There's too many choices AKA the minimalism thread

[Invisible Man]

The communist in me loves the idea of being minimalist and shifting the focus towards creating good music as opposed to focusing on accumulating capital in the form of music gear.

Pedal Proletkvlt

[Kacey Y]

I'll see your good old days and raise you Robert Fripp.

[BossMann73]

The kids are seeing the 20 and early 30 year old completely shit the bed as a generation that they are rebelling.

This notion that millennials have "shit the bed as a generation" is pretty ludicrous, and always sounds really sad when regurgitated by some old dude. I'm really not sure why you're so bothered by what other people are doing. It's fine not to like noise or any other less traditional genre, but all your petty lamenting of the "good 'ol days" and your belittling of younger people for playing music outside of your comfort zone is really not as interesting or refreshing as you seem to think it is. It's okay for people (even most people) to like different things than you. It would be a way better use of your energy for you to take a stab at dissecting the reasons you're so frightened by cultural diversity.

That said, I think it's awesome how minimalist everyone in this thread either is, or wants to be, musically, but it's definitely not for me. I like layering effects and having a lot of tools at my disposal. I always have a gear-acquisition end-goal in sight, but I'm totally comfortable making changes to that goal or setting a new goal once I arrive at the previous one.

Since you addressed my post without totally going off the rails with invective and hate I will simply respond by saying that:

1) As a native New Yorker, I love cultural diversity and take advantage of it almost every day in my food choices and the music I listen to on the radio. We weren't talking about cultural diversity at all, so not sure why you even brought it up.

2) I was talking about sociological trends and speaking of the Millenial gneration as a whole. There's no doubt that one can always find plenty of individuals that don't portray the characteristics ascribed to said generation, but there can be no doubt that taken as a whole, millenials have been rightly accused of so many of the things we ascribe to them. My own group, Generation X, has been analyzed as a whole many times and the results were usually spot on.....we were/are filled with a lot of ennui. In fact, I'm the biggest critic of my own generation because we shit the bed probably a lot more then millenials. We were just young enough to realize that the corporate/political life of the US was a big fat fucking lie, but yet the ranks of the corporate world are filled with plenty of 40-50 somethings that back in the day were really cool people. We should have been the ones to tear down the facade, but we joined it enthusiatically. But again, individual cases can always be found to break that. I never became a corporate slave, instead I started a small gardening business and am a Permaculture farmer as well, slowly building my farm in Puerto Rico (and yet I'm afraid of cultural diversity???). And I'm sure there are plenty of 20/30 somethings that break the mold as well. But again, we were talking about the wider trend, not individuals.

So anyhow, hope that explanation helps you pars out a little more of the nuance of what I was trying to express. Getting back to music briefly, I stand by my statement that most people who play large pedalboards are doing it to compensate for lack of real talent, and that most "noise" sounds like a little baby having a temper tantrum. If only I could call a "time out" on all this garbage. Anyhow, here's another article descrbing how there is hope yet.

http://nypost.com/2017/07/01/why-the-ne ... epublican/

[Chankgeez]

From one native New Yorker to another, I can't believe you just cited a NY Post article. Wait, yes, I can.

[friendship]

Millenials are killing the minimalism industry

[Chankgeez]

Wait, there's a "minimalism industry"?

#tinyhouses

[mathias]

The prog rock and David Gilmour examples also make me think:

Minimalism of gear does not necessarily lead to minimalist music.

Pretty sure that minimalist electronica (Album Leaf, let's say?) takes just as much gear or software as extravagant dubstep.

A minimalist gear setup could produce different music than the extravagant gear, too. I'm thinking about all the bedroom recorded demos, etc., on Tascams.

Not sure where I'm going here but that's what I'm thinking.

My setup isn't necessarily minimalist to the point of eliminating every choice, nor is it particularly cheap -- I think I just tried things and whittled things down until I had a few, nice things that I always wanted to play? My hope is to be down to one amp soon -- I've got two in my practice space but one gets unused. And the new amp that is coming (Science) is nicer than any amp I've ever had before. It's my hope that this "minimalism" in a "picking a few nice things" sense allows me to focus on the music I'm making and not on trying/picking gear.

