I'm Done w/ Gear Videos & Reviews

all right so I told myself that I'm not going to spend more than 1 hour making this video so I'm sorry if my makeup is all rushed and if the production quality is ass because there's not even two dozen camera operators working this shoot so let me tell you a little story back when I started this channel uh I called it Ben and gear some people back in 1960s might remember that and it started as kind of a low motivation side project to make myself speak better because I was a professional musician at the time that was kind of my only profession and I moved down to Georgia to like this wooded area and I just worked on music and composed for projects and never really spoke all that much to anybody and one day I think I've told this story like 50 times because people are like why did you start a YouTube channel but I remember getting my hair cut once and I was asked just a question about something in my life and I couldn't really string a sentence together all that well and I thought to myself man I need to like get a social life or something because this is probably bad to not be able to string a sentence together when you need to answer a simple question but um instead I thought that creating a syn channel would be the the solution to that but I also knew that if I did a good job I would eventually get some free gear and that I would also meet some of the people who are making some of the tools that I'm making to do the most important thing in the world which is write music to me anyway that's always been my number one thing and uh both of those things came true I got tons of free gear and I made some really good friends and met some really brilliant people one of the biggest examples of those friendly connections would be polyend and if you're one of the people who is upset about the polyend play plus release scenario and you're expecting this to be an apology video put put it away and zip up your pants the reason that this isn't an apology video is because in this situation I don't think that I have to apologize for anything I wasn't paid anything to make that video I did get a prototype that I disclosed in the video that I got for free it's sitting right over there I've never sold a prototype or any product that I've been given for free on this channel in my life literally never sold one of them they're all here in a box I think gave a few away if it was like a smaller thing that I really just wanted to throw out and make space for and by far more importantly I was not dishonest about anything I didn't try to sell you anything and I can't think of a time where I've been dishonest in any launch video I'm usually very Vigilant of the influencer feeling that you get when you're making those videos which I'm going to get to in a moment but in this particular circumstance I do think that between the two options where one is a product coming out and then 18 months later some new hardware comes out and you could trade in that product and get the upgrade for half off I believe that that is better than intentionally for marketing purposes holding off an upgrade for a few more years to get the full amount out of your customer when you're essentially getting the same functionality with both of those options I stand by my opinion which may be wrong which brings me to the next thing I do not think that me having a different opinion than somebody about a piece of gear means that I deserve to be wiped off the planet I don't think that it means that I should kill myself I don't think that it means that this channel deserves to be hacked I don't think that I deserve to be doxed or contacted at my home address or through family members addresses and this is just a tiny sliver of the that's taken place in the last 7 months and the majority of that unfortunately comes from the gear and synth spaces or people who are part of those communities I realized that those Bad actors make up maybe one in 30 people in this community and the other 29 people are genuinely nice lovely musicians but in the last couple months people from those spaces have called Lop Israeli scum they've attacked other creators for their sexuality or gender and I'm done if you couldn't tell I am really really being passionate about everything including making Gear videos and when I am making a gear video and I'm making music with something I'm enjoying myself a whole lot and I am not really caring about what the battery life is like or what the what type of USB port it has on the back or um you know what kind of plastic it's made out of and as long as it's not getting in my way of making music I am just happy as a pig and but caring about those things that I just mentioned that is the job of a reviewer or unboxer or demo or synth tuber and then when I do play with something like the NPC keys or op1 and something about the UI gets in the way of me actually making music then I start caring about all those things and I start nitpicking the things that I don't like and then when you do that the chorus of people calling you a influencer shill it's quiet and then the of people screaming at you because you've insulted their favorite piece of gear becomes the loudest thing in the world and uh long story short I'm just not cut out for the job the last product launch video that I made before this one this morning was the pend tracker mini in April and that had an equal amount of toxicity and drama surrounding it and my way of dealing with that was being 100% transparent by releasing this video and then conver converting this channel to a nonprofit organization