Hello

I have a Mac mini 2012 Quad Core i7, 16GB 3TB SSD and a MacBook Pro 2015 Quad core i7, 16GB 2TB SSD.

Despite having these my project libraries are almost a barren wasteland, with only around 20 projects on, most of which are covers. Covers don't create hits, and I have absolutely 0% creativity to make original music

I never has the guts to publish anything as I don't think I'm any good and a lot of people have turned around when I've posted music online and attacked me viciously and when I do try and finish one of these projects off, I open it and then within minutes it is shut down again.

This has been going on for years but now I have gotten to the point where I am thinking whether it is worth having two machines.

Nowadays when I do turn a machine on it will be the Mac mini, but I will just need up wasting my time because 9 times out of 10 I don't end up doing anything productive and if I do I normally end up getting dragged off the machine because someone else wants me to slave over the house and clean their kitchen mess up or something like that when they've literally just made that mess and left it for me to do.

Is it really worth keeping two machines?

Personally I now don't think it is, realistically looking into the future I seriously can't see myself getting anywhere with this so I don't see the point in having two machines.

What do you guys think and what do you think the Mac mini would be worth?

 

Hi Grey
as you decribe your current mindset it really makes no sense to have an extra computer for musik making.

I would sell the "beast" and would invest the money in a course to improve your self-confidence.
You can't achieve much anywhere with this attitude towards yourself.

Who always told you this nonsense that you can't achieve anything?
You just have to find out where your strengths are. That you have some, I have no doubt! Everyone has some.
You strengths may not be the ones you like them to be but I reccomend to use them instead of dreaming of others you don't have in the moment. Thats the easiest and fastest way to make you proud of yourself. When you come there much more will be possible, even making musik.

But if you have someone who is constantly putting you down, I would consider replacing him or her instead of the Mac Mini.

 

Hard to replace people who are complete strangers

 

Don't hope that technology and material things will solve your problems!

Rather invest your money in a short vacation - go away in a foreign gegend - make you before a note what you want to think about.
Try to find out what you want to achieve in life. Try to write down where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

The Work of Byron Katie is a way to identify and challenge those thoughts that cause all the suffering in the world.
It is a path that leads to inner peace and peace with the world. Anyone with an open mind can do The Work.
http://thework.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/English_LB.pdf

The Work: A Two Hour Intensive | Byron Katie | Wisdom 2.0

Byron Katie’s 4 Questions to Get out of a Negative Headspace, Stop Suffering, & Start Healing Now

What is cognitive therapy?
The term "cognitive" is derived from the Latin "cognoscere" and means "to recognize". Cognitive therapy is about becoming clear about one's thoughts, attitudes, and expectations. The goal is to recognize false and stressful beliefs and then change them. After all, it is often not only the things and situations themselves that cause problems, but also the perhaps far too great importance one gives them.

One stressful thought pattern, for example, is to immediately draw negative conclusions from an incident, to generalize them and to transfer them to similar situations. Generalizing thinking patterns are called "overgeneralization" in psychology. Another stressful thinking error is "catastrophizing": Something disturbing happens, and exaggerated worries promptly arise that a disaster could be imminent.

 

Yeah, I would go abroad, if the f*****g passport office would give me my passport, but at the moment they're saying they want to interview me for some stupid reason, but yet when I try and ring them up, the c***s don't answer!

To be fair, I've had enough...right from the word go, my mother ensured that life would be a total mess for me, doing substance abuse even when she was pregnant with me and also doing it after I was born and blowing it in my face. I just can't deal with the world and life anymore....everyday is torture.

 

It's high time that you start to draw the consequences. Start today and solve the problems.
Leave the past behind you - your own life still lies ahead of you, make something of it and don't let yourself be dragged down.
Get out of the situation - look for a safe anchorage. Do something...!

 

I just do not want to be here anymore, I’ve had enough. No matter what I do or how hard it try it’s never enough

 

Now I want to motivate you, if you don't go now, you will go down completely. Go now - you still have the strength.
You are the captain of your ship and determine the course. Only you have it in your hands - it is your life - live it.