To move the thread along again, does anyone want to share pictures of their small pedalboard setup? Tips and tricks for getting more out of less pedals? That seems to be a common theme and worth exploring some more.

[BossMann73]

From one native New Yorker to another, I can't believe you just cited a NY Post article. Wait, yes, I can.

Hey Chank, even a stopped clock is right twice a day!

[AlexGlassLungs]

I work with a pedal to make something musical out of it. When you have pedals as crazy as Industrialectric or Ezhi&Aka it's hard to not sit and make a bunch of noise (at least for me). Oven if you watch pedal demos on these it's mostly noise. If you're in a band like myself I find these to be extremely inspiring and I do the exact opposite of some of these other guys who say they add Effects post written song. For me I like to sit with the pedal and find a sound I can make musical and write a guitar part within the limitations of the pedal. And sometimes that's hard in itself. People say guitarists are relaying on effects and I don't believe that to be true, I think it's just as hard to incorporate the effect, especially in the Industrialectric and Ezhi&Aka realm... with that said I write around the pedals limitation, get to where I want the next part and choose another weird effect to use for the next part and figure out how to bridge them together. It's not easy but it's rewarding.

[OddKnowledge]

I realized that most of my favorite guitarists made a lot of sounds without using much gear and I decided to give that a shot. For the past couple years, i've been limiting my pedalboards to about 5 or less pedals. Usually I just have a tuner, drive, delay, and some sort of modulation or some such on my board and I add a looper when I'm playing by myself. I don't feel like i really need much more than that, generally.

[Invisible Man]

Old pic, but this what I use. PF has a tuner, tap tempo delay, reverbs, arpeggiator, pitch shifters, modulation. Two dirt pedals, two wild cards. I can get to most of the sounds I want, and they have a lot of real-time flexibility.

It's small because I like it to be symmetrical and black.

[Lurker13]

Stereotyping people with generational labels is a marketing tool. People are being born continuously, not in discrete pigeonholes of years, and so culture evolves continuously too. The challenges of any given time period must be dealt with by people of all ages.

[popvulture]

The challenges of any given time period must be dealt with by people of all ages.

Yes.

[Invisible Man]

Empirically false. I am a cancer, and share many personality traits with others whose parents got hot-and-bothered during the same months that mine did. We share a fortune.

[rustywire]

...
My setup isn't necessarily minimalist to the point of eliminating every choice, nor is it particularly cheap -- I think I just tried things and whittled things down until I had a few, nice things that I always wanted to play? My hope is to be down to one amp soon -- I've got two in my practice space but one gets unused. And the new amp that is coming (Science) is nicer than any amp I've ever had before. It's my hope that this "minimalism" in a "picking a few nice things" sense allows me to focus on the music I'm making and not on trying/picking gear.

To move the thread along again, does anyone want to share pictures of their small pedalboard setup? Tips and tricks for getting more out of less pedals? That seems to be a common theme and worth exploring some more.

We're on the same page. About 2010, the journey began to find/develop my audio aesthetic, discovering which flavors of dirt and mod, delay etc resonate most... which all facilitate focus on writing, creating and finding inspiration. In recent years I've been able to taper off trade ins/ups and "mostly complete" my rig of keepers while paring down to essentials I loathe to bypass.

Here's my preference/peak complexity for a guitar setup:

NSFW: show

beano oc44 > superfuzz 45 > harmonic percolator > dejavibe > wah > vol > rrr > polyflange > dmm

And for a bass setup:

NSFW: show

harmonic percolator+ruetz rat > pc2a compressor > mf-102 ringmod > sb7 synth bass > bitquest > phaseomatic deluxe
then 2 more pedals off-board: a Fromel Shape Eq and DMM

There hasn't been much change in the above rotations for the past 2 years.
Guitar rig uses 50w class-AB British amp, bass rig uses 35w class-A American PA. Both w/halfstacks, +1 extra 15"