Cure for GAS?

[wrngtrls]

Books are cool.

Indeed, as I sell rare books to fund my sporadic GAS episodes. Steidl anybody?

[smithjohn]

I had a GAS and wanted to make my tracks with 100% eurorack, but got frustrated and then realized I'd rather use eurorack for making weird noises and sound design... and get more hardwired synths

Fortunately don't have the space for more synths at home anymore.

[dooj88]

have a kid

[tvparcable]

It's also interesting to think about what exactly makes one buy modules. It's possible that if it wasn't for modular, the people who have a very severe case of GAS would still exhibit some form of addictive behaviour, one way or another. If what you're really after is the dopamine kick you get from ordering something and frantically updating your delivery tracking status (we've all been there), but then you rarely actually spend a lot of time using what you buy (or if it feels like a chore when you do), then there is probably a real problem to solve.
Sometimes we tend to believe the illusion that just because it's "modular", we can modulate our way to the perfect system… and very conveniently, it happens to be a perfect excuse to pursue that dopamine kick. The reality is that non-perfect systems are the most enjoyable systems (in fact, they are the only systems you can get: "the best tool is the one you already have" etc.). Someone who starts playing acoustic guitar doesn't spend their time imagining extra features that their instruments is lacking. They're just happy with being limited to 6 voices, not being able to control the waveform of the strings, and having super limited and imperfect clock speed and tuning. That's because they find the fun in the practise itself, and in the musical output that results from it. When you look at electronic music artists that people enjoy because of their music, and not their association with modular, it's interesting to see how many of them have quite small systems, or systems tailored to quite specific needs. I think these people tend to see modular as one of many ways to create, and not as a goal in itself.
If you think your gas is becoming a problem, maybe ask yourself a few things: "Am I ready to admit that I may have overspent hastily on something I just mildly enjoy on the long term?" ; "To what extent did (insert name of Youtuber getting a ton of sponsorship from manufacturers) play a role in me wanting this module?" ; "When I'm patching, what do I feel the most: frustration from not being able to do certain things, or fulfillment from being able to do other things?"

[Back Down the Path]

have a kid

Yes this is the ultimate cure at least temporarily. I didn't buy a single piece of gear from 2013-2020 due to having a kid.

[neumedi]

Aim your GAS at modules that take a long time to get. I have orders out for Natural Gate, Piston Honda, and Black Sequencer. Knowing I have 3 modules "on their way" is helping curb gas for other modules. For better or worse, this wait is becoming longer than I had imagined, but good for slowing down my GAS.

Decide you must have a Cirklon, and no other module/sequencer/gear-addition will satisfy, put an order - and you'll have a good 2 to 3 years before you have to worry about GAS again.

[EPTC]

Not sure if this is mentioned here, but also emptying out your studio into your hallway and reconfiguring arrangement of things, by bringing them back in, can often reestablish a sense of connection with what you already have. Sometimes the act of completely uncabling things can do this.

I have a lot of gear that collects into sections now, like a percussion section, voice section, stuff like that. It's less satisfying to do this with modules, but just removing all your modules and reorganizing them is similarly satisfying.

Buying small cases to put your modules in can totally reset a sense of boredom from them all collected in one large case, too. Move stuff around!

[EPTC]

Start taking hard drugs.

Ha! From NAMM to WHAM.

[Nik]

Buddhism might help. The Second Noble Truth - that craving (tṛṣṇā) is the cause of dissatisfaction (duḥkha) - encapsulates GAS.

I'm not enlightened and it didn't help me though

[electricfence]

Aim your GAS at modules that take a long time to get. I have orders out for Natural Gate, Piston Honda, and Black Sequencer. Knowing I have 3 modules "on their way" is helping curb gas for other modules. For better or worse, this wait is becoming longer than I had imagined, but good for slowing down my GAS.

Decide you must have a Cirklon, and no other module/sequencer/gear-addition will satisfy, put an order - and you'll have a good 2 to 3 years before you have to worry about GAS again.

