What’s on Your Holiday Wish List – Beyond the Usual Suspects? (Open Thread)

Yes, it’s that gift-y time of year again, which naturally means among lovers of music technology, thoughts turn to gear wishes and dreams of new hardware. We’ve asked in the past what readers want in their stockings and presents – and, just as interestingly, what they’d give to others. And you’ve come up with fascinating ideas.

This year, I’ll frame the question a bit differently: what, beyond the usual suspects, would you love to have? Books or music collections? Handmade or boutique items? Unique tools and toys that’d help you be creative? And what would you give to others – perhaps out of the gifts you’ve given yourself this year? (Music lessons, for instance?)

We’ll again pull together those ideas for next week. And we’re also looking through the best music of the year. Given the lavish presentation music itself often now has – far from disposable digital downloads, gorgeous vinyl records and limited-edition prints and books and design objects – I imagine those two questions might well merge.

Nor does this has to be raw consumerism: the best gifts, to me, can start a life-long love of music or be an object that embodies a connection to another person. If ever we, the music tech press, may just encourage endless throwaway purchases, I think it’s also our obligation as journalists to find the tools (free or pricey) that will make you musically productive and that you’ll value over a long time. (If you think that we lack that motivation, by the way, you’ve never been buried under a stack of review hardware. Ahem.)

But before I open my own mouth, I’d love to hear what you’re thinking – or what gap we might fill. Fire away.

And if this seems like “filler,” on the contrary, I know from past experience sometimes it’s what gets written in comments that I enjoy the most.