Post your keyboard controllers, synths, drum machines, etc!

SPINMASTER X said:

Hey I never questioned your setup, everyone has their own workflow. I actually really like your oldschool setup and wished I had something that cool. Whatever works and maximises your creative juices and workflow is always cool with me.

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Yeah, it's oldschool. I'm picking up the pieces, so to say. In this day and age of DAWs and super high-end audio recording, people have forgotten that most of the time, the old stuff (I'm also talking about recording/mixing equipment here) sounds just as good but usually is easier to use, more reliable (less computah crashes, etc.) and also way less expensive. Sure, it does not have all those nifty features of modern software/hardware but it's nothing that can't be solved with creativity. The less you have, the more flexible you gotta be and this gives me lots of inspiration. It's also a great way for a beginner to get into making music, a complete basic oldschool studio setup costs less than a full version of Cubase or Ableton + controller.

I've been part of several projects where the music was recorded and produced entirely on computers and it always felt kinda weird to me. I know about the power of modern-day equipment and really love the stuff some people can do with it but I wouldn't want to center my music making process around a DAW software, it just feels wrong to me, even more as I rarely work with samples or sample loops. Usually, the only samples I use are bassdrums and a few percs, all the other stuff comes straight from my hardware synths.

But hey, I don't want to make a religion out of it. In the end it's all about the music and when a track is good, noone is going to care what equipment you made it on. My label boss Oliver Kapp sold all his hardware over the past 10 years and now only uses a Powerbook to make tracks and they're as cool and funky as in the old days, just with higher bit rates. I wish he had sold me his 808 and 909 but it would have been too expensive for me anyway...

hyper,

I was thinking of buying a TR-8 and possibly VT-3 but then decided to wait for further updates for those boxes. The TR-8 sounds very good, test-drove one at a local music store and it's an excellent drummy with added extras that you won't find on the originals. I'm not very keen on the System 1, though, even though the recently released SH-101 plug-out sounds very close to the real thing. It has this trancey and new-style Electro vibe that I don't really like.

the recent lightman tracks sound great

I like the workflow of your production setup, focusing on ideas and riffs rather than processing or mix down.

there are a few ways to update your setup, ableton would give you the most flexibility and midi programmability letting you work entirely in midi without having to process audio, although you could if you wanted to resample some loops.

There is very little ableton cant do midi wise and by using max for live you can expand its capabilities even further (max is a whole other can of worms).

Add a MOTU midi timepiece (the latest units are called express) and you should be set to program in midi and record to reel to reel or DAT or your DAW of choice. the latest versions can be found, cracked, anywhere.

As far as I know, the security device that Cubase uses is not crackable(or at least, hasn't been cracked yet). I'd like to give Cubase a go, but there's other things I'd rather spend $500 on at the moment.

P.S. - I notice most big name producers these days use Logic Pro X on Macbook Pros .... Ultimately though, you should just use whatever you're comfortable with and try not to get too crazy building up a VST collection

hyper said:

the recent lightman tracks sound great

I like the workflow of your production setup, focusing on ideas and riffs rather than processing or mix down.

there are a few ways to update your setup, ableton would give you the most flexibility and midi programmability letting you work entirely in midi without having to process audio, although you could if you wanted to resample some loops.

There is very little ableton cant do midi wise and by using max for live you can expand its capabilities even further (max is a whole other can of worms).

Add a MOTU midi timepiece (the latest units are called express) and you should be set to program in midi and record to reel to reel or DAT or your DAW of choice. the latest versions can be found, cracked, anywhere.

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They finally let you out of jail?

Where is whisper's game?

dk, Ja Rule says hi and where are his "$10 muthafuckin dollaz"

ask him

tak,

The TR-8 sounds incredible, the firmware was recently upgraded to 1.1 across the who AIRA series to tighten up the midi and add some functions to the sequencers, that KICK.. in the roland promo video there are side by side comparisons on an oscilloscope between the td-8 and the 808 hits and they are nearly identical. I could pass on the system 1 and vocal transformer and go for a Arturia Minibrute and korg mini

The builtin compression circuit of the TR-8 makes for some really hard and heavy sounds. Using the 909 model with it results in just the kicks and snares I like. The thing is that I already have three drummachines (Roland TR-606, TR-626 and Korg Volca Beats) and two hardware samplers (Ensoniq Mirage and Akai S-20) with a large library of drums and percs that I made myself over the years so I don't put a rush on buying one. Maybe I'll pick up a used one down the road, let's see.