so I would have no personal financial incentive for any of these product videos at all and I didn't do this for you I did this for me because I felt gross and I wasn't enjoying making it in the process of making this last video I kept wondering what it was that I was doing um for example I took off my sweatshirt in part of the video because I got hot from the camera lights and I thought to myself I wonder if anybody's going to like mention that and be like oh he's sweating because he's lying you know or some stupid like that and sure enough somebody did but even though every single thing in that video except for the specs I guess came from my brain and my mouth but I still felt like I was going to be called a shill and that I was going to be expected to be selling something I guess and I kept thinking about how annoyed am I going to be by the comments how many threats are there going to be how many weird you're being paid to make this accusations are they going to be even though I'm not being paid anything to make it and if these insecurities or these insecure thoughts were happening when I was doing something that I needed to survive then obviously the next uh action I would take was to deal with those insecurities and learn how to continue making content without them but I don't need to make launch day Gear videos and I don't really need to show you all of the features in a new piece of gear that just came out I'm certainly not being paid to do it from the company directly and so I was only really doing it because I enjoyed it and now I don't enjoy it anymore I think that I was wrong in thinking that I could make content like that about music gear and not at least somewhat be an influencer the most dreaded term ever right so I'm not going to cover gear anymore if I have a beta unit of that piece of gear or even without pay if I'm being contacted as part of a publicity or marketing strategy from that company which pretty much every company has when it comes to sending YouTube creators gear when it comes to exploring new gear that I am organically interested in I'm going to be limited to what I can personally afford or what a retailer is willing to give me a discount on so maybe me making this video right now functions as something that I could link people to when they ask me my opinion on a new piece of gear I could just be like watch this here's why I don't have an opinion yet or maybe the function of this video will be like when somebody quits drinking and they tell all their friends and family that they're seven days sober or a month sober so it like increases the accountability it's kind of weird to think of it that way there's still a few other things where I've been talking to some gear manufacturers where they just want to send it to me for my comments on it and if I feature it on a stream then I feature it on a stream it would be a huge dick move for me to send those things back because of this little precedent that I decided to State just now so this is going to take a few weeks to see itself through so while all of this is happening on the exterior on the interior of this nonprofit myself and a few others have basically been full-time working on a massive research and documentary project that is still a few months in the making but it is the largest project that I've made made on this platform so far and I guess while I'm talking about that do you hear a hum right now or a rumble does it sound like there's a truck outside of your house or some sort of giant boat or something and it's just rumbling but you can't actually figure out where it's coming from if you do hear this Rumble then you would probably be happy to know that between 2 and 3% of the human population shares this phenomenon in common with you and if you do hear this rumble or hum I would very much appreciate if you could fill out a brief survey that I have put a link to in the description of this video and uh that would be awesome thank you but anyway yeah I'm probably a terrible gear reviewer and I'm kind of okay with that at this point I did realize it quite a long time ago and I was just hoping that when I made any type of launch video that it was as inspiring and fun to watch as it was to make but I'm not going to lie the synth and gear Community can be super toxic and frankly it's not fun to make them anymore if a person exists out there that hears this news and goes a first of all I'm kind of surprised that somebody exists and feels that way and thank you and I also just want to tell you that's going to be fine because there are a lot of really creative and talented synth fluenc SL yoube creators slashgear reviewers and they're not at all yet burnt out from the toxicity and there will be no shortage of demos and reviews and takes every single time a new piece of gear comes out so yay for all of us I like watching this stuff too all right anyway thank you for why am I holding a paint marker while recording this thank you for watching and attending this little emotional board meeting I will have some Reverb pedal videos coming out in the near future they're not sponsored they're not based on any particular company but they are you know in this space like I said this stuff's going to take a little bit of time to run its course um I think that before I go we should have a little funeral for the Ben and Gear song and Logo one last time before I delete the file forever 3 2 one hit it am

Channel: Benn Jordan

Views: 220,999

Keywords: music production, science, synthesizers, pro audio

Id: FEO0NVPyED4

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2023