Hey, gear people, I’m creatively blocked and looking to hear how people deal with their own versions of whatever is happening to me right now.

I started making music as a teen with a Sound Blaster and FastTracker2, on a 66mHz computer convention-bought generic PC, in a tiny room of my parents’ basement. Today, I have some decent equipment (stuff that would’ve blown the mind of teenager me), and I have a [slightly larger] room dedicated to music & computing, in my own house, and plenty of time (subsisting on disability), so I should be fine to make music…

… but I’m seriously struggling to do so. I’m not sure if it’s entirely depression. I’m definitely not as interested in sounds as I used to be, and I’ve got a serious issue with life conditioning me to feel that effort has no reward. I regularly exercise and eat well. The sleep disorder I cannot solve, nor the PTSD. These are things I’m aware of and actively, seriously trying to conscientiously work around / overcome.

I feel like there are legitimate physical/ergonomic obstructions to creativity in general. A couple specific examples in my case are: being near-sighted and frequently physically uncomfortable. I hate reaching over/toward/under stuff, but there seems to be no way out of that, resulting in leaning & twisting to operate stuff.

I hear neighbor and street noise near constantly and despise it. Absolutely HATE it (people with intentionally loud vehicles are a-holes). I also hate a cluttered/busy/cramped workspace. Even just the process of startup is a major speed bump for me, and, according to many articles giving advice about such things, many other people.

That said, it might be that my setup doesn’t accommodate (or I’m not chasing) the thing(s) that would fuel my interest or meet my personal musical needs. So I attempted to change that: I just got some analog semi-modular stuff to experiment with, because all electronic music gear I’ve had in my life has been abstracted behind screens and full of menu-diving. I wanted hands-on, tactile immediacy… and there’s where the physical arrangement of objects just broke me: there’s no room for everything to have a permanent home.

I’m currently on my third effort to rearrange things as I type this. It’s not going anywhere. It’s starting to feel like those puzzles where you have to slide tiles around to reveal a picture, only it’s a trick and there is NO solution to reveal the final image. Moving one thing obstructs another, etc. I just know that it looks fine to someone who isn’t me, though 😅

(The analog stuff I bought is interesting, I’m learning, and I want to explore it more, but the physical space and desk clutter is maddening)

I’ve considered boxing up and even selling some stuff, but I hate eBay (been screwed by them as a seller), and I feel like I’d regret getting rid of something because of its potential esoteric use... and (sheepishly) I’m kinda sentimental about some of this crap 😅

My room is too small for an optimal arrangement of the mismatched desks & equipment, and I’m not the type to build furniture, synth stands, etc. (no skill or tools for that), but I know some people don’t have any of the stuff I do have (though they may want it) and they’re still playing and enjoying themselves.

I’ve seen the “post your setup” threads: Some people have amazing professional studios ( something I can never have), and some people seem to be just fine with setups that look like unpleasantly shared/cramped spaces of migraine fuel and inevitable neck/back injury. Maybe their passion overcomes… mine seems not to. I’m not willing to accept that I have none, though; I’m still constantly attracted to music and gear. Maybe it’s a habit? It’s the only hobby I keep pushing at while others fade or fail to amount to any sense of intrinsic value (I still spend money on music, but not photography).

Again: I acknowledge an element of depression to this creative block, but I keep feeling PHYSICALLY blocked. Is that an illusion? A symptom of something else?

What I’m looking for: If you’ve also struggled with this (especially if you’ve resolved it), please SHARE 🙂 How did you approach it? Did you find your solution? Specific equipment, arrangement/workflow, something about your mindset and approach to music-making, life/social issues, health…? Was it a sudden realization brought on by something or through someone else?

I’m sure others have experienced similar scenarios. Maybe hearing about each others’ experiences can catalyze new ways of thinking, if not present specific tactics or tools I’ve not considered.

I realize this could all be depression and a failure to take advantage of what I have. In my state of poverty and disability (in a house I hate), I realize I’m fortunate in some ways. So many people are so much worse off than I am; it’s distressing and disturbing… but understanding this doesn’t change my actual experience…

…which then piles guilt on top of all else. So if you’re inclined to reply with “stop being a lazy self-entitled brat”, please abstain; I guarantee you I’m already scolding myself.

