We are in the process of moving house.
The actual move is still around a month out, but because I have been in this house for a very long time, there is a massive amount of accumulated stuff to sort through. That means I am rapidly approaching the one task every producer absolutely dreads: unplugging the studio. Everything is going to have to be packed into boxes, and looking at the sheer volume of cables, I honestly don’t know exactly when it will all be unpacked, patched, and fully operational again in the new garage space.
With the clock ticking on the current setup, I decided I was due to record one last DJ mix last night. My goal was simple: I wanted to put together an hour of tunes that I could throw on a USB drive and listen to in the car while running errands.
What was supposed to be a relaxing evening of music instantly devolved into an hour of unpaid IT support.
First, I had to port my recent Spotify listening over to Beatport to actually buy and download the tracks. Then, I fired up Rekordbox, only to be greeted by a mandatory software update due to a recently discovered security exploit. Once the software finally updated, I had to wrestle with the physical setup—re-routing the power supply, fighting with the USB docking station, and getting the controller talking to the laptop.
Finally, I reached for the GoPro that I normally use to record the video and audio for my sets.
It was dead. It absolutely refused to turn on.
At that exact moment, standing over a nest of cables with a dead camera in my hand, I was entirely over it. I was frustrated, the inspiration was completely gone, and I was dangerously close to just powering everything down and going to watch TV.
But then, a memory hit me.
The Kitchen Decks
Once upon a time, back when I was flatting, the turntables and the mixer didn’t live in a dedicated, acoustically treated studio. They lived right in the middle of the flat’s kitchen.
Because they were permanently set up in a high-traffic area, there was zero friction. We would constantly just jump on the decks whenever we walked by. You would put the jug on for a coffee, mix two tracks together while the water boiled, and then walk away.
We didn’t care about recording it. We didn’t care about the lighting. We certainly didn’t care if anyone else was listening. We were mixing purely for the visceral, tactile enjoyment of the process itself.
That was the entire reason I started playing music in the first place: for my own enjoyment.
Standing in my current studio, staring at the dead GoPro, I realized I had fallen into a massive psychological trap. Somewhere along the line, I had mistakenly decided that an hour spent mixing was only “worth doing” if I was able to convert it into content. If I couldn’t record it, upload it, and share it with others, it felt like a wasted effort.
I had completely lost the plot.
The Content Creator Trap
We live in an era where every single hobby has been monetized, documented, and commodified. We are conditioned to believe that if there isn’t photographic evidence of an event on a social media feed, it didn’t really happen.
If you build a modular synth patch, you have to film it for Instagram. If you play a DJ set in your bedroom, you have to stream it on Twitch. We have transformed the joy of “doing the thing” into the stressful, admin-heavy job of “making content about doing the thing.”
As I wrote previously regarding the trap of the electronic identity, when you allow the noun (Content Creator) to supersede the verb (Playing Music), you lose the joy of the craft. I was about to abandon a perfectly good evening of music simply because a camera battery was flat. The tail was completely wagging the dog.
No Views, Just Tunes
So, I left the GoPro turned off. I ignored the recording software in Rekordbox. I pushed the docking station out of the way.
And I mixed for an hour anyway.
It was fantastic. I played a bunch of heavy, rolling tracks that I genuinely wanted to hear. I pulled off some incredibly tight, long blends. I made a couple of minor mistakes. And absolutely no one else will ever hear it.
There is a profound freedom in creating something ephemeral. A live DJ set, much like an unpatched modular synthesizer sequence, is meant to exist in the moment and then vanish. It doesn’t need to be preserved in amber on a YouTube server to have value. The value was in the hour I spent standing behind the decks, actively engaged in a process I love, completely disconnected from the algorithm.
I didn’t get a file for the car, and I didn’t get a video for the channel. But I did get a brilliant reminder of why I actually do this. No views, no likes, just tunes.
I will tell you what, though. This entire frustrating saga has made me incredibly excited for the new garage studio build. I cannot wait to have a dedicated, permanent space where the decks and the synths are hardwired and ready to go. Because the moment you eliminate the setup friction, you can finally get back to just playing the music.