 Hello, Osleigh to Sync here. At the time of recording, we're in the first week of February, and January already feels like a distant dream. For those not already in the know, January is a yearly creative challenge, in which participants attempt to create, record and release a new piece of music or jam on each day in the month of January. I really enjoy these kinds of challenges, and this is my third year taking part. And while the things that you create during the challenge are cool, I think that forcing yourself to create under these kinds of restrictions can help you learn a lot about your own creative process. And taking the time to reflect on that can bring you huge benefits for the next 11 months. So, in this video I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about what I took away from this year's challenge, and hopefully some of it will resonate with you. Also, because I'm a massive nerd, I wanted to break down some stats on what worked for me, what gear I got the most use out of and so on. But more of that when we get into it. So the first thing that this year's January reinforced for me is that when I'm working on a project, momentum is everything. So, first, spoiler alert, I didn't manage to create a jam on every single day. Although, if we take a look at this chart here, you'll see that this was my most successful year, clocking in at 18 days out of 31. That's a sweet 58% hit rate. That's real terms, year on year gains, which I'm sure we can all agree is 100% a stonks. Interestingly, if we extrapolate this data, I forecast that I'll finally manage to do all 31 days of January around the middle of 2027, which is no good to anyone because that's July. Anyway, eye digress. Part of what made this year more successful was how stubbornly I stuck to the schedule at the start of the month. Feeling a sense of duty to adhere to the challenge meant that I had a good, solid seven-day streak at the start of the month, even resorting to posting a jam from the passenger seat of a car as I knew that was my only chance to record. My stubbornness was born out of a belief that if I skipped a day, picking the challenge back up would be harder, and I was right. As soon as I broke the streak, it killed my momentum, and I was never able to get the same level of consistency happening again. We'll get to what else contributed to this breaking productivity in a bit. Nevertheless, one thing I will take away from this month is the fact that if I want to take on a large creative project, and if I need to get it done to a schedule, it's pretty much essential that I create a clear runway for myself so that I can build up and not break that momentum, because I know how difficult it will be to get going again. So next I want to talk about what is kind of the flip side of momentum, and that's burnout. So I have a satisfying but demanding full-time job, as well as a young family, I have a one-year-old baby. So this channel is very much done in the snatched three moments, usually when everyone else in the house is asleep. On a normal month, it's really only once or maybe twice a week that I can probably work on a video or jam, but obviously, January demanded a higher level of dedication. While the challenge was going on, I had some particularly heavy weeks at work, and both my wife and baby got ill during the month, but I was stubborn enough to keep trying to get jams done, depriving myself of any downtime and quite often sleep. This was arguably a dumb thing to do, especially as my brain and body were being quite clear that they wanted to take a break, and you can probably see on the chart here where the burnout really kicked in. Actually you can probably hear it in the music in a lot of places too. There was definitely a swing towards darker sounds and discordance later on in the month. There was a big chunk of the month where I was exhausted, low lacking focus and drive, and I wish I had looked after myself a little better rather than obsessively trying to keep up a schedule. Actually there were a bunch of nights where, despite feeling like crap, I tried to record something, but I can't create in that state, and I should have used that time to sit and play computer games, or even better, just go to bed early. Ironically, I probably would have gotten more jams done if I'd consciously taken a few more days off. Basically, the lesson learned here is that no project, especially something like January, when you're having fun is worth risking your mental health over. It's okay to take a break, it's okay to stop and talk to someone about it and reflect on why it is that you need to take that break. That being said, I don't want to come across sounded like January caused me any suffering. I did that to myself, and there were probably lots more days later on in the month where the act of creating raised my mood and energy level significantly. If you're a creative person, creating is probably a big part of your self-care regime. You just need to find that balance. So, enough of that philosophical stuff, let's talk gear. I own a lot of synths. Too many, if my wife is to be believed, but one piece of evidence working in her favour is that there are plenty of synths that I haven't used in ages, or used very rarely. I used January as an opportunity to fix that, and I took the time to dig into some synths that I've neglected. At the top of the chart, you'll see the Deep Mind, a synth which I legitimately haven't used to make music on since the previous January, and I only featured in one other tutorial shortly after that. That's a shame, because I really love using that synth in the way that it sounds. Similarly, the MiniBrute 2S, I've used that in a bunch of tutorials, but I haven't taken the time to make any music with it really since I first got it, and it sounds fantastic, like, really inspiring, and I really, really enjoyed making music with it. The reason for the neglect is clear. When I sit down to make videos, I will always prioritise newer gear, because I think that seeing newer gear is more interesting to everyone watching the channel, and I'm more than happy to be told that I'm wrong here, because it will save me lots of money. On top of that, I will prioritise making tutorials, rather than jams, again, because I feel like that's the main reason that you're here on the channel. I knew that I was going to be selling some synths this year, so that I could afford some other stuff I've been ironing up, but January has made that harder, because it's made me reassess what stuff I actually enjoy to use to make music, which ultimately is what this expensive habit is meant to be about. I guess the learning point here is, make music with your gear, make as much music as you can, because that is what's going to help inform you as to what it is about an instrument that inspires you to create. Whether that's sound, or workflow, or even aesthetics, if nothing else being truly informed about your own creative preference is going to narrow the pool of gear that you're lusting over. Side note, and this is something that I already knew about myself, but I think it's worth sharing, using one thing at a time. The majority of my jams this past month were using only one box, or one box in some effects. Part of that is for practical reasons. It's easier to set up and shoot one thing at a time, but I genuinely have a big, big preference for a box that I can use to make an entire jam out of on its own. It's probably just because I'm bad at multitasking. So I guess we should finish by talking about the music itself. I feel like this year's jams are of a much higher quality than previous years. Jamiro is kind of meant to be a rapid fire of creating a thing, put it out quickly, no regrets, and move on to the next thing. But there were some nights that I would abandon something that was nearly finished, just because I didn't think it was ever going to be good enough. There are probably pros and cons to that sort of creative hissy fit, as I referred to it in some of the posts, but one thing I did which I think was kind of smart is if I was going to destroy my work, and sometimes I was literally pulling patch cables out to destroy the sound completely, I would radically switch gears immediately. So for example, if I was trying to make something a bit electro, I would switch to drone. If I was failing to create ambient music, the very next thing I'd do is lay down a massive floor to the floor kick so that I was as far away from my failure as possible. This always worked for me, and I would work quicker and make something better every time. The lesson here was if you're going to burn everything down, you ought to flee the country and start a new life immediately, if you'll excuse the overstretched metaphor here. I hope you see what I mean. As for my favourite stuff, I thought that with Day 10 was a real banger, and I'm really proud of that one, but honestly despite my general mood by that point, the ambient, drony, soundtrack-y stuff near the end of the month is some of my favourite stuff I've ever put out on the channel. Day 25 on the diggitone in particular is something I'd like to revisit and release properly. The latter part of the month has got me really interested in the possibility of soundtracking for film or theatre. Perhaps that might be a goal for later in the year. Anyway, I hope at least some of that was interesting. If you did January this year, perhaps leave a lesson that you learnt in the comments so that we can all learn from each other. Also, if you enjoyed the video, please do the whole like and subscribe thing so that you don't miss out on any upcoming synthy videos. As always, thank you for joining me. Take care. See you next time. Bye-bye.