Gear and collaborators

Your equipment. Both kinds run out, in different ways.

Guide 03 · 3 min read

A professional recording room, desk and monitors set up for a session — A room, a desk and everything you brought with you Gear

Talent does the work. Gear and collaborators are what make a song sound like nobody else made it. They are also the two card types that do not last forever.

Gear wears out

Instruments, recording kit, the clothes. Gear is where most of your uniqueness comes from, and it wears down the more you write with it. A piece used in every session fades faster than one saved for the songs that mattered.

Collaborators have a session count

Each gives a bonus and a limited number of sessions, then leaves. Famous ones have more sessions and cost more, so the price per session is closer than it looks. A big bonus with few sessions is for a song you are trying to make special. A modest bonus with plenty of sessions is someone you work with all the time.

Watch the genre on it

Gear often carries a genre. It is worth a lot when it matches what you are recording and nothing at all when it does not.

When they run out

Used-up cards leave your collection, which is not all bad news. The thing to avoid is everything running out in the same week and dropping you back onto plain cards.