 

you seem to have a really bad mood swing, but it's a good question/topic to discuss,

as a matter of fact, resale value of 10 years old MacMini or 7 years old MBP is next to none, don't expect to get any meaningful money from either unless you run across some really dumb person to buy that from you,

if I were in your situation, I'd probably make MacMini a HTPC rig for a TV in living room, it can play YouTube, music and basic online browsing better than average smart TV nowadays,
depending on battery lifespan of your MBP, you can start using it as some sort of tablet, huge advantage over iPad is real MacOS with fancy things like LittleSnitch and AdBlock support, usb connectivity etc..

if you're having creative block, perhaps forget about computers for a while, get some real musical instrument (or if you can't afford anything new right now just use whatever you can find, or even sing/hum) and just play and play, record ideas, play more....and after some weeks listen to that stuff of yours and pick let's say 1 out of 100 ideas and make something of it, there is no way everything would be so bad to trash it all,

and, music creation is an art, not everyone needs to be doing it, perhaps scratch that all together and start painting, or do something else completely different - spiraling into mindset of not being good enough will make you see problems everywhere, it's not how you want to feel about what you do, just the fact you're here at forum means you're more lucky than majority people on this world barely surviving

 

Nobody on here is a qualified psychologist/therapist/psychiatrist for a start. If there are some, they will never say so publicly and would privately message you.

People who are complete strangers should not be in your inner circle - ever.
The only people who are would be people who know you and love you. Their opinion matters, nobody else's, and even then, only mattering in areas they understand. If they do not, they would likely still encourage you to achieve your dreams.

You have some decisions to make. Are you doing this because you love music and love to write music or to be liked?
If you are doing it for the latter, you might need to rethink why you are doing it. Music critics are everywhere. If you wrote a great piece of music and knew it was great and strangers all said it was shit, would you keep going or can that piece of great music?
Believing in oneself, setting a goal and finishing it, is the real achievement.
If you wish to write for other people, be prepared to take an abundance of criticism. This goes with that territory. If you write for yourself, or purely for the art, opinions do not matter.

As for a computer? An inanimate object is a tool and it will never be anything more. If it is the only thing you rely on to make music then I say this for anyone, that is not being a musician. That is getting a computer to be a musician for you. You have to believe in yourself to create. This is the best thing anyone can do for themselves.

 

Sell the Mac Mini

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2022

I saw a quote on imgur the otherday that, i think, relates to your current frame of mind (it certainly related to how helpless i felt at how my life was).
Paraphrasing a bit, "You cant change your past but you can change your future".

I was stuck in a cycle of not being able to get anything done, i kept finding ways to blame everyone and everything for my inability to do anything. But reading that quote made me realise that i was the problem but also that i could be the answer to my problems.

Since then i've slowly started to get things done, just small things at the moment but for someone who has been unable to take responsibilty for anything for about 20 years, its been a massive change.

I wish you well and hope you manage to find your own reasons for taking back control of your life from the past problems.

 

Exactly. And the keyword is I

Almost everyone of us was or will be in a situation that seems to be hopeless at some point in our lives.
The only one that can change things and fate is myself. No one can do that for me.4

What I can do is reach out for help from friends or relatives or even proferssionals. Everyone has people who like them or even love them and like to care about one. But it remains me who must do the first step in that direction and ask for help if needed. Plus things need time to change to the better, it won't be done in days what took years to turn bad.

Thus the first thing I would do @GreyMakesMusic is reach out for help. Talk to people around you and ask for suppoting you. They will also help you decide if and how you should approach the matter.
This is not just a simple matter of selling the Mac or not. And the internet won't really help you much.

 

Last edited: Aug 24, 2022

I'd keep them both. These are Macs we are talking about, right?

 

IMO it makes perfect sense to use multiple little systems rather than one that has to do everything. When I started in the late 90s, I usually inherited old gear because people knew that I was into old computers. And in those days macs had become less popular. So my studio broke work down into tasks handled by different boxes. Like one would listen to my controllers and run patches to generate the MIDI patterns. Then a second box might be running a VST host, and a third would be recording to disk. Or maybe instead of a VST host the patterns trigger MIDI modules, and I use that system for video sampling and VJ effects instead.

Nowadays I am still doing a version of the same process as I get back into production again. I can't afford a modern computer, which would be great for the audio-rate modulation in Reaktor and/or VCV Rack. I'm testing setups for camming, so I need a fast box for OBS to stream or record audio and video. My old iPads can perform camera and mic duties, as well as filters and basic image processing. Then another box for real-time sampling, synthesis, effects, etc.

 

You can use an older iPad for Logic remote. It's nice as a channel strip remote, but the entire thing is more toylike if you are used to using a regular old setup. The only reason not to setup a ton of little machines, is because if you have a current spec Mac running Logic you will have the second machine just getting in the way. You need some pretty damn big projects before you start even needing to consider adding an Audiogridder-like solution. Just get the Max ram. Everything else you can get around somehow. (to a reasonable extent)

 

Last edited: Oct 14, 2022