I don’t have a social group of musical people to chat with, so I’m here. This is my second attempt to write a post like this. I abandoned the first, because I scolded myself about it. But, I’m still struggling and looking for human interaction about this stuff. Normally this is the kind of stuff I’d share on KVR, but I abandoned that forum due to their policy of protecting a specific troll I got sick of. Haven’t been there in years. Not sure what to expect here 😐

Sorry for the lengthy post.

one of simplest things you can probably do, is find the bottom part of an office chair, you don’t need the actual seat, so any discarded chair with a ripped seat would be fine. so you will see that there is a plate with holes which attached any bolts to the seat. now you just need a large enough wooden chopping board to attach where the seat would have attached. you need to drill holes about 7mm wide. then get some of those receiving sockets which they often use on speakers in guitar cabinets. they are called T.Nuts and they are generally an M6 thread type. which is 6mm. now as you tighten up the M6 bolt into the T-Nut and through the holes, the T Nut will pull itself into the wooden chopping board.

what you have then is a platform which is on wheels, and a wooden block which you can attach more things to. in fact you can pre drill it with many more holes and use many more T Nuts which can be placed in either direction. the main tool you would need for this is either a hand drill or an electric drill which has a chuck which can take up to say a 10mm drill bit. an fairly inexpensive electric battery powered drill should be sufficient. preferably one with good control over various speeds down a low speed setting. if you want a way to have some way to capture all the mess, the simplest way is to find an old suitcase, and detach the lid. use that as a place to do the drilling and maybe use a couple of 1inch by 1inch wooden blocks to mount the wood you will be drilling through, so that you don’t picture through the suitcase lid.

here's an example of where I got on one of my ergonomic solutions with this technique. the chopping board is right under the bottom of the Roland MV8000. in this case, I then use the sides of the MV to mount Rails which I then mount everything else from. it amounts to the most efficient use of materials which in turn, translates to the least amount of work, for the maximum amount of ergonomic solution.

Hey thanks! That’s a smart idea.

I do happen to have a desk chair that has a fine base but is terribly uncomfortable to sit on for longer than a couple minutes. I’ll have to keep this idea in mind if I ever decide to get rid of the chair.

I’ve had eyes on (but haven’t been willing to spend money on) the mobile stand for the Roland VG99, which is one of the pieces of gear I use infrequently enough (my hypermobile fingers make guitar horrible for me, so I’m not really a player despite having one) that it would be nice to be able to move it out of the way when not in use…

…though, I’m not sure where it could be pushed out of the way (also with cables attached) in this small room, and not get in the way of other things.

My studio space is a 3rd-floor rear room that’s also a pass-through to the front room, so it must stay divided in the middle to allow access to the front room. This room is the preferred shape (not a box), and relatively less noisy compared to the front room, otherwise I’d switch rooms (also, I want my girlfriend to have the front room mostly for her use because it has better lighting and a better view out the front window).

sure. I understand these various systems can be complicated ergonomic problems to solve for a variety of reasons. there's a couple of things which might universally hold true imo.

one is, that generally trying to connect anything to a wall, might generally turn out to be a bad idea. on the other hand if you ever want or need to drill anything into a wall, then the wall would have to be strong. so if it is strong, you may be able to drill in a strong bolt in socket or two so that you could use those sockets as a way to make what you bolt into it, modular. e.g. so that you can change what ever bracketing you use without having a major headache.

for anything like that, you want to spend on a really good quality masonry drill bit. you might not think that would matter, but it absolutely does matter. anyhow, if you do not own your property, you could fill a well made hole, easier than the mess a poor quality drill bit would have made. if you get my drift. a sufficient electric drill can usually be found even in certain supermarkets in the UK these days. the quality of them all now, are all very similar. they are handy to have for various reasons these days and should not even be expensive. it's the quality of the drill bits which are the most important.

if you ever did use the bottom of an office chair then, if you ever needed to connect a bundle of cables to the lower part of an office chair, the way that I do it is to get an exhaust bracket and strap it to the gas lift pole. then you can figure out from there how to secure a bale bundle.

here's what I would do about the "studio setup" part. Get some graph paper and glue it to some card stock so that it has some rigidity. Now pick a scale - like one box on the graph paper = 4 inches or something like that.

Make 'maps' - appropriately sized representations of your room, all the furniture and pieces of gear that you have. Cut them out and start experimenting with where everything might be able to go and be arranged. Label each piece: "computer", "mixer". Color-coding can be helpful. I actually drew little black keys and white keys on the "keyboard". Don't forget to represent yourself or your chair in there somewhere.

You can try out many different ergonomic ideas, and because you don't need to physically drag furniture and gear around, you may come up with things you normally wouldn't think of. Any arrangement you come up with that seems appealing to you, or even has 'potential', take a photo of the layout with your phone.

