Is the DIY lifestyle holding me back?!?

Hmmm....been thinking about this a bit. I got on the kick of DIYing as much as I can in my life.

I now have a small rack of very nice recording gear in my office, but not a very good room, and several incomplete projects in my workshop. I get much better results than I used to, but still not the "pro" results that I want. I'm now considering selling my gear or trading it to a good studio here in town to just get the results I want the first time and finally have my next album finished.

I now have a short-size school bus in my driveway for getting the band to and from gigs. It is used 5-8 times a month. Diesel. MPG gallon is rediculous. I had the intention of converting it to WVO but it'd take a while to just break even. I'm curious at the cost of just renting an extended cab van for when we need it...Thinking about selling the bus and using that money to pay the rental fees as needed. I'd probably still make money after a year of doing this.

I am now in the process of automating my whole record label and sending everything to CD Baby and dumping my website. I calculate that this will save me several hours each week of cutting, folding, burning CDs, etc, etc.

Derek Severs said something that made me think. DIY doesn't mean "Do it yourself", it means "delegate it yourself".

I'm starting to think that I don't want to wast my life on the little things if I am mainly a musician, I should just focus on making music and let people work for/with me more.





:guinness: :guinness: :guinness:

The thing is of course that doing things yourself and also for yourself can make one a perfectionist... while when delegating it, things will often be ~about good enough - but that's often also as good as they need to be.

In other words: DIY-perfectionism will be the most satisfying BUT will often be ridiculously un-economical if that DIY is a method towards other goals (like making music).

Let's for instance look at an example about how many steps from the actual goal this very activity is (assuming 'making music' is the goal):

We're for instance chatting & discussing here (1)... about making some test-gear (2)... for building & testing say a mic-pre (3)... that we want to use to record our music (4).

That's FOUR steps 'away' from the assumed goal. Sure we enjoy soldering & discussing, and if the goal had been 'having a good time' it'd be mighty fine, but it's quite far away from that actual playing.

FWIW....

[quote author="Mbira"]....I'm starting to think that I don't want to wast my life on the little things if I am mainly a musician...[/quote]

you are right, if you think about diy this way you should stop it.
the "quickly diy some high-end-stuff and save some bucks" approach just doesnt pay off.
maybe it´s possible with all-inclusive kits, but the time invested in finding stuff out (!) & ordering & building & tweaking could be spend on things you really admire - like recording in your case - focus on the stuff you really love to do!
-max

Don't get me wrong, it's really fun to solder and make stuff and etch yer boards, etc, etc, but I have found that it is no longer a "hobby" and it never was a "career". As Clint says, I'm finding that more and more, I'm letting my "lack" of DIY gear hold me back from my goals "if I only had this pre I could make the drums sound so much better" when I could walk down the street and get that sound right now...

hmmm. Come to think of it, really I have a nice "sketch pad" recording studio as it is now, and I could decide to be very happy with what I DO have and treat it as such. I have a system where I can get pretty good results quickly and see if a song idea works or not. Maybe I have already reached my goal.

Oh there is definitely a payoff when it comes to DIYing clones of certain high-price-tag items such as Neve gear. The name alone causes wallets to quiver in fear.

I personally found out that once you have the essential clones complete, the more ambitious projects tend to have less of a positive cost/performance ratio. I guess it just boils down to the fact that some clones are cheap and easy compared to their commercial counterparts while others are plagued by needing custom parts which cost more than what the factories are paying for those same parts.

I don't think your DIY should be stopped, just take a break and use the equipment and experiment using it in unconventional ways.

Here's a personal experience that might help you out:

One thing that really changed the way I do things was building a patchbay so that I could hook anything into anything. Any combination of preamp with any combination compressor, eq, console channel, etc. I spent a lot of time just playing and trying new things out. I USED to be one of those *never ever use effects while tracking* folks until I really tried it extensively using this setup. It made it easy to spend a lot of time just playing around while finding that using my compressors/eq/effects while tracking made things sound MUCH more like a professional recording.

I also recommend that you immediately go get some gobo type sound absorbers. Make your ceiling as absorbent as you can afford to make it as well as surrounding your drums with absorption, leaving space between the panels for *some* sound to get into the room. This way you can tune the reflections that ultimately make a *bad* room sound bad. It made a world of difference for me.

Does that mean you are considering bagging the acre of cotton, gin, spinning wheel, loom, and sewing machine as well? We got into the whole "division of labor" thang during one of NYDave's outsourcing article links.

If you think of it, everyday life used to be all DIY all the time. Barely enough time for a page from the Good Book before sundown.

It has to be a question of balance and economy. I considered the whole WVO thang until I calculated the time involved. If I wanted that to be my hobby I would have committed, but as an alternative to driving to the pump is was not efficient at all.

