I came across The Paradox of Choice talk today.
It’s very interesting.
It also explains why I never get around to writing songs - I’m always thinking/reading about something that would make my (non-existant) songs better.
At least I know why it happens, now to overcome it…
Yeah, saw that talk a while ago but I didnt apply it to music writing. Thats a good take on it with regards to VSTs/genres etc.
Certainly made me smile when I watched it though.
YES!! I suffer from this MASSIVELY! Especially having studied music making in some shape or form for the past 7/8 years. All I can thing about is what I should/could be doing instead of just doing it!
I’ve decided I’m gonna try and forget as much as I can about what I have learned. And also follow some of the advice and ideas here about easing off the constant external stimulation of music/tv/internet. 
and just. make. music.
…I might watch that TED talk first though! 
Or participate in a competition. That way you have to make and finish a song and hopefully you’ll keep doing it even after the compo is over. At least that’s what I’m aiming for. 
The 19th century rehashed into sound bytes for the internet generation?
Our limitations are making music we create special. You just have to embrace fact that it’s always possible to do better and be better, but you have to know when it’s good enough to be what it is, a form of your expressions.
i wholeheartedly agree, very well said. mastering the sense of having made a proper song is an art in itself; this is why some music can sound so simple, yet so awesome, because the creator did not think about it too much, and just expressed him/herself.
ok, let’s build a 10mn mindblowing song with 4 tracks and 1 xrni instrument, in less than… let’s say 4 hours
see you soon
Yes. I think it has to with trusting yourself and your own decisions at each stage.
…or those who perhaps didn’t get the education they’d have liked. Thanks for posting that, I definitely found it interesting and informative! I know it’s only a wiki article I could have found myself, but sometime relevance means more than content. I find the concept of angst in this context pretty fascinating.
We just need not to worry about shit
Ok I’ve tried to limit my choices, and yes, limitations work.
You should note that you actually chose how you limited your choises, so you basically made a pre-choise that limits your future choises. That’s why this video was bullshit. You wanted to do something, you had the chance because of the choises were there. Paradox of choise is that people don’t know what they need and want, so they make bad choises. Bad choises are bad. That’s no paradox. The paradox is between the words “more” and “enough”.
I ask myself why I’ve grabbed my 650 free VSTis, and my GBs of samples… and was nearly unable to achieve something with it, or by mere chance. Most of the time I use a host, whatever it is, and my m-Audio Oxygen 49 MIDI keyboard, and I play live, that’s all, I record a few quantized things sometimes, what is the starting point of further compositions. But I have to be pathologically unsatisfied with what I do, with my sound and/or music. Because finally whatever the quality of the VSTis I use, I still say to myself “it could be better”, and hope to find something “even better”, so I let my works in an “unfinished state”, and load, load, load , test test test neverending possibilities, hoping to sound “even better” in the future. I can’t easily say to myself, “ok I like it like that”. From my point of view, I can’t finish something and search something more, because I can’t enjoy it enough. I must have a poor idea of what would truely make it for me, and poor skills, because even if I had the good idea (what could never happen) I’m not sure to be able to correctly use my tools.
maybe thats why propellerheads dont add vst support to reason. appart from the licensing issue.
and the truth is i tend to produce more completed work when i use reason. maybe its the fewer choices reason offers (not fewer features or functionality)
the same thing happens with renoise on a fresh installation. it has a complete list of built in DSPs with complete features and functionality.
the paralysis for me starts when i add my 3gb vst collection.
then i stop making stuff and start testing vst compressor or distortion plugins to evaluate their tube modeling.
i know this is stupid and i also know that i can achieve similar results with a renoise distortion, filter, eq, and compressor (i have done tests for that of course 
)
but i really do that.
vsts are like the sirens.
huge sound libraries too