These days I'm more into synthesis of drums and percussion. Many kicks you hear in my tracks have been created using a combination of various machines like the Nanozwerg for the bottom end, the FB-01 for the initial drum click transients and a low-pitched 202 with a snappy envelope for the overall fatness, then the whole thing gets processed through a dbx 166a compressor and Behringer Ultrafex II enhancer, sampled and further fine-tuned with Cool Edit Pro, re-sampled, et voila. I have about 30 floppy disks of these drum sounds that range from traditional Roland/Linn drums to post-modern stuff. I also bought/downloaded some sample collections over the years, the last one was Vintage Movie Vocals by Resonance Sounds that I got for cheap (10 bucks). They're too cheesy to use them directly (I don't really wanna sound like Bomb The Bass, eh) but cutting some stuff out of them and giving them the Lightman treatment is big fun. I'm working on a track right now that contains some of that stuff.

Making a track and doing a live gig is almost the same for me. There's no real arrangement, at least not right from the start. After creating a series of single tracks in Notator, I'll usually start arranging them in some way or another, record a few more, dub them and mix them, I also use muting and demuting a lot. No two takes are the same, and once I have made a version that suits me, I use the graphical equalizer function in Cool Edit Pro for the first mixdown and post-production. The whole process takes about three to five hours, if it takes longer, I delete all the stuff and start from scratch. If the flow ain't right, it's of no use to record a half-assed track.

In the old days, I used to record a track on my Aiwa DAT recorder, now I'm using Cool Edit Pro on my laptop for that purpose. I'm not doing any multitrack recordings, a track gets recorded in a single session and that's that. That's the compromise to reproducibility I'm able to make without feeling bad about it. Once a track has been "freezed" as a single-track recording, I'm gradually losing interest in it... because my true identity is doing live gigs. Being there, making music right there, right now, that's what I want to do but it's getting increasingly difficult to get a booking. If your music is not reproduceable like mine, people seem to have difficulties "getting" what you do. Back in the 90s, I made a track (Nava Zeta, released on the backside of a split EP) that found its way into the eternal playlists of some well-known DJs for some reason. Whenever I went to a live gig, people wanted to hear it but I always said sorry, I won't reproduce any shit from yesteryear but make a live gig. If you don't want that, don't bother to book me... ....and they did. So there we are, eh.

I don't wanna sound too nostalgic or anything but I wish I was back in the late 80s when we ran our Attacke and Bunker clubs over here in Nuremberg. A concrete room with rusty chains hanging off the ceiling, a fogger, blue and red lights, a strobe, a DJ or live act and endless hours of, uhm, almost existentialist, free-form technoid sound. We did not want to reproduce, never ever. No things with strings, no bloody star DJ cult, no connection with the old and tried, and lots of people who felt like us and went there to get a glimpse of the things to come. Well... did they come at all? Nope, things got out of hand in the mid-90s, and the rest is history. Still, I'm thankful for having been there at that very special point in time from the mid-80s to the mid-90s.

Sorry for the long-ass rant.

Pretty cool detailed explanation on everything there.

I don't have much as far as hardware goes(yet). I keep telling myself that I'm going to pickup a Roland VT-3 & a decent mic... but keep spending money on other stuff

I hate having to find vocal samples online. I would rather make them myself.

Depends on what kind of vocal samples you need. If you need some strange voice things, Youtube is your best friend, there's a ton of stuff waiting to be downloaded and sliced. A while ago I downloaded a bunch of vids of a Charles Manson interview, cut out a few voices, processed them with various machines, respampled them on my S-20 and used them in a track. For vocal hooks or stuff like that, your best bet is to buy a sampling CD or downloadable sampling archive, most of them are royalty free which is important if you want to release your stuff on YT or other platforms. YT has a really nifty algorithm that scans uploaded tracks for copyrighted material, even if it's just a tiny sample. Your vid will get busted in no time.

Of course making your own vocal stuff is always the best solution and more fun than just ripping it.

EDIT:

About buying hardware:

Whatever you do, just forget about the tedious analog vs digital debate, YT comments and music-related forums are full of that crap and it really drives me crazy. The analog craze of recent years has led to a strange breed of nerds who drone on and on about the warmth and unpredictability of analog gear and rate any digital machine as inferior by default. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yeah, I also have a bunch of analog machines in my studio and wouldn't want to part with them because I like their sound but I also wouldn't go as far as going the analog-only route. Inexpensive digital synths like the Yamaha TX81Z or FB-01 give me endless possibilities of creating and using sounds that are very difficult to make with analog gear if you don't happen to own a large modular system and this will set you back several thousands while a used TX81Z can be had for less than 100 bucks.

So, don't trust anything or anyone but your ears. There is no such thing as a "right" or "official" way of making electronic music, it's all about what suits you best, both sound-/interface-wise.

My wife just ordered the Volca Beats and Bass for me. Now my DAW setup combined with this analog nastiness shall be the force of pure evil.

SPINMASTER X said:

My wife just ordered the Volca Beats and Bass for me. Now my DAW setup combined with this analog nastiness shall be the force of pure evil.

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Good choice, Spin. They're cool little boxes and amazingly cheap for what they bring to the table. The Bass can do more than just basslines, its 3 VCO architecture makes it possible to create lots of interesting semi-polyphonic sequences and multi-rhythmic patterns. Sound-wise it's a bit limited compared to more elaborate mono synths but has lots of bottom-end and character.

At the moment I'm sitting in my studio and struggle with some voice and fx samples I want to use in a new track. I find working on samples kinda boring to be honest, most of the time it takes longer to finish them than making the track itself... ...and then there's the innanet distraction... ah well, gotta do some more work now.

Let me hear about your first encounter with your new Korg boxes!

Okay, sampling work is done, the arrangement has been finished, here's my new track: Pleasure

Tak, your music and visuals make me feel like I'm back in the 90s and I love it. Pleasure gives me that early to mid 90s feel.

The video/visual stuff started out as a mere necessity because YT does not allow uploading tracks without a video. It's quite labour-intensive but I like the results, at least most of the time.

The voice samples ("pleasure") were taken from the Vintage Movie Voices sampling pack that I've bought. I wanted to use my Monotribe as well but there still is this strange sync problem I have with Notator and the Korg boxes. It's okay as long as they're connected up via MIDI but the analog sync connection does not work, at least not in track-based cycle mode in Notator. It works flawlessly if I make a complete arrangement but that's a bit too unflexible for my taste so I will have to find a way to sync them in track mode as well. There's a MIDI option (hardware) for the Monotribe, perhaps I'll get me one of those.

as a birthday present to myself I was thinking of buying a minibrute, but after checking out craigslist a bit I seen for around the same price I could have me a moog minitaur! Then I seen a roland MV-8000 for less than both... I'm pretty happy with my sampler/sequencer and really this wouldn't really be nessesary functionally, but I always did think it looked like a beast and I imagined it would be too expensive to consider owning.

which would you guys go for? I'm leaning towards the minitaur because I really dig the sound and it would just be cool to have my own legit moog but deep down I know it's pretty limited and the minibrute is likely the better bang for my buck.

obviously if you're planning to use it for production, go with the minibrute. whereas the minitaur would make more for a 'collection piece'.

personally, i just have an akai max25.... although for portability, was thinking about getting an mpk mini mk2.

on a side note, i also just finished a new song and posted it on soundcloud & youtube.
here's the youtube link:

of course if you like it, i wouldn't mind if you 'like' it on soundcloud

Great track, I like the dubby chords and classic drum/perc programming. Good mix quality, you seem to know your stuff. "Like" given.

complexz,

The Roland MV-8000 is a great all-in-one production workstation that has lots of great features. The CD mastering part isn't that necessary anymore in this day and age but nice to have anyway. Good sound, very good effects (the Roland reverb is amazing) and a cool sequencer. If you want to go the hardware route, this would be a very good option.

About Minitaur vs Minibrute: Well, a Moog is a Moog, meaning that it sort of hogs the mix and can be difficult to balance out. Perfect for basses but be warned, the Minitaur only has a limited voice range (from -C2 to C2, iirc) so you can't play really high notes. This is because it's based on the classic Moog Taurus bass pedal machine that also had this limitation. Sound-wise it's great, tons of bottom end and of course it has that fat and famous Moog lowpass ladder filter. Perfect for basses but not as flexible as the Minibrute. If you connect it to a computer and use the free Moog editing software, you can access some hidden functions that are difficult to use on the frontend only. Together with the Sub Phatty, it's the cheapest way of buying into that classic Moog sound many people hold in high regard.

The Minibrute has a Steiner-Parker filter with a distinct tonal quality that may not be everyone's cup of tea, you should try it before buying. I love the stingy and agile sound a lot. There also is a SE version with the Microbrute sequencer instead of the arpeggiator. Basic modulation options but what's there works very well IMO. I really like the machine, it's also on my wanted list.

Bottom line, if you already have a mono synth and want some more bottom end, get the Minitaur, otherwise get the Minibrute.

There also is the Microbrute which is smaller than the Mini and lacks certain elements like the noise generator (which I couldn't live without). It sounds almost as good but is a bit too reduced in my opinion.

Here are two Sonicstate reviews for the Minitaur and Minibrute:

Here's my sunday track: Halls & Things.


Enjoy!

cool retro chip'ish sounding track there.

i have a ton of sound samples of stuff like that... but have yet to use them for anything

For Halls & Things I created some chirpy bibble-bobble analog sounds with my MFB Nanozwerg and Volca Keys and sampled them. I also have a lot of original C64 samples and loops that I made for a project two years ago but they're difficult to use in a track as they tend to vanish due to their small-ish sound. I'll give them an overhaul with a bit of compression and enhancement and try it again someday.

I got the inspiration for the track from the 8bit game The Halls Of The Things that originally came out on ZX Spectrum and got ported to other micros afterwards. It looks quite bland but is mad fun to play. You have to collect a number of rings that are hidden in a large tower with many levels while fighting against the Things that throw fireballs and other nasty stuff at you. You can use magic, swords and other types of weapons. The version you see in the vid is an adaption of the original for play on emulators with a much higher firing rate and speed, found the vid on YT. Hope the owner of the vid doesn't mind.

Aaaand I made another track yesterday, I'm on a roll atm, check it out:


The mix is a bit weird but hey.

sounds dope to me tak!

I am still so tempted by that minitaur, but something popped up that will hold me over from making crazy purxchases. A Vestax PDX-2000 mk2 popped up for cheap and I'd love a legit deck, something that I could scratch with eventually. I'm just getting into crate digging a bit, I just love that old school vinyl sampled boom bap they don't make anymore because of sample clearing prices nobody is trying to pay me any money for my music just yet, so I just sample whatever..

a trip to value village and my portable turntable resulted in this one night.
https://soundcloud.com/jeeshyness/takes-a-village

Melodic Hip Hop, nice. The flute is cute!

About the Minitaur, don't get me wrong, it's a cool machine but from my personal tests, I can tell you that the Minibrute has a much broader tonal scope, which means that it's more flexible than the Minitaur and can even act as a centerpiece of a larger (semi-)modular setup with its CV ins/outs. In other words, the Minitaur is not the best "my first mono synth" type of gear, except of course if you're looking for a comparably inexpensive way of getting that Moog phatness for your tracks.

Haven't used the Vestax deck you mention yet, looks good though.

Oh, and I finally had the time to update my Soundcloud archive, just finished uploading the last batch of tracks.

I've got the minibrute > rane ttm56 > TLA C-5021 valve compressor

sounds great check out Daniel Fischer on sweet water sounds youtube page he explores some great patches in that video

I finally got the Korg padKontrol. I like it way better than the micro version I have. I also bought Arturia's Spark Vintage plug-in which has some nice '80s stuff. It needs a bit of tweaking to get super '80s sounding / