't making as much music as I should but I had a good reason. But during the first COVID lockdown, I had all the time in the world ahead of me. A perfect context to finally bring to life all these ideas I had shelved over the years. Yet, once again, there was only silence. The fear of failure had taken all the place and this time I couldn't really blame it on something other than me. To pass the time, I begun watching a lot of videos on youtube. Being a fan of weird guitar pedals, I ended up watching a lot of synth and modular content. One thing that bugs me in life is organizing gear when I play and modular synths seemed like a very tidy way of making music. I decided to take the plunge and sell most of my gear to finance a eurorack system.
It's been a game changer. Suddenly, I wasn't just frozen in front of a screen, a guitar or a synth thinking I would never come up with something. The fear was gone. Somehow, I couldn't care less if the patch sounded like shit, I would just start over again. In a way, it was a very meditating experience, plugging cables for a while, listening as it grew into something and then choosing or not to let it go away. It was a big revelation when I understood that I would produce something beautiful, be the only spectator and it would be ok. I think I've been making more music in the last 5 months then in the last last 10 years. The pressure in that sphere of my life was taken off and I had fun making music again.
I think it all boils down to how different modules need you to abandon the illusion of control. I chose what I patch and how I patch it, but a lot of the results are out of my control. Making generative music allows me to focus on the sounds I hear rather then getting obsessed with theory like I used to.
It's been a great 5-ish months, thank you for coming to my TED talk (jokes aside, thank you for reading).
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