TWO MORATORIA
The title of this post sounds like the beginning of a joke : “Two moratoria walked into a bar…” Which in turn reminds me of the hilarious particle physics joke “Two neutrinos walked through a bar.” Lol.
Anyway, a moratorium is the temporary secessation of something, as I’m sure you know. In my case, I have two running for 2024. Two addictions capped. Two financial sinkholes filled in. Two avenues of depressive buying curtailed.
The first is books. Actually I started my non-buying of tomes in April last year, so I’m already nearly a year in. Books are a good thing, but I have a tendency to over-buy, and although there are many more worse addictions to have, I thought I needed to take a break and actually read the large stock of books I have lying around.
I get through about 40 books a year, and I need another 32 for 2024. I think I’ve just got enough, even though it may force me to read things I’ve been avoiding, or even reread a couple more things. And that’s probably for the good!
Can I hold out? Who knows, but I’m slightly concerned that at the end of it I’m just going to go out on a massive book splurge, but we’ll see.
The other moratorium is for music production software. I use Apple’s Logic Pro to make my music, but there is a massive market for third-party plugins, usually effects, which you can open within Logic to process your music. At this point I have everything I need, but the temptation to keep buying, keep collecting is quite overwhelming. Basically, in music production you only need to use a few types of effects : EQ (boosting or cutting high, mid or low frequencies), compression (reducing the dynamic range of the sound), distortion, modulation (chorus or tremelo type effects), reverb and delay (echo). Then there are instruments, usually synthesisers, often emulations of vintage gear.
To illustrate clearly why I’m not buying any more for 2024, let me show you how many of each of the above types of software I’ve accumulated:
EQ - 24
Compressor - 37
Distortion - 11
Modulation - 18
Reverb - 16
Delay - 12
Synthesisors - 88
And then there a ton of other types of processors, probably as many as 50.
Do I really need 37 different compressors, a tool which simply makes the quieter parts of a sound louder, and the louder parts quieter? The gear fetishists will say, yes, of course, because each compressor imparts a certain characteristic sound to your music, but in reality, no real people can actually hear the difference. But the URGE TO COLLECT is incredibly strong!
At least books are tangible things that you can actually pick up and touch. When you buy music production software, it’s just a bunch of 0s and 1s in the shape of code - nothing physical whatsover.
OK, I will stay strong. I will endure. These twin sirens will not move me from my stoic course.
For now….