Quitting

  • Thread starter Thread starter brendandwyer
  • Start date Start date

Have you ever wanted to sell all your gear and quit recording

  • Yes

    Votes: 165 39.1%
  • No

    Votes: 257 60.9%

  • Total voters
    422
Whenever certain people on this board insinuate that I/we are wasting my/our time even bothering because my/our equipment "sucks".

That is until I realise those poeple are assholes. Then I just wish they'd go away...then when that phase wears off after about a minute I realise they aren't worth a second of my consideration whatsoever
 
yeah, at this stage, the two most harmful trains of though are "what gear do i need to get a professional sound" "why doesn't my track sound like platinum selling artist x"
 
With probably the most helpful train of though being quite simply 'Are you happy?' or 'are you enjoying yourself'. I know it doesn't help much on the technical side but if I gave up because I started out using makeshift crap that didn't make me sound like I'd spent millions on it..well...I'd be a bit of a dumbass really...

Personally even if someone does really suck I don't think thats even a good reason to quit. As long as they enjoy themselves. We don't get long on this earth, and no one said we had to be super good at anything.
 
legionserial said:
With probably the most helpful train of though being quite simply 'Are you happy?' or 'are you enjoying yourself'. I know it doesn't help much on the technical side but if I gave up because I started out using makeshift crap that didn't make me sound like I'd spent millions on it..well...I'd be a bit of a dumbass really...

Personally even if someone does really suck I don't think thats even a good reason to quit. As long as they enjoy themselves. We don't get long on this earth, and no one said we had to be super good at anything.

Amen. I completely, utterly agree. :)
 
legionserial said:
Whenever certain people on this board insinuate that I/we are wasting my/our time even bothering because my/our equipment "sucks".

Those people are unflushable turds. A good half of the music of the fifties and sixties was recorded on equipment that doesn't hold a candle to what these people call "suck". It's all about the writing and the performance of songs. People who say it's the equipment typically produce music that's so lifeless that no one outside their fellow upturned pignose doilyphiles will appreciate it.
 
Hmm its funny how things change...No more than few days after my last post and I'm getting all set to quit now...
 
I haven't read any of this thread but I just wanted to drop in and say YES YES AND A THOUSAND TIMES YES!!! Every time I make a recording or 'finish' a mix!!!!! Even though my skills are better now than they ever have been, I remain completely distraught at my inability to get the sounds I am looking for. Recording is kinda fun but mostly a completely frustrating pastime, and I understand it stays that way till you master all the techniques you want to a level you are happy with ... and then it's pretty much boring from there on in.

Don't panic though, the little glimmers of hope will get you through from time to time - and if you ever go and pay someone else to do your recording you'll realise how good you already were, and how difficult it can be to communicate your ideas to someone else anyway. :)

Nik
 
I have.

I think this is a very appropriate thread, and personally, I find it very beneficial to see where my recording peers are, or have been.
I have been dinking around with recording since I was 16 or so, starting with figuring out I could record two discrete track onto a stereo tape recorder (no monitoring though, so it was always interesting to see the end results..kind of a surprise.). I'm 25 now, and have a good amount of gear, and I rent a fun space in the 2nd floor of an old building downtown where I live. I'm happy with my setup, I'm happy with my gear. I'm happy with my abilities, and even my limitations. However, this obsession with music (I literally hear music in my head all the hours that I'm awake...) has been directly involved with me losing two very long term and meaningful relationships. The most recent breakup, after almost five years with the girl, has left me in quite a pit. For some reason now, instead of seeming welcoming and warm, my studio seems daunting and unfriendly. I have no idea of what weird psychology is going on inside my hat-holder, but I just don't want to see it anymore. I'm miserable, and it seems that stupid place actually makes me more miserable instead of offering some sort of relief. That's never happened before, and it's really weird. I don't know what's going on, but I've never doubted my purpose or passion for creating/recording music like this before, and it's feeling more and more like something that doesn't belong...
I don't know what I'm going to do, but like I said at the beginning of this post, I really appreciate the honestly and openness of the previous posts, it's been helpful to read that I'm not the first to feel like this.
Thanks.

