I feel like the older model of accumulating physical gear helped put some limits on how complexity grew in small studios, but that has all been upended by software. There is definitely a balance to be struck between the capabilities of the setup and what will actually result in the best creative output. Creativity often thrives within constraints, and it can paradoxically become harder to work with objectively better equipment.

Recorded an EP with a guy who had rebuilt a bunch of used gear by hand so nothing even physically made it into the studio unless he could afford it and fix it. He had plenty to work with, but it was largely just the staples ... and one beast of a tape machine for mastering. Funny thing, is he found a lot of settings that just worked and kept most of them. There would be some tweaking, but mostly with the levels more than anything once we found the sound.

Recording on our own, digitally, had my pal tweaking various parameters until all hours—introducing different EQ's and reverbs and then pulling them and replacing them and tweaking them and trying to find the minutiae of what would make it just right to him, but he was rarely ever satisfied. I don't think it was just him, it's that there were so many options available to us—even without paying for premium VSTs and the like.

And we were recording what was essentially folk-rock or roots-rock. There's a lot of leeway in recording demos and EP tracks in that space.

Recording, like software, I've grown to like to keep it as simple as I can, when I can.

I think you're confusing survivor bias of 'some people did really well in the past despite crap equipment' with the actual definite lowering of the cost of entry for music production that has happened over the past 20 years.

Its vastly more accessible now for a great many people whereas in the past it was a privilege to have access to quality recording gear.

the second you think "I could make X if I had access to Y" you are already thinking about it wrong

I disagree, for the reasons given above.

I would also argue that while maybe the general sound quality has improved with technology(a 4 track cassette recorder can only sound so good) the music is not similarly improved. There are great songs written today, as there was 40-50 years ago, but the technology isnt the reason.

Anyway, I will concede that in the right hands a great studio full of awesome gear will make a better product than a cigar box guitar, pots and pans and a mini cassette recorder. The point I was really making is dont expect technology to make you write good music. It can inspire creativity, but you need to have the spark and put in the work...

With only a bartered acoustic guitar, I used tricks (disconnecting the erase head wires) to layer on standard cassette and create songs. A friend loaned me his cassette 4-track for a weekend and I knocked out 7 tracks.

This was in the 80's.

Now with the luxury of hard disk recording, and essentially a whole studio on my laptop, I instead post to HN. ;-)

What can I say, I'm old and not as moved by the creative passions of youth.

Maybe "creativity finds a way" is another way to put it.

I think though that this article was focusing more on accessibility, at least, that was my takeaway. There are many sub-genres and scenes of music that might not initially make the most money compared to top slick commercial pop production. In the early 1980s, the initial cost of equipment to make and record certain styles of music could be a barrier of sorts.

To make something like, say, electro in the early 1980s, you would have to purchase... something. A synthesizer and a drum machine / sequencer is probably minimum requirements. Juan Atkins for instance lists his gear for his Cybotron days here [1], it's not "minimal" or "pawn shop" level for sure. Generally speaking, the home studio was still "demo" level recordings in the 1980s (there are exceptions); "Clear" likewise was recorded at a couple of professional studios and mastered at a separate studio.

Not all artists were doing this much, of course. But there is a reason that the sampling drum machines of the late 1980s (Akai MPC 60 and Emu SP 1200) were seen as "democratising"; previously, the barrier of entry to create sampling oriented beats was much higher, and now, all of a sudden, there was a relatively affordable machine that could allow you to do this.

These days, with a laptop, you could probably pretty easily make an electro style track using free or low-cost plugins and DAWs.

You are correct though, that all the gear in the world won't make a difference if the ideas aren't good (and even Mr. Atkins says this himself in that interview, "you don't want to go out and invest in all that gear just to push a couple of preset buttons and make a track that 20 people across the world could have already made."). I just think that the greater affordability and quality of today's equipment allows more artists to realize their vision (and if it also allows more hobby level people to be able to afford to just play around a bit, that's okay too :) ).

[1] https://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/interview-juan-atkins-o...

My first real job in high school was as an assistant engineer/intern at a recording studio, and I was an avid musician, producer and band member then and for a decade or two following. This would have been about 1989, and at the time the reality was it was very hard for an average musician to be able to produce anything that would sound remotely like a professional recording at home.

Even things like the classic Tascam cassette based 4-track recorders were pretty expensive, and then you'd need microphones and serviceable compressors and reverb and so on to make something respectable. I mean, we did it, we bounced tracks, we used the pause button, we put drums in stairwells, all that. Sure it was fun, but it was challenging, and you could make a good argument that it was an obstacle to actually making music.

Even when digital came along it was still miserable for awhile. One of my earlier professional computer experiences is the literally hundreds of hours spent messing around with Windows NT settings trying to figure out how to keep a Pro Tools rig functional and at least sort of reliable, when the first PT systems came into our studio. And those even were way out of the financial reach of home musicians.

And we're not even talking about duplication and distribution issues. I grew up in D.C. and some of those early engineering gigs were for Dischord records, which at the time had taken the genuinely innovative approach of getting vinyl pressed in Eastern Europe, because of the strangehold on vinyl capacity in the US that made it really tough to do small runs of independent music. Most people didn't have that ability to buck the system. If what you were doing wasn't recognized as commercially viable by some kind of label you were probably going to do it in obscurity.

Yes, of course, artists can always thrive and find a way in the face of adversity. But that doesn't mean it's not adversity. It was so much harder back then, the digital changes since that era that first enabled project and portable studios, and eventually made it plausible to go from a laptop to the top of the charts in a matter of days.

The access to gear is a real, substantive difference, and I don't think it's fair to dismiss the changes out of hand. The changes have made it possible for a lot more people to participate.

Access to equipment has gotten a lot easier. Access to reasonable levels of income from paying audiences has become far, far harder.

Same with cycling. Getting a $1k bike makes it so much more enjoyable than a $300 bike.

Don't make things harder for yourself than they need to be. Yes, the people who most desire doing a thing will do it with barely anything. But if you know you're not that person, you know more pleasant tooling will bring the threshold of the activity down, and you have the money for it, absolutely do it.

Better tools lower activation energy significantly. You want activation energy to be low for things you want to do but can't summon the motivation for.

Sure, in the end if you find you don't really want to do it, don't. Now you have to sell these ski boots for way cheap. But so what. That's just money. Life is short. Don't make things harder for yourself.

And creative arts are no different. Sure I could paint with paints. Etc. But having a Wacom makes it way more likely I will.

But sure, as an autodidactic technique, starting from a restricted environment and progressing to complexity is superior to starting with complexity.

I've noticed myself thinking this way a ton and you're absolutely right. It's just so easy to get bogged down with the possibilities that it's easy to think this way. How do you stay focused with what you have?

That reminded me of a video of two guys playing a shit WalMart toy guitar and making something surprisingly listenable.

https://youtu.be/gWPysY0Wis0