I would think that owning the bus beats renting at 8 trips per month. The fuel cost of either is a wash, so if it costs $100 per rental, do you spend more than $9,600 per year on the bus? It should be a simple spreadsheet analysis. Can YOU rent yours to other bands?

As far as audio recording, getting more experience as an engineer will do more for you than making or buying more equipment. Anyone can buy great eqpt and get lousy results, but only a talented few can use lousy eqpt and get a great sound.
Mike

[quote author="Mbira"]
Derek Severs said something that made me think. DIY doesn't mean "Do it yourself", it means "delegate it yourself". [/quote]

Thats painfully true. Even though it's small volume, I'm already considering moving PCB assembly to a 3rd party. Even shipping is taking me 6 hours at a time.

When time is limited, the key really has to be delegate/outsource and spend your time when the return on investment is highest.

In your case - making music is where your return on investment is highest.

Sure, having a "ideas studio" helps enable that, you needn't build a ton of stuff for it. As someone mentioned in this thread - get then essentials, then get back to the music.

Cheers

/R

I should say a lot of this shift in thinking is a result of a book I'm reading called "the Four Hour Work Week". Good stuff when you get past the guys ego!

When you say 'not a very good room', is it salvageable? Considering my living comes from music electronics, it usually makes my clients giggle when I tell them that I'd rather have a good room and a Mackie than a crap room and a Neve.

I wonder if, instead of spending several evenings building a new whojamaflip, you should buy some books on acoustics and look into getting the room right?

Of course, I could be well off base...


Justin

I went into DIY everything out of necessity, when I had all time and no money. Now, I still have very little money, but also very little time. I pay myself better doing tech work for others than I do for studio hours, which is back-asswards given the difference in overhead. But, lots of tech-work mean the studio suffers in regards to maintenance and planning. And trying to do both means there's no room for anything musically creative at all. So, balance balance balance. I purchased one of Roger's Stereo Pico Compressor builds simply because I don't have the time to do it. I realized I would likely never get around to building one on a speculative basis. It was worthwhile; I'm using it already, and it's one less project on the perpetual back-burner. You have to figure out where to cut your losses in regards to priorities. Some things it's just better to pay for, after considering the ups and downs of time versus money. I mean really, how many hours on end have we all lost putting together a Mouser order? What could we have billed elsewhere with that time? Or just f#*$ed off having fun elsewhere? And don't get me started on packing and shipping; it's a full time job.

Not that I'm getting out of DIY.......

Room salvageable? Not really. My wife would say definitely "no" since the room is the house. Low ceilings are frustrating my drum sound. I've got gobo's (my wife loves those too!) In any case, the bottom line is a studio I'm looking at working with (they are a private studio and don't take walk ins, but they have heard about us and want to work with us) the sound they have gotten from vocals on their freaking mp3 playing on their website is something I haven't been able to achieve in 10 years of trying. It might have something to do with the $6500 Wunder Audio mic they were using, but it could also be the sweet room. I love DIY and I love my project studio, and I'm realizing more and more that that is just what it is and it would again take tons of time and money to get the space to a place that I can achieve now (and I don't need to be the engineer and talent!)

"If I had this thingy or that thang, it would sound so much better" is a trap. I have a friend who is a total gear whore, yet he gets nothing done usually because he doesn't have this or that. Every pay day he's buying something new. Sure toys are nice, but does it really matter? Have you ever said to yourself, "I'm never listening to this record again because the cymbals aren't bright enough?" Van Lear Rose comes to mind as a record that doesn't sound all polished but it's perhaps one of the best records I've ever heard. Every Iggy record ever mad sounds like hammered dog shit, yet they're regarded as masterpieces.

Dude... quit beating yourself up. You've done a ton since you've moved to Austin. Keep doing what's fun and ditch the other crap.

[quote author="Mbira"]"if I only had this pre I could make the drums sound so much better"[/quote]If you're starting to think like this, then you're entering an engineers headspace as opposed to a musicians headspace.....
I know, I've done it sooooo many times, when really I want to be thinking more along the lines of "how does this guitar part or melody help/hinder the song?"

DIY is great, but does take time.. a lot of time..... :wink:

However the payoff for me was when a local radio staion took a few artists(me included) to one of the local professional studios to do some live recordings.... everything was set up like a recording session, but pretty much "one take" was the motto for the day.
My drummer couldn't make it, so we used my pre-recorded drums done with all my DIY gear. My raw files sounded every bit as good as the drums being recorded that day!! even the engineer commented on how good they sounded. You can imagine how chuffed I was to hear the comparison :green:

Sometimes we think the gear matters more than it actually does, leading to that disease so many have around here....If I only had a ******* or a couple of *******s.......... ...............The downward spiral begins... ha ha (i'm starting again, after a few months of not building)



Take a beak from DIY or something. My girlfriend is great for this. She WONT let me start on a new project till I've written/worked on/finished a song. She has a better perspective than me sometimes, coz she's not into this geek stuff, she's a musician and she dosen't care if my Gssl has a fancy sidechain in it, or what transformer I use in my G7.............. But she cares a whole bunch about hearing one of my SONGS.
It's good to have someone to help keep you inline and focused on the bigger picture.

[quote author="Mbira"]"delegate it yourself"[/quote]I'm thinking of delegating the mixing to someone else, not only for their acess to a console, but more for their experience, and knowing that I wont be second guessing my own mixes all the time. Mixing sucks up a lot of my time, coz I'm still new at it.............. I want to learn to mix, but I want to be a musician MORE

And I 2nd the treating your room thing. Made as big a difference as all my facy gear....if not more so. But yeah... try to convince the wife...um..... :?

Where am I goin with this??? (typing words always comes out different then how my brain first sees it..ha ha). DIY is a blessing and a curse at the same time, but I don't think dropping it all together is the best option. But the dedication we give it isn't really justified if you want to be an artist.

Have a look at what you already have.... Do you NEED much more??
I thought I did, but it seems I don't really...........

[quote author="Butterylicious"]

Dude... quit beating yourself up. You've done a ton since you've moved to Austin. Keep doing what's fun and ditch the other crap.[/quote]


:razz: Then I'm coming across the wrong way! I feel GREAT about how I feel! I feel like I'm coming out of a haze and looking around and seeing how much easier it will be to acomplish my goals than I had previously thought! The point is that I have let DIY get in the way of me finishing the projects that are more important to me now. Now that I see that, it's a good day. :green:

Joel, after being part of 3(!) indie record labels to sell my music from various bands over the last 20 years, I switched over to CD Baby with my last release. CD Baby rocks. Not having to do the fulfillment part is worth every penny of the $4 they take per disc. And the additional visibility from their website is a nice bonus as well.

I'd say that would be a fantastic way to simplify your life a bit.

> I got on the kick of DIYing as much as I can in my life.

I once spent a month sewing a shirt. Never finished.

I have installed gas pipe. Twice. By the second time, I was broke-even on tools compared to hiring it done, and the inspector liked my work. But when it came to running gas to the kitchen, I let an electric stove go in. Either you do it every day so the callouses stay strong, or it's just too much like work.

Do what you are GOOD at. If you are good at tinkering buses, tinker buses. If you are not good at it, get out of the bus-tinkering chore. And knowing what ex-school buses are like, that probably means suckering that bus to someone else who is (or thinks he is) a bus tinkerer. Just like you off-loaded the CD-folding chore to someone who is set up to do it well.

It is clear that you are a musician. Fated to happy poverty. But even poverty is no excuse to DIY: some poor(er) woman or child in Asia is happy to make your shirt cheaper than you could possibly justify your own labor.

Mike remembers the day when everything was DIY because it was 40 miles to the next neighbor. As the world gets smaller, we find more people who are better at something than we will ever be. I have not milked a cow in decades, someone (now some thing) does it for me. If I fix PCs for $25/hr, and a mechanic gets $25/hr to change oil, but it takes me an hour and him only 15 minutes to change oil, why DIY? He's got the lift/pit, he does it all day, he does not have to wash up and put the tools away after one job. And he brings me his sick PC: he could spend hours trouble-shooting something I do every day.

Specialization is a wonderful thing.

Do what YOU are GOOD at. Get that other BS off your plate.

"Gear" is usually not the answer. Nice gear is nice, but low-price gear can do very well.

"Room" is very often a factor, especially on stuff like vocals. We have a main concert stage which sucks, and a recital hall which is worse; OTOH some old churches make anything sound loverly, if you find a sweet-spot for the mike, and don't fork it up with FX. So -knowing- the room matters. And if you can use a known-good room, why DIY raise and gobo your own home? You don't record 5 days a week all year long, who cares who holds title to the room?

The only thing I disagree with PRR, is that I desire to be fated to happy wealth. :green:

[quote author="Butterylicious"] Every Iggy record ever mad sounds like hammered dog shit, yet they're regarded as masterpieces.[/quote]


:green: :thumb: :guinness:

Joel,

I guess I misunderstood your initial post. I went back and reread it and I think I was internalizing what you were writing. I'm currently disenchanted with DIY so I think that clouded what I was reading. My current project has become a total abortion due to a string if amateurish mistakes, not to mention it's just not..... oh hell it sucks. I won't bore you with the details beyond thinking I knew how to read a tape measure better.

Keep on truckin.

-Richard

my tape measure lied to me the other day too. I'll just leave it at that. :green: