Update on Part 1
Well then! A lot has changed since I posted up Part 1 of my studio tour. I’ve finally moved away from the more “gamer” setup of a big, beefy desktop and two monitors, down to a laptop and one, big 4k monitor. BEST CHANGE EVER. I feel so much more lightweight. My laptop is more powerful than my desktop was and I can produce on it efficiently and easily. I mean, this is just what I was looking for. I’m really getting the studio dialed in to have 2021 be awesomely music-oriented for me.
Controllers
I used to go nuts over controllers. I had an Akai MPK249, a Novation Circuit (which is also a synth, kinda), a NI Maschine Jam, a NI Kontrol 88, and other toys. No more. A goal has been to downsize and surround myself with gear that speaks to me, excites me, and gets the creative juices flowing. So, no more craziness. Nowadays I run purely on just my NI Kontrol 88 and an 88-key digital piano. I also plan on getting a Novation 49 sl mk3 for more access to my modular gear, and that’s it. I don’t need any more than that.
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The Kontrol is a great full-size keyboard that pairs well with Komplete Kontrol and for synth performance
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My digital piano is great to be able to sit and ideate on a piano while having my DAW recording the MIDI to capture any magic
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The Novation 49 sl mk3 will enable a lot of creativity in writing short licks / hooks, and better integrating my modular gear
Simple, easy, gets the job done, and my gear doesn’t get in the way of me playing. If I’m sitting there looking for a particular sound, I just turn on my computer keyboard as a controller for a second while I play with tones. All. I. Need.
Rackmount Gear
I love gear. I do my best to not go over the top with it, though. Need to rain that shit in before I’m short on rent, hah. I’m not going to list every single piece of gear here. Feel free to ask me directly if you’re really curious. These are just a few of my favorite gems.
Right off the bat, I’m sure many people are having a “WTF” reaction. This is a sampler from the 90’s and is viewed as an old piece of junk. It’s frustrating to use, doesn’t have a lot of features, it’s super clunky, and people saw it as garbage within a few years of its release. I, on the other hand, absolutely love it. This thing is bananas. Would I use it when I’m just needing to sample thing cleanly and clearly? No. Never. There are a million better samplers for that. But what if I want to get weird and start really messing with a sample in ways I never thought possible? Oh yes. This thing can manipulate samples in all kinds of weird ways and outputs such a beautifully warm tone. For example, I’ll take a short, high-pitched sample, feed it into the S2000, play it two octaves lower, then sample that output into a digital sampler, and I’ll get this crazy awesome sound that more often than not, is playable as an instrument. Also, the thing uses 3.5” floppies, which is always fun. TIP: the base wave shapes that come with the boot disk sound amazing if you sample them out to a digital sampler. Load up the square wave, play a note into a digital sampler, then play that up and down the keyboard. You’ll be shocked.
A vocal processor with a firmware version of antares’ Auto-Tune built-in. How cool is that!? This thing is a lot of fun. The compression, tube modeling, all the regular ol’ voice processing features are okay. The double track is pretty neat and an easy way to immediately get a doubled vocal track into your DAW in real-time. But the auto-tune. The auto-tune is SO fun. It’s super responsive, very clean, and unlocks a lot of fun stuff, and it’s $200 cheaper than the plugin.
dbx 566 Dual Vacuum Tube Compressor
There is something about hardware compressors. I don’t know what it is, but it’s just a specific kind of sound. It’s not as precise or as fast as a plugin, and there is a warm that only vacuum tubes get you. I use this guy for some light compression on an individual track/instrument. I’ll bounce out in real-time then reset the compressor for the next instrument. I don’t always end up using it, but when I do it’s often times it’s a very light touch, just a light sprinkle of warm that acts as the perfect gel between tracks. Fun, fun, fun.
What a beast. What an absolute powerhouse. This tiny little slice of eurorack heaven is the sparkly-est of gems. A semi-modular moog device with a line-in and the iconic moog ladder filter? Yes. That’s enough to justify buying this thing. The fact it also has an oscillator, LFO, sequencer, etc., all of that stuff is just gravy. This is probably the most creative device I own and unlocks so much creativity within me. I’ll use it as an actual synth or most commonly, just one piece of it, the sequencer, the LFO, the oscillator, or most of all…the filter. My gawd. The filter.