Maintaining or Regaining Your Sanity

What can you do? First off, recognize that it isn’t you that’s stupid. You’ve been being had by an infantile industry that used to be cute and is now beginning to be annoying. After you’ve absorbed that self-affirmation, then it’s time for a couple of other decisions. The first is to make a decision about time vs. money, which in turn will lead to some decisions about what computer(s) to buy. The second is to make a decision about whether or not to become activist about this.

Given the way computers and software are today, you can spend a bunch of time, you can spend a bunch of money, or most likely you can spend half a bunch of each. The ratio is up to you. If you’d rather spend time than money, then develop your computer management chops and dedicate significant chunks of your life to mastering computers. There are numerous advantages to this path, particularly if you are youngish (under 40, f’rinstance), because you will end up with a powerful and marketable expertise to go along with your musicianship and recording craft:. You will become a computer expert! Yikes!!

On the other hand, if your time is limited and/or you hate computers, be prepared to spend money. Not a lot, perhaps, but a fair amount (which is what I’ve done). For what? To buy multiple computers and dedicate them to specific tasks. The result? Problems will be localized and comparatively easily solved, and you’ll become more productive. Changes in one function won’t cause your house of cards to come tumbling down in other areas. And you can choose dedicated computers and operating systems that are each focused on a specific need, which means cheaper computers. This strategy also allows you to lease computers, which in turn frees up cash, and keeps your hardware more current.

For instance, I use an elderly Mac IIsi for writing and business, with a Powerbook 100 as an external hard drive. I use a Mac Quadra 650 for Digidesign software and some Mac MIDI work. I use a Leading Edge 486 for TEF analysis and IBM MIDI work. Since I’ve done this, I’ve been considerably more productive. The Quadra has never crashed, the IIsi behaves itself moderately well, the Powerbook has Special Instructions galore, and the IBM is fine now that I’ve learned (a) never to muck about with the DOS prompt and (b) how to do a “clean boot” (a Special Instruction that disables all the Special Instructions that come with Windows – “Hold Down The Shift Key When You Turn The Computer On”).

In 2005, I’m using a Mac G4 laptop (plus a cinema display and real keyboard) for all my office and busienss work, using OS X (which I find buggy and unreliable). In the studio, I’m using a Mac G4 (plus cinema display) housing Pro Tools 5.1.1 with three DSP cards (it went in service in 2001), sticking with OS 9 (it’s getting increasingly buggy and unreliable). FYI, I’m still using the Leading Edge 486 and MS-DOS for my TEF Analyzer, and it contiues to chug right along. Amazing!

The benefit to this arrangement is that I spend far less time crapping around with computers, and far more time working on music and writing. The downside is I spend more money on hardware (even if it is tax deductible) and I know less about computers.

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