Aaron
 
I voted yes because 5 yrs ago my computer crashed and I lost everything I was working on for the past 5 yrs. It was pretty deflating. But I'm glad I didn't sell, cuz I'm back. Bigger and better.
 
brendandwyer said:
I should have also asked who considers themselves "artists" and who consider themselves "engineers" Because i think it would effect the poll results. I'll guess that artists would be more prone to becoming disenchanted with their art, while i would guess engineers are more business like and grind it out because it's sort of their job and all. Just a guess of course

Of course engineers would say "hell no i would never quit"
Im no engineer

As an writing artist i get pretty fucking frustrated, and sometimes when creativity becomes frustrating it spirals downward.

At this point i quit... for maybe a month (just writing, i still play shows and maybe record a bit)

same with recording, if nothing quality is coming out, then i just play shows and write.

if i play bad shows... well then i just play more shows, thats the only constant in music for me. :)
 
Quit? How?

Just a few days ago I was carrying a micro-cassette recorder into a restuarant, just to record myself ordering food! If someone would fucking make a small decent mic that plugs into an 1/8th inch jack, I'd be in heaven.

When I was 14 I found a mixer at Radio Shack that had 4 chanels: you could put it on mono or stereo. On stereo chanel 1 and 3 were left, 2 and 4 were right. I was soooooo excited!!!

When I was in the Army, I used to bring recorders to tape machineguns on line at the firing range--never could find the sweet spot.

Shit man I learned how to play music just so I could record it. I can play God knows how many intruments now. Of course I don't play any of them very well, but who cares?

I just bought a pair of good condenser mics. . . imagine the posibilities!
 
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Today is just exactly one of those days.... it's all sounding like shit and the more I try to fix it the worse it gets....

I'm not ready to sell and bail, but the thought fleetingly passed thru me! My wife ( a charcoal and acrylic media artist) tells me it's all part of the artistic process... which if she's right...which OK we're not even going there, sucks....

I look at it more in the light of: at first the dirty diaper feels warm and comfy... then gets cold, uncomfy, it's time for a change, REALLY unconfortable, and after a few times of this the connection is made between cause and effect and how to avoid this situation in the future

... today, it all stinks and I'm sittin' in it!
 
Quilting? who cares about quilting? Like I'ma go buy a rocking chair, thread, and needle or somethin'...

bah...
 
sadly yes?

in new, im young and going into collge next year. i have already spent quite a few bucks on recording gear and when thigns weren;t going my way i was like, shit, i need my money back. unluckily, i wont get my money back because playing and recording music is all i think about. i want to study recording as an art. so when you are feeling down about that, just crank up some tunes, imagine the science behind it and you might want to keep all your stuff and expand, thats what i do. a smart person once told me, its the person that makes the sound, not just the gear. peace and good luck.
 
I quit every darn day, make a plan for selling it all on ebay, take a couple of hours break and then get caught up in trying it one more time.

I've been doing this for 30 years.

The secret to not burning out....track it right, mix it once, move on, don't listen to it again for at least a week then if it still needs work, make a few small adjustments. If it doesn't come together, retrack it or listen to the competition some more. And to keep it interesting.....buy gear slightly outside your price range.

Art is a puzzle never totally solved, that's what keeps me coming back. Kind of like trying to solve the mysteries of the universe, 3-4 minutes at a time.
 
Jesus, but yes!

Every time I take on a project and then sit back listening to the finished results appalled at what I see as the utter shitness of my work...

...whenever I check out an MP3 from somebody on here who's posted up a "how am I doing?" thread which invites the answer "obviously a lot better than I am"...

...every time I lose a job because my mind's back home in the studio...

...after every terrible gig where the drummer appears to be playing to his own internal band and my Jazzmaster appears to have been sounding like a badly-amplified cheesegrater...

...whenever I realise I'm ploughing a relentlessly indie-rock furrow as a porky middle-aged man to a world which favours technique or youthful good looks...

...after every gig where I'm doing the sound and finish the night confident that more people will remember the 2K feedback that plagued the whole night rather than the band who were playing...

...every time a relationship falls apart because I'm a one-woman man. And my woman is music...

...every time I realise that the vast majority of my life has been spent playing instruments, to the point where my ability currently rates as "almost competent"...

But then somebody says "thanks" and I change my mind...:)
 
phildo...you'd fit right in with our weekly beer-guitar talks.

porky, cheesgrater sounding jazzmaster..hehe
 
COOLCAT said:
phildo...you'd fit right in with our weekly beer-guitar talks.

porky, cheesgrater sounding jazzmaster..hehe
Beer and guitars. Is there anything more perfect?
 
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