Browse any music production forum, and you’ll encounter posts along the following lines. “I dug out some old recordings from 30 years ago. All I had back then was a cheap drum machine / four‑track cassette recorder / some Sellotape with iron filings stuck to it. But you know what? They sounded really good! I wish I could get that sound today!”

Limitations have also helped to shape entire genres, as Juan Atkins explains in this month’s Classic Tracks. Would early house and techno have been so minimalist if its producers had had endless polyphony on tap?

It’s tempting to conclude that embracing limitations is always a good thing, but I think the truth is more complicated. The warm feeling we get when looking back to work we did on limited rigs is the knowledge that we did the best we could with the resources available. And we can forgive ourselves if the toms didn’t quite come through properly, or the samples were too crunchy — because it wasn’t our fault.

Now that software gives us practically infinite resources, this confidence has been taken from us. If there’s even the slightest flaw in what we produce, it’s on us, because we surely did have the means to correct it. We can’t blame the equipment anymore. Nor, when infinite good advice is only a Google search away, can we plead ignorance.

When we smile at the recordings we made 30 years ago, that’s partly because we only need to take responsibility for their good points. When we wince at the mixes we delivered last month, it’s because we know that any issues could have been avoided, if only we’d done yet another round of ‘mastering’, or added another few nodes to the automation on the lead vocal.

So what’s the answer? Well, there’s nothing to stop us chucking everything out of our studios and working only with a Boss DR‑55 and a Portastudio today. But self‑imposed limitations are contrived. The decision as to what to chuck out is just another creative option, not something forced upon us by circumstances, so it doesn’t absolve us of responsibility for the consequences in the same way.

The key point is not that limitations are good in and of themselves. It’s that they force us to get the best from the kit we do have.

But the key point is not that limitations are good in and of themselves. It’s that they force us to get the best from the kit we have. And no matter how much gear we own, there’s always more we can do to get to know it. All synths are better when we learn how to program them. All mics become more versatile once we try them in multiple positions and polar patterns. And the thing that makes all of us better producers is knowing our own limitations.

Sam Inglis Editor In Chief