Turn It Off and On Again

Sometimes things just don’t work.

That’s the magic of turning the power switch off and on again.

One of the issues I ran into during my studio redesign wasn’t the gear itself — it was my attitude. Somewhere along the way, I started expecting things to work all the time. With the added complexity of cables, connections, sync sources, sub-mixers, and external hardware, that expectation was… optimistic.

Don’t get me wrong — my studio works perfectly about 98% of the time. But that remaining 2%? That’s where the learning happens. Screens freeze. Something doesn’t sync. A patch doesn’t save. A sub-mixer doesn’t get turned on. (That last one isn’t gear-related — that’s just me.)

When you work with hardware, these moments are part of the deal. Settings get lost. Devices behave strangely. Reprogramming begins. It’s not failure — it’s normal.

And it’s not unique to music gear.

I pay my phone bill through my provider’s app, and if I want to enter $129, I have to type every number twice: 1-1-2-2-9-9. The first press shows up, then disappears. An app update fixes it… for a while. Then it’s back. Software has quirks. Hardware has quirks. Electronics have quirks.

Somewhere during this redesign, I had to relearn a basic lesson: don’t panic.

There’s a moment in this video series where I completely lose perspective. The AKAI Force isn’t syncing properly. That’s it. It’s over. Cancel the whole hardware studio. DAWLESS is a lie. All this time was wasted. My life is ruined.

Then I turned it off.

Then I turned it back on.

And it worked perfectly.

In hindsight, my reaction was obviously unwarranted. These things happen. I know this. But at that particular moment, I was probably short on sleep, hadn’t had my morning coffee, and had lost perspective — which, if I’m being honest, was another recurring theme during this redesign.

To make matters worse (and funnier), immediately after the Force issue, the Maschine+ decided to shut itself off without warning. No goodbye. No explanation. Just… gone. That didn’t help my confidence in this so-called “DAWLESS” setup.

Of course, once everything was rebooted and powered correctly, it all worked exactly as expected. User error. Everyone knows the “turn it off and on again” rule — unless you’re overtired and under-caffeinated.

To be clear, I’m not talking here about serious failures — like dead power adapters, failing USB hubs, or a monitor that simply stops working. That’s a different story, and probably one for another day.

This is about the small things. The everyday hiccups. The moments where patience matters more than troubleshooting skills.

Now, when something isn’t working quite right, I try to remind myself: relax, reboot, retry.

Most of the time, that’s all it takes.