THE BEST PIECE OF GEAR ISN’T YOUR SYNTHS
The first thing you have to determine is your goals. Are you a hobby musician, are you trying to be a DJ, are you trying to put a band together, are you just trying to record your own music?
Where you allocate your budget and time will depend on these questions. It will also depend on what part of the journey you are in. Are you trying to improve your skills on keyboard / mixing? Are you trying to find someone to mix your EP or build a website for you? Etc.
It’s important to determine what you need but also to work within a budget that you think is reasonable. Just because you can pay for it doesn’t mean you should. it doesn’t happen as much with electronic music but in terms of instruments there’s a feeling of needing to deserve the quality of instrument you’re playing, therefore people don’t usually buy instruments much higher than their skill grade. (that doesn’t mean to say you shouldn’t Buy the best instrument you can)
The philosophy of Buying
Considering this is meant to be a minimalist tips list, this will talk about how to buy less… or to get more with less.
I use a notes list in my phone of things I want to buy. Unless I need it urgently I write things in this list and then forget about them. I check back after a few weeks/ a month and if I still want to get it then I will consider it. Somethings stay on the list for years before I justify that the object is really necessary. Sometimes I find ways to get the desired result without buying the object, usually this involves using my current gear in a different way which is usually more creative. This saves money and time.
As a counter to this principle, don’t wait too long to upgrade gear. Some things die, or processes can be done faster with an upgrade – so use this to help yourself save time. One good example for me was upgrading my computer – when I upgraded my almost 10 years old MacBook I became hugely more productive as the computer could process better and faster.
Equally, if you are missing gear that you need, ie. Monitors, make it a priority to buy these over other stuff. Other things like the hottest new plugin etc. isn’t really a priority.
Ongoing costs: subscriptions, repairs etc.
I hate subscriptions and upgrades. But your main DAW is something you usually want to keep well serviced – this doesn’t necessary mean the newest version.
I stayed on ableton 10 for over a year before upgrading to 11 because I didn’t have much reason to upgrade, and my student music lab was still on 10 so I stayed to keep compatibility.
Similarly with the DAW reason, I stayed on 7 then upgrading to 10 and find that suits me fine.
If there are tools that you use regularly make sure you budget to keep these in your library but be strict about them. If it is a tool that you only use occasionally and still don’t find it very useful maybe it’s time to let it go.
Deals and discounts
As much as I hate the idea of one big consumerist day, Black Friday sales are your friend for this. Every year many plugins, DAWs etc go on sale at this time. I often wait until then to buy things. Some sites like pluginsboutique.com offer some good deals. Its often also worth keeping an eye on other sites like Thomann.de or your DAW specific sites for deals. If you work with loops etc, sites like ADSR , LANDR and more also usually offer regular deals.
Other things especially hardware can be bought second hand. Everything except my keyboard in my studio is second hand. I got a nice MOTU 828 off a guy who thought he could use it for karaoke but decided it was too difficult to use, an old mac pro from a video editor who moved companies and my monitors from a DJ who decided he preferred DJing to producing. This saved me thousands. Each county has different sites for this but ebay.com is a great way to gague general prices for second hand gear. My other top fave these days is facebook marketplace – though watch out for scammers.
Keeping with the mentality of mindful consuming, make sure you think about what you really need before you buy it, and if you really need to buy something think of cheaper ways to buy it such as second hand, deals or exchanges.