I have built 3 studios in my life, and helped or advised in the building of 3 or 4 others. I did this 'map' thing each time. When I was in college, my roommate and I made a map and came up with an arrangement of the dorm furniture that was a little "weird" but it worked. It gave such a superior ergonomic (vs what the college had set up) that other students started copying our idea.


As for a lot of the other stuff, that sounds like you require actual medical intervention. It's easy for someone to say "oh just ignore that traffic" etc but I am sure if you could ignore it, you already would. Something deeper is letting that get to you. I am no expert but unless you live in "Borneo", there are almost certainly resources available to you. There are even online things.

Sleep disorder is something I can speak to, as I also have a sleep disorder. You need sleep. Your body needs it, your brain needs it. Lack of good sleep could possibly account for everything else: PTSD, depression, noise sensitivity etc etc

I have sleep apnea which is where I stop breathing in my sleep, 'wake up' for a split second, resume breathing and repeat 20 -30 times an hour. I don't remember waking up, but it stops me from ever getting into the very necessary deep sleep stages. I got a CPAP machine, and IMO it saved my life. I always thought apnea was an "old person" disease (and I am old) but I learned a cousin of mine got it at age 28, so I wouldn't rule it out.

I got tested in a lab, but there is often a long wait. You can go for a home test. Actually your girlfriend could just watch you sleep and see if you are gasping.


while waiting for a prescription for the machine, I also did everything else I could to improve my sleep. Blackout curtains or blindfold. Blue blocker glasses for the late night computing, backing off on the caffeine etc. These might not get at the root cause of any sleep disorder, but they can still help to make sure the sleep you do get is actually restful.

I also like the pink noise thing to screen out traffic and so on. There are YouTube videos that have 11 hours of the sound of rain or ocean waves or a waterfall, with no ads. This steady-state noise smooths out the horn honks, sirens and other sounds from your environment that might disturb you. You should definitely try it.

Another practical suggestion, which admittedly does not get at root causes either, but could be helpful both for recording and for peace of mind is to soundproof your windows. I built plexiglass inserts that allow the light in during the day, but cut the sound from outside in half. I can put them in when needed and pop them out if I want to open the window. They are just built to the right size to fit. If your windows are not in a 'recess' then maybe you could hang the plexiglass panel 'over' them on a French cleat.

I often record musicians in my home studio and my house is in a town. It's not very built up, but still there are cars with subwoofers, fire engines, motorcycles, garbage trucks. And I am on the ground floor.

Thanks for sharing 👍🏽

Sleep: I’ve had sleep studies done. I don’t have sleep apnea but I do have poor quality sleep (very little deep sleep). There was noted brain activity raising me up out of deep sleep on the charts, but it’s “unknown etiological origin”. The end result was “yeah, you have a sleep disorder, but we don’t know why, and it’s not really treatable unless you want to regularly use, and can legally get, GHB to increase deep sleep. No, this isn’t common and nobody is really looking into it.” I was legally allowed to be prescribed a formulation of GHB called sodium oxybate for a year, until I ended up on disability and welfare won’t cover off-label use (you have to be diagnosed with narcolepsy to be prescribed it, and I can’t be diagnosed with that because my sleep latency time on the napping test is infinity; docs would have to lie).

Anyway, drugs aren’t for me. Every single chemical modification I’ve ever attempted has backfired in multiple ways: Little positive impact, EVERY adverse effect known and “unknown”, physiological addiction (getting off an SSRI & a benzodiazepine was a 20-month nightmare), paradoxical effects…

I built, with help from a prior poly relationship, layered drywall plugs that are jammed into my bedroom window wells (it is lucky that they’re recessed otherwise this wouldn’t have been possible). My girlfriend hates this because she feels like my bedroom is “a tomb”, so I bought NanoLeaf bulbs to turn on in the mornings. It’s not enough for her 😕 but it actually helps regulate me (my body will NOT align to any sleep cycle, so I’m best trying to match my girlfriend’s… when she’s here, which is rare).

Consequently, in summers, the third floor where my studio is, there’s a window AC that is directed down the steps toward the bedroom with a dam of hung sheets and poster board because the bedroom can’t have an AC. The noise of window AC is horrible anyway, so I’m glad to not have them in the room where I sleep. In summers, I mostly play games with headphones instead of trying to work on music 😐

If it was only the windows as a source for noise, I’d be half as bad off as I am, but it’s a row house built in 1900, without any consideration for how well rigid materials conduct sounds. I hear almost everything my neighbors do and say. This is why I’ve stuck with the third floor for studio stuff; it’s as far away from everyone as I can get (I’d prefer miles, but 🤷🏽‍♂️).

