Hi all,
here is something I needed to write down to get it out of my system, maybe someone will find this interesting even though it may be the 1000th thread about this. Thanks for reading, maybe you feel similar and it helps a little.

I started my music journey completely clueless in 2021 with a cheap midi controller, FL Studio and a handful of free plugins - I stuck with Vital, LinPlug Alpha and dexed. FL being a huge investment for me at that time, I learned everything of it by trial and error and had fun making some crappy tunes, thinking I will surely progress after a while. At that time I did not knew about the magnitude of the whole music production scene, commercialized to its core and trying to hook me with all the promises that don't hold up, and neither about the cracking scene.

I knew from the start that I wanted to do Jungle / DnB, Psybient and Atmospheric Dub Techno, yes I know completely different genres, but I thought I could just switch back and forth between them and then create nice album art in blender or whatever since I like art too. Anyway from the jungle scene I found out the Korg Triton is the synth to go for, and for Dub Techno it was Ableton - both were financially way out of reach for me at that time. So after a while I found two things - first, a certain sister site and later plugin boutique to get discounts hopefully sometime in the future. That's basically the start of my plugin GAS addiction.

I was uncomfortable with using the cracks and eventually bought both. The Triton definitely was a good investment as I made ONE good track I am proud of with it. However, I was not able to adapt to ableton's workflow. FL is much more modular with its Patcher and imo has a better automation and piano roll design. But I am sure that ableton sounds different, more dub techno like with its synths and effects and to this day I'm unsure if I should switch to it after all. But I didn't yet, its sitting there on my machine without being used.

While my financial situation improved since then, my spendings have escalated too, and last week I checked my spendings on music stuff over the past 4 years. It amounted to slightly over 3000 bucks since OF COURSE my damn mind had to believe the ads "buy this and you'll be instantly good" and so on. So I caved in and bought plugins like Serum, other stuff from Korg (instead of the korg collection, I was so stupid to buy individual plugins of them), Pitchmap (for whatever reason) and a larger keyboard.

Guess what, I still use Vital and never touched Serum either for example. Some purchases were downright detrimental for me, as instead of learning what keys to play I stuck pitchmap on the mixer track like a total donkey, and instead of creating my own FX chains I relied on Tantra and Rift. My verdict: Don't use them if you yourself want to be creative instead of the machine doing it for you.

And of course I scoured the sister site and found out I like this and that plugin that could easily set me back yet another 1k. My brain now wants to buy Diva next since it has one fucking preset that someone used in one of my favourite tracks but I can even recreate that one in Vital as it is literally two square wave oscillators two octaves apart. Sure analogish sound is nice and Diva is a good plugin but I literally have tens of VA plugins already and I don't even like Diva's UI and probably won't ever use it either. And don't get me started on sample libraries which I only haven't bought yet since they are way too massive in GBs for my laptop.

So after two good songs and maybe 5 good short loops, I have nothing else to show for it as all I did was just trying out the newest shiny thing for the last like 3 years instead of sitting down and do whatever it takes to get the sound I so desperately want to produce out of my speakers.

Over the last weekend I tried to delete plugins and am down about 30% like some drug addict, still having 100 FX and 80 Synth plugins. Some I want to keep as I know the bands I liked used these, others might eventually be useful, others I rarely use but have paid for.

So what is my message? Better stick to the best free plugins out there as they are equivalent in quality to the best gear there was like 10 - 15 years ago, and only buy or crack what you KNOW you will need for more than like one song. And by all means spend your money on vacations or something as long as you still can with the world being in its current state rather than the next shiny thing. I know that is very hard and my brain is already looking at upcoming synths like SWAY and Zebra 3. I should just not visit plugin news websites anymore but its hard to stop these habits, good thing I never downloaded TikTok or some other brainrot apps.

Anyways I'll have a look at your comments tomorrow, thanks for reading and let's hope we all get there where we want to be!

 

Which makes it your own fault. Not judging here. I only look for new plugins if I need one and don't update plugins if they're already working fine and do what I need them to do. At some point I DID chase plugins, but quickly realized I shouldn't do that. I firmly believe in "don't fix if it ain't broken".

 

All beginnings are difficult; you have to make your own experiences, and some things work and some don't.
But you shouldn't over-dramatize your path, which is full of obstacles, but rather look ahead.

Before you buy something, download a demo version to test it out.

As the saying goes, "Practice makes perfect."
I think I gathered that you now have a rough idea of where your journey should take you.

Remember, music isn't a fixed process; it depends on what you love and what you want to do.
Failures are part of it; anything else would be stagnation.