A VCS 3 might hold off GAS for a decade or more.

[flies]

As others have said, if this is seriously impacting your rent or relationships, seek professional assistance immediately. Gamblers anonymous may be useful.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Ato ... +Sheet.pdf
Read Atomic Habits, which inspires what follows. It provides very actionable advice. Removing temptation is a powerful tool. For example, if you're trying to drink less, don't go to the bar or the liquor store. Applying that to buying stuff online is non-trivial but you can do it if you're creative.

Make it Invisible: Avoid temptation. Reduce exposure to triggers, get off muff, etc. Contrariwise, every time you start looking at gear, say out loud, "I am looking at gear that I may spend money on." This help make your unwanted behavior more clearly visible so you can respond to it more productively. You can add to this by adding a reminder ("I'm trying to save for X") or a penalty ("I'll do ten pushups"). Enumerate the money you've spent on gear over the last X months so that the consequences are concrete rather than nebulous.
Make it unattractive: Focus on the downsides of GAS and the upsides of saving. Do a "motivational interview" (list pros and cons) to your bad habit, post the cons (aka benefits of adherence) somewhere.
Make it difficult: make new auto-generated (hard to remember) passwords for websites where you buy stuff, put your passwords in a password wallet (if you're already using one, create a separate account), sign out from those websites.
Make it unsatisfying: This is about removing/countering the nice feeling of getting new stuff. Tag someone in your life as a commitment partner - allow them to penalize you in some way for buying stuff. Establish a rule that for every impulse purchase you have to sell twice the dollar value/hp of the gear you bought. Make your default shipping address somewhere besides your residence or addressed to someone else you live with and have the addressee hold on to it for a month before you can use it. Make adherence satisfying and visible with a habit tracker that you can see in whatever place you're most often doing the unwanted behavior. For example, using a calendar, keep track of how much money you're saving by keeping a running where every day/week you add on your previous average spending. This way you can directly see the benefits of adherence. Physically interacting with the habit tracker feels rewarding in itself, and you can put the money saved towards something you value.

Obviously not all of these ideas will appeal, and doing all of them would be silly. This is just to get your mind working.

I don't have GAS, but I do have ADHD and I've been procrastinating terribly during quarantine (posting online a lot and making music...). Stuff that's working for me:
* I signed out of Twitter.
* I have a two jars on my desk: bank and spend. I started with 265 pennies in the bank. Every ten minutes of solid work, I move a penny from bank to spend, and the idea was that after I'd moved all the jars from bank to spend twice (~90 hours of actual work) I'd have $530 I could use to buy a Morphagene. The procrastination benefits might not mean anything to you, but this could put new purchases on a schedule, making them feel possible (rather than utterly forbidden) and earned when you get there. Your pennies to $$ ratio should vary with your financial situation and work habits. You could use something else besides work, like flossing.
* If you're doing something like this, you can move pennies back from spend to bank for infractions such as logging in to Reverb or what have you.
* There was a project I was particularly avoiding and it was super late, so I enlisted my wife as a commitment partner and she promised that if I didn't put earn X pennies by the end of the week we'd watch Bling Empire (ack) and eat tagine (not my cup of tea), which would be painful for me but in a kind of playful way. Having her threaten me with it was both funny and very motivating. I finished the project on time. (I got two pennies per ten minutes on this, and a 20 penny bonus for finishing.)
* scheduling - deciding what I'm going to do when. For me, this is basically to-do lists. To make this work for GAS, you'd do something like decide on a date and a dollar figure, then once the date arrives, you are allowed to go to Reverb and drool to your heart's content until you make a purchase.

[magicdust]

Aim your GAS at modules that take a long time to get. I have orders out for Natural Gate, Piston Honda, and Black Sequencer. Knowing I have 3 modules "on their way" is helping curb gas for other modules. For better or worse, this wait is becoming longer than I had imagined, but good for slowing down my GAS.