I’m not a fan of noise generators. I find I have to play music more often than I want (I love music but I need to rest my ears and brain sometimes!!) to distract from other people’s sounds. At best, I just hear through noise generators. At worst, they irritate me and agitate my tinnitus. In fact, this is what the window AC units do, even when it’s just the fan and not the compressor. It makes me feel crazy after a while of being exposed to it. I want quiet, not more sound on top of other sounds. This is really my biggest sensory issue and there’s nothing to do but leave…

What I really need is to be relocated, but there’s no social service to accomplish that (if I were eligible for government housing -I’m in the USA, BTW- I would be worse off in such housing than I am in my own house, because they build/use pretty horrible structures for government housing). I have a desperate and unlikely dream of my GF moving in, the two of us pooling resources, selling my row house, and buying a detached house in a quieter region… but this is incredibly unlikely with the insanity of real estate pricing, job availability, and her … uh… preferences and difficulty with being rooted anywhere.

Planning out an arrangement of the studio space sounds smart. I don’t think I have the necessary trustworthy math skills to measure everything consistently correctly (dyscalculia & mild dyslexia has dogged me all my life). I appreciate the practicality of it. What was your college dorm solution?

Thanks again for your ideas and contributions 🙂👍🏽

I definitely don’t want to put anything into the walls. They’re brittle and messy (a mix of plaster on brick firewall, plaster on lath, drywall over brick, drywall over plaster over…). I watched the contractors do their crappy work on a county-sponsored rehab of this place years ago and it’s a mess.

My dad and I DID put railings in, though (something the rehab contractor missed, despite it being required by code), into plaster on brick firewalls. The masonry drill bit was an absolute must. My two main stairwells now have decent and secure railings (unlike the crap here when I moved in, one of which came with me all the way down the third floor stairs one day after I slipped at the top on a poorly carpeted landing, and luckily didn’t get seriously injured riding my ass down the stairs to crash into the door at the bottom!!).

well I guess if the wall is the same as the stairs, and you fixed up a railing on the stairs, then you probably have a very good chance of also getting a bunch of very secure fixing points on the wall. and if it's your wall etc.

but generally I try to shy away from the idea of having to fix anything to anything if I can figure out how to avoid it. especially a wall, because any wall is itself a fixture, so it will never move. which means anything fixed to it, relies on the wall for it's own fixture.

I kinda prefer leveraging mobility and modularity, so my solutions usually have wheels on them. my systems aren't really against a wall though. I keep trying to come up with some extremely simple solution which I could build in a short period of time. and which could also be deconstructed and reconstructed in a similar short period of time. using bog standard available everyday unspecialized equipment. but for an against the wall type of desk type form factor, it's not easy to arrive at a good solution. I have a few plans but am still not sufficiently satisfied one is especially a winning design.

I don’t have anything actually against the music studio wall. I need to get behind the racks / desks to handle cabling, so there’s a very narrow space behind them. It’s very annoying and marginally risky to get back there. It’s like walking a ledge to get around the end of the two desks, though I wouldn’t fall off a building if I trip; I’ll just smash my face or other sensitive parts into the backs of equipment, probably breaking something in the process. Even if I don’t fall, I might trample cables or tear my body open on sharp corners (the desk on the accessible end has an angled riser, meant for studio monitors to point inward, and the corner of the one drags across my chest while I’m squeezing in there, which is only possible because my back is toward a door-less closet I can barely make use of). I can barely bend over to look at stuff or get on the floor back there unless I’m behind the main desk, which is sort of across the room’s corner (much easier to move at that point; large enough a space to invite ideas on sticking a small table back there to push my mixer and routing rack behind the iMac, because that stuff is mostly a “set once per session and forget” bunch of gear… but the reality is that I have no such table and one wouldn’t fit there and still allow me to crawl around to see the backs of my main desk’s racks, which are caged in by metal sheeting with small holes in it, making the racks nearly inaccessible (avoid the “Studio RTA Producer Station”!! I see it’s still on the market and more expensive than it used to be. Total trash, and I removed the top pieces, but it’s what I have to work with).

The opposite wall, normally to my back, across the walk-though space, has a Home Depot countertop on top of two filing cabinets, upon which is a shelving system that poorly accommodates my classic computer setup. I’ve got a couple wires strung up overhead between the two so I can send audio from the classic computers to the iMac, and send MIDI from the iMac to the classic computers. That wall is a half-wall over the stairwell, with a set of wooden rungs instead of more wall, around abdomen level. This allowed me to hang a carpet for reflection dampening and tie up scrap telephone wire to suspend the audio, MIDI, and Ethernet wires from one side of the room to the other. This line also acts as a curtain hanger for sheets that act as an air dam to direct AC down the stairs to my bedroom in summers.