Decide you must have a Cirklon, and no other module/sequencer/gear-addition will satisfy, put an order - and you'll have a good 2 to 3 years before you have to worry about GAS again.

Done. Hasn’t helped

[sir stony]

TL;DR.

However, I think Lisa had one of the best advice I ever heard from anyone about this, saying something like: don't get something new unless you have made a track with what you already have.
Simple, and so damn effective. Either you are a creative, productive workhorse and dish out new tracks like crazy, or else you'll have to reduce your shopping tours a lot. You have to be consequential about it with yourself, though. If you can't be, you really do need help.

[target_destroyed]

Get married.

[tokidoki]

Aim your GAS at modules that take a long time to get. I have orders out for Natural Gate, Piston Honda, and Black Sequencer. Knowing I have 3 modules "on their way" is helping curb gas for other modules. For better or worse, this wait is becoming longer than I had imagined, but good for slowing down my GAS.

Decide you must have a Cirklon, and no other module/sequencer/gear-addition will satisfy, put an order - and you'll have a good 2 to 3 years before you have to worry about GAS again.

A VCS 3 might hold off GAS for a decade or more.

We are waiting for the CS-80 Yamaha reissue and can't stop to add modules to our 2100 hp modular. The pleasure to help all these passionate modular manufacturers trying to offer new ways to make music is a great one. Music is an infinite drug.

[Peng33]

Books are cool.

Indeed, as I sell rare books to fund my sporadic GAS episodes. Steidl anybody?

I was able to afford my initial foray into Eurorack about a year ago by flipping rare-ish video games that I had been hoarding for a decade or two solely for the purpose of flipping if I ever became "hard up."

Not hard up, per se, but my salary as a stay-at-home dad (which boils down to the satisfaction of raising a really, really bright autistic son and having the ability and motivation to work on music once every week or so) did not allow me to fill up my tank with my initial GAS. Nearly $4000 worth of sold games later, my GAS has mostly subsided after I now have a 6U 140 HP Behringer case to expand from my initial 84 HP Nifty bundle, and both are full with a very slight overflow.

That said, the purchases over and above the ebay game flips were financed with Sweetwater on (nearly all) 36 months no interest. That also said, my GAS had dissipated for a few months, but the Qu-Bit Data Bender is really getting the tank thirsty.

[Voltcontrol]

have a kid

I have three. Two is enough. Good to have some ‘insurance’ in case one of them breaks down though.

[Koryo]

I don't think I have a cure, but this helped me de-gas a bit. Turn it into a game. Challenge yourself to mimic or exceed the GASed gear with stuff you already own.

[Dob]

I don't think I have a cure, but this helped me de-gas a bit. Turn it into a game. Challenge yourself to mimic or exceed the GASed gear with stuff you already own.

This. I don't really make it a game, but sometimes I just get new patch ideas from looking at videos of desired modules. Or I ask myself: why do I want this, to achieve what? (And is it possible to achieve that, approximately, with what I have?)

I've always had a, like they say in Dutch, "hole in my hand". Which means, I spend what I can afford. And I can't really save up for something bigger or later.
Having money on the bank even is able to stress me, because of the choice that is to be made: what to do with it. Sad but true.
Whereas I know perfectly well more stuff doesn't equal more happiness.
I'm raised a perfect consumer.

2 years ago, I got a raise, and I just bought more/expensive modules. I do wish I didn't do that. I.e. spend some more on home improvement, happy/easy living, getting out, kids, wife. Guess I'm not short of anything.
I used to max out my creditcard, go into dept because of gear, but those days are past. I've got responsibilities now.

Nowadays it doesn't get me in trouble, but it's also a nasty habit that I'd like to keep under control a bit more...

[ferran]

Very interesting thoughts tvparcable . I like particularly this

Someone who starts playing acoustic guitar doesn't spend their time imagining extra features that their instruments is lacking. They're just happy with being limited to 6 voices, not being able to control the waveform of the strings, and having super limited and imperfect clock speed and tuning. That's because they find the fun in the practise itself, and in the musical output that results from it...