It’s all quite loony but it sort of works around some problems…

it’s amazingly easy to end up with ergonomic problems, no two ways about it. I’ve mentioned before that at this point, my primary interest is not so much in equipment, it’s much more in ergonomics. I reason that, if you have 30 pieces of equipment which are tedious to use, you are very likely going to not want to use them. not because there’s anything wrong with your equipment choices, but more everything wrong to do with your ergonomics.

I tend to make sure that I can sit in one chair for very long periods of time, and not have a problem getting to anything. I just maybe move the chair one foot this way or that way and I can get here or there and be pretty much as comfortable in each position. it’s all easier said than done though, because I won’t use anything which significantly interferes with my ergonomics.

so it’s one of the problems with a desk against a wall design, and it’s exactly why I insist on having wheels and making sure it is fairly easy to move that desk on those wheels. because I know that if I don’t do that, I am [ ] this far away from an ergonomic nightmare. I’m sufficiently sure that in order to future proof against getting turned off, you have to start putting ergonomics first, and everything else second and third.

maybe move to a state where THC is legal....

yes recessed - very similar to my windows but I made my inserts out of plexiglass rather than drywall.

I got rid of my window ACs and use the ones that stand on the floor and have a hose going out the window. This allows the window to be 90% closed instead of having a completely hollow box of an AC jammed in your window.


That is odd because these sounds are often promoted as a treatment for tinnitus.

I see a lot of stuff these days about the "tiny" houses. I knew someone whose neighbors lived in one and it actually looked pretty cozy. They said it was a big savings. Of course you will need a bigger tiny house to include the studio.


If you could get someone to help you measure, you could probably still do the experimental reshuffling. Even if it is hard for you, it's not that deep. If you have a table 2' x 4' thats six boxes by 12 boxes on the graph paper.


I forget exactly but it was something like this. The standard arrangement was dresser-bed-desk down one wall and dresser-bed-desk down the other wall. Boring. We went sideways, created an internal 'wall' with the dressers and had the beds on either side of it. I think the desk went in front of the dresser whose back was to you. so mirror image. Probably not something we would have come up with by physically wrestling the furniture around.

Your dorm arrangement sounds smart. I’m a fan of dividing a room with furniture when the room feels the wrong size or needs a sense of compartmentalization.

The use of noise for tinnitus treatment… yeah… not really treatment. It’s distraction. The quieter a space, the more people notice their tinnitus. Mine isn’t the kind that bothers me to notice UNLESS I’ve been exposed to more noise, like fans, or been listening to music a lot. But fan noise is especially egregious because it’s full-spectrum stimuli. As with a number of things I put up with in my life, I’m kind of appalled at the “typical” solutions offered by a medical system that seems not to have actual subjects of the issue involved in advising solutions. Don’t get me started on all the sleep articles that say REM sleep is the most restful sleep stage or various agencies advising on how to help autistic people without actually doing the things they request ������������‍♂️

My girlfriend is on the tiny house and van life kick, still… I don’t think I could cope with either. Not remotely my thing. If she ends up trying either, we will definitely remain a couple who merely visits each other instead of domestic partners. I really want the domestic partnership though. ������

The free-standing AC units seemed to be a great idea, until I learned that they create negative pressure inside the house by blowing air out their window vents. This results in pulling outside air into the house wherever the house is not airtight (all over the place). It causes the room with the AC to get cool, but also warms the rest of the house more than it would’ve been without the negative air pressure pulling heat in from outside. ������

Your plexiglas window inserts sound like a good idea to give my girlfriend outdoor light in my bedroom, but my concern with that method is the thinness and relative lack of density of the material (unless it’s VERY thick!).

How thick are yours? What did they cost? Where did you get them?

My drywall window plugs are very dense (two 3/4 sheets sandwiched together with sound insulation grade drywall glue and screws, bordered with duct tape). They’re effectively just more wall, except they’re semi removable. Good thing they ARE removable because when the town cut down the tree in front of my house for the sake of sidewalks, the sunlight baked the plastic & foil insulation sheets I had on the glass; the stink of melting plastic was oozing into the room. We had to take it all apart and clean out the degraded plastic. It was weird to see my room lit up with daylight for the first time in about a decade. My GF loved it but it couldn’t stay that way. I replaced the plastic foil insulation with just plain kitchen aluminum foil.

If sheets of plexiglass could provide the same amount of density and therefore absorption, I’d definitely try them.

Edit: I’m not certain, I’d have to look it up, but I’m pretty sure THC is bad for deep sleep acquisition, as is almost every damned substance. GHB is the only known substance that causes the body to spend more time in deep sleep and it’s super regulated. It’s also a weird drug. Makes me sleepy, ravenously hungry, super horny, and have to move my bowels almost all at the same time.

Edit 2: oh look: editing posts still breaks emoji. Yay.

Sounds like you could do with a stripped back minimalist set up - with as little "stuff" as possible - this makes the mucking around issue go away and makes you space effectively larger.

if you have problems seeing things clearly, a major factor in the problem is that the eye becomes less sensitive to light. it's not something an optometrist will tell you about but it's often easy to prove to yourself. it's not always a solution, but whatever visual problem you have the brightness of the light only helps.

in any case, if you want a good way to have something ready in place which can generate a lot of good flicker-less light at a low cost in watts, then look for a small LED based flat panel SAD light. those actually do what they say on the box btw, but they also are very bright for the wattages, compared to most other LED light solutions.

put one behind you gear ready to go, for instance. anywhere where you need to read or see clearly,
or anywhere where you find you are losing attention and the daylight factor is low.
just start picking them up for cheap. they are fairly ubiquitous, and they work great.

I’ve been experimenting with different lighting in my daily life because I noticed I felt better when I was attached to my girlfriend’s sleep cycle (something my body historically refuses to do on its own). She’s super sensitive to a lack of light. She complains about darkness like I complain about noise 😅 She has one of those seasonal affective disorder light panels and holy cow is it bright! I thought about using it for photography (macro photography seems to never have enough light) but it’s made to just sit on a desk (even budget light-stand mounted photo lights cost hundreds!!).

I’m not keen on direct light in my spaces, so I’d probably be better off reflecting any such lights off walls and ceiling (I kinda hate center-of-ceiling light fixtures; don’t know why; maybe the way they make us shadow everything we look at below them? The way they flood the area? Feels like perpetual low light noontime).

But I do recognize a mood and overall functionality difference when I’m getting brighter light and daylight exposure. I wish my body would respond to it correctly and do the whole diurnal sleep cycle thing.

That said, I don’t feel there’s a problem with light in my studio area, just my nearsighted eyes 🤓 I wear milder prescription “computer” glasses in the studio because my regular “TV & outside the house” glasses give me migraines after a short period of time, especially if I’m looking at things in a medium to near distance (like most things inside the house).

I do consider this, but my whole life of music creation started and lived off of accidental discovery and experimentation. The times I’ve just reached out and randomly used something different for a sound source have felt like much better results were had. I still keep trying to think up a way to get a good feedback loop machine going again like I did over a decade ago, because it produced such interesting looping sounds (amp, speakers, mic, TransTubeFex, and various other things), but I don’t want to risk my studio monitors or ears.

“What if I ran this thing through that thing…” or “hey, let’s pick up the wooden flute (that I need quick access to a mic to use)”, or “time to grab the wind controller/guitar/drum pad controller”, or “what if I ran the guitar/MT-32 through a thing not intended for it (like the Voiceworks Plus)”.

I’m not a spontaneous person, but when I’ve been spontaneous with music, I feel I've done better work, and that seems to happen better or more often with outboard stuff than ITB stuff. It gets me to stop being so linear and boring… if the setup time isn’t high.

The studios I’ve found to be most inspiring to see are those with a huge selection of sound sources (and things to run them through) all around the room. I don’t have that, but seeing it is inspiring. If I could afford it, I’d own more instruments I can’t play 😅 because recording stuff from an acoustic instrument I’m only marginally capable of getting sounds from is fun and feels like learning and growth… and electronic instruments just still have a hint of that childhood wonder feel about them for me 😅.

I understand - that's me an an nutshell too - I always "abuse" whatever hardware I own - use it for the "wrong" things to see what happens. I love the sound of tortured hardware, never been into pristine transparency.

I mean light in circumstances such as when you have to get behind things and the light reduces so you might find it hard to see certain things. different for different people but often it's possible for many people to find it hard to read information, because there isn't enough light rather than other sighting problems such as people needing glasses. e.g. optometrists are trying to sell glasses not lighting systems.

Oh yes, definitely have noticed this 👍🏽

When I was young, I had a bit of a thing for pristine sound, but when I was introduced to Nine Inch Nails in my late teens, it began a journey that eventually lead me to realize what I like is the juxtaposition of clarity against degraded, broken, difficult sounds.

That’s not to say I want poor production. I couldn’t listen to Guided By Voices albums a friend loaned me because of their low-fi production (being a hipster, he thought that made them better, sigh), which was a shame because I loved the songs/music itself. I explained myself to that friend and he didn’t get it. Years later he told me the band decided to get professional with their studio recordings and said “OMG it’s so much better!!” What can you do…?

I guess I only like very carefully produced broken things, ha ha

Some of the synth music I liked as a young teen now feels sterile to me. It still means something to me, but it’s sort of “not hard enough” or something.

When I first heard Larry Fast’s “Warriors”(?) trilogy, on a college radio station I tuned to without hearing an introduction, the radio reception was poor. I liked what I heard immediately, and quickly stuffed a tape in to record on my bookshelf stereo. I’d recorded a lot of such impromptu stuff from that station in my early years (it turns out to have been my first exposure to Bowie’s “Low”), and I listened to that tape until its death. I only found out what the Larry Fast tracks were in the last five to six years (i posted an mp3 of it and someone on a forum informed me)!

When I got it on CD, I loved it still, but the sound was too clean! 😅 The saturation from the radio signal, studio, whatever… it added something that’s not in the original. Still very cool music, though.

Yep, totally agree, intentional LoFi is usually terrible. I like well engineered and produced recordings with some hair. In the 1970s we chased transparency because stuff historically sounded so bad. When digital audio finally gave us transparency we found we didn't actually like it - except for classical music where digital was a revelation, no more hiss and compromised dynamic range. You get all the saturation and dirt from the performance itself. A big brass section sounds wonderful, dirty and menacing without any further processing!

IMHO the 1970s was the best sounding era through (for rock and pop), big budgets, quality control, subtle layers of saturation through all the gear, very few nasty digital effects, mostly professional recordings in great spaces - analogue at its very best. I'm not anti-digital, I would love to hear some classic 70s albums recorded on modern gear with the same 70s production ethics and outboard. I'm sure it would sound amazing. The problem with digital is the accessibility reduces content quality as anyone can have a go (both a good and bad thing!) and the myriad of effects and plug-ins encourages you to process everything even if it's not necessary. I expected all this new tech to wow me - for someone to grab it by the horns a do something amazing with it - I'm still waiting! As digital is so transparent the move to non-professional recordings just exposes all the awful untreated spaces stuff often gets tracked in these days - the double-whammy of affordability and increased transparency working to reduce quality - then the vaseline on the lens to try and gel the track in the form of some often poor sounding or over-egged plug-ins. There are some nice sounding modern(ish) albums though – I love Elbow’s “The Seldom Seen Kid”, tracked through nice standalone pre-amps in a nice hall, straight into the DAW, lots of reamping and very little processing despite being mixed in the box – it sounds great.

I just listened to four songs from “The Seldom Seen Kid”. They’re very good songs with very good sound. I was particularly keen on the combination of sax(?) and guitar as if one very dirty, very thick, and very wide instrument in “Grounds for divorce”.

I see on the Wikipedia article that they were very deliberate in production about using a wide dynamic range. I approve 😅

Yes, that a key to that album - lots of really nice layering, carefully constructed soundscapes through good engineering - no tricks.

I think this thread focuses too much on the materialistic, physical and gear side and neglects the mental and psychological, although some of it seems obvious.

You have too much stuff already, you have too much time, you are lacking purpose and an audience and distraction from music making.

Noise is torture, agreed, but I dont think its the primary issue here.

I think reducing and joining your GFs tiny house plans might bring a change. Part of this change might be that you reduce the time spent witg music by 90%.

Lets not forget that music making these days is like carrying sand to the desert. Means, unless there is an urge you cant surpress, its kind of pointless to struggle to carry another bag of sand to the desert.

What I believe is you cling to music making to avoid other things in life, if not life itself.

Of course, I can relate to that.

I absolutely hated my creative space for years. I'm replying to this to address multiple issues troubling OP, bear with me.
Abstract: Making your space comfortable for you, and learning tricks to overcome the things that disturb your work is gold. oro puro.


Firstly, if you are truly stuck in a bad spot mentally, you need to start looking at your options and trying some of them.

Finding someone to talk to in a safe space is very important, and don't just pile everything on bff/gf/bf/partner/spouse/family. Few share your passion completely unless they're doing the same exact stuff as you.
Save yourself the heartache and frustration, find a friend, mentor, and/or a therapist.
(microdosing and making friends are both significantly more affordable avenues that can be equally as valuable for some individuals in the long run)

Regarding issues with workflow/ergonmics:

I install production AV systems professionally, so I have a unique perspective on things sometimes.
My place is a small mixdown/overdub spot, and I live a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, I do remote work, I tour, I travel a lot, so I'm rarely tied to a property for more than a few years, so I like having the freedom from the burden of being "stuck" or "attached" to a property.

In my shop, nothing outside of cable management is installed in a manner I cannot later reconfigure, the whole place is designed for flexibility, mobility and ease of service.

Everything is in well built racks, so we can take the entire rig out, pack it for transport for remote work in under an hour. it's an installed rig on wheels but that's the utility that I prefer and enjoy personally. This makes me a very happy boy.


Simply having everything the way I want it, brings me pride and joy every time I'm in the room, because I did EXACTLY what I wanted (for once in my life) and I can change it at any time.

About once a year, I do a routine overhaul of my entire room, we pull out EVERYTHING, clean, service,, and reinstall everything, and every time I'm more happy in the space.

Figure out what annoys you about the space and make "shitlist" in something like Asana or Keep/Notes and systematically design your room to your liking, if you're not modifying the existing construction and installing stuff permanently there's little need for making drawings to scale, some folks love to work that way, many dont, follow your heart.

Abstracts aside, lighting is critical to enjoyment and productivity in a space. Experiment and find what helps you feel at ease in your space, with zero regard to anything other than how it works for you.

We upgraded the lighting this year, even installed in a couple "vibe" lights (I thought it was stupid initially, now I wont go back, I dont care what anyone says, I makes me happier in the space)

Emotional factors:
Respectfully, throwing your hands up and threatening yourself to sell off all your gear will not solve your problems, this is avoidant behavior. I've tried it, and I regret it to this day. I want all the gear I sold when one of my bands split many years ago, but I'll never have that stuff back the way I liked it.


Regarding sensitivity to disturbances:


I think our minds may be a bit similar. I used to get super irritable about street noise around my place(s) in the US... then I lived in Latin America for 3 years and I will NEVER again seriously complain about anything making noise outside of my windows, NEVER.

I tried everything including moving away from cities, I had a house on the side of a mountain in the southern Andes, 10km from ANYTHING, and I still had noise pollution regularly. I traded the city for el campo and I quite possibly almost lost my mind because of it.

Some dumbass kid with 2x15s in the trunk driving by your house once or twice a day is nothing compared to the rest of the world deals with.

I've worked in professionally designed studios and venues that have no choice but to "work-around" the disturbances, unless you're building a place from the ground up, literally like a commercial recording facility and/or in a (very) remote location, this will always be a factor in some way.

I can't think many residential areas in the US outside of NYC that hold a candle to living in a city with lax or no regulation of noise pollution.

If you're tracking with live mics, schedule that work away from times you know there will be noise outside (we dont record on Tue, Wed or Thursday, and having that schedule created took a ton of pressure off me, I have a program now, I stick to it.


Conclusion:
If you're anything like me, I recommend finding tricks (I hate the phrase "life hacks") that will allow you to overcome the stimuli that bothers you, it's not easy, but you will feel like Neo when you understand the true power of having these sensitivities, it's a strength, not a weakness that I use every day I work.

Not because I'm some salty dog with decades of experience (I'd like to think of myself more like a seaweed crisp), but because my mind is tuned to be so sensitive, I hear and see stuff other's will usually overlook constantly. When I realized that about myself, my entire life changed.

Learn to have fun with the process, treat it like building, it's installation, do stuff systematically, have confidence you did it right to your liking. Plan it, don't plan it, whatever you like, rebuild it 5 times if you need, by the end, you'll be excited to use your gear again, even if you change little or nothing, simply improving aesthetics can do wonders for our minds.

I think folks forget that as someone with an understanding in audio production, with a decently equipped project studio, you have a lot of capabilities that folks 40-50 years ago would've sold a limb for. Learn to make it work for you and your personally happiness, that is why we are here.

Hey there.

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you face. I face some of them myself, but obviously don't know the details of where you're coming from.

Before considering massive gear changes in an attempt to spark a new interest/creativity, maybe consider finding new sources of inspiration (as it seems you're not currently inspired to make music).

Music is a very social thing. My best memories both creating and consuming music have been in groups or with people I care about. I used to have a large music community that I interacted with and music permeated every part of my life.

But I got older and work got busy and stopped playing instruments often and stopped interacting with many of the people i used to consider my musical community. Recently I've made some new connections to old friends and started actively discussion music and music creation, and have even started exchanging music ideas/motifs with a few friends.

Reingaging with musical peers has really sparked a renewed creativity/interest in creation that I've been struggling with. I'm not all the way there, and still really want to connect with more people in person, but it's been a big help.

I hope you consider ways in which peer-peer connections can help with both your music and your other life issues! I'm an introvert and it's easy to forget that it's still an essential part of human life.