I have been fortunate enough to play the piano acceptably, since I was a child, and I always end up getting more pleasure than with any other complex gadget I have bought for years. A simple cure to GAS for me is doing music playing a classic instrument.

[SonarBk]

+1 for what Lisa and Artaos offered - respectively validating potential need for help. I'm actually a therapist (best day job ever) and I struggle with GAS myself in ways that have been destructive in the past. As someone who knows a lot about how to treat obsessions and compulsions, I sometimes apply what I know to myself and often I don't. Also, I don't always talk to my own therapist about it even when I should. There are all sorts of reasons why we hang onto patterns etc etc. and I think its cool you are reaching out here.

Keep talking about it, its worse if its a secret. And you can totally find support groups for people with compulsive spending online too - it won't always be about music gear obviously but there's a lot of overlap.

[thevegasnerve]

I am pretty sure my "gas" stems primarily from boredom. So when I can get myself engaged with challenges of existing equipment, it really helps. Compulsion is something entirely different. I hope if some of you truly are going into debt and cant stop purchasing, you will seriously consider getting help. This should be fun at the end of the day.

[cinnatoastg]

...saying something like: don't get something new unless you have made a track with what you already have.
Simple, and so damn effective. Either you are a creative, productive workhorse and dish out new tracks like crazy, or else you'll have to reduce your shopping tours a lot. You have to be consequential about it with yourself, though. If you can't be, you really do need help.

This is good, I'll have to put this into use. I generally side with redirecting the energy as well. Ignoring it or hoping you suddenly stop wanting to buy music equipment is much less realistic.

[EPTC]

Get married.

Laughs. Not untrue. Cue my favorite meme:

[skunk3]

As someone who has dealt with GAS for many years and have finally mostly cured myself of it, for me the answer is simple:

Think HARD about what it is that you want to accomplish musically, what suits your desired sound, and what gels with your workflow. Sell anything that doesn't help you achieve that without thinking twice. Learn to recognize that they are time-wasting abstractions. Keep only what is actually useful in 85%+ of what you do. If it's something that you use only once in a great while, odds are that you don't need it and instead you like the *idea* of it. Gear fetishization, basically.

Purge. Sell all of that crap, even if it requires convincing yourself to feel guilty about hoarding it. Think about your kids. Think about your wife. Think about all of the other things you could do with that money to make their lives better instead of indulging. Take that money and invest it for retirement. Take a vacation. Upgrade your house. Pay off bills. Heck, even donate it if you're that flush with cash.

I've gone through many setups over the years and had mountains of gear that were major overkill several times before because I compulsively bought anything that seemed cool. After some time I came to get a sense of what "my sound" is (at least the direction I am going for) and what I *need* to make that happen, and I have to say (honestly) that it is so nice to have less rather than more.

I know I am on the wrong forum to be saying this, but Eurorack is a fucking money pit for people with money to burn. I wish I was, but I am not that guy. Yeah, it's cool and all but it's not exactly 'productive' most of the time and it costs an arm and a leg, and you're never happy with what you have. I've gone down the Euro rabbit hole two or three times now and managed to pull myself out after coming to my senses. It's alluring but no amount of knobs and lights and patch cables is going to make you happy or make your music cooler. If you have the money to burn and buy your gear at decent prices then there's no real risk from GAS aside from feeling generally unfulfilled because you can always sell it off later on, but if you're buying new or the upper end of used, you're probably not going to recoup that money spent and in that case you're just pissing your money away for no return aside from the internet clout you can get from snapping photos of your rad studio and flexing on social media.

One good way of determining what you really *need* (if you don't know already) is to force yourself to release *finished* music frequently, on a schedule... and stick to it. Don't go out of your way to try to incorporate some bit of gear into a track just because you feel obligated to! They are inanimate objects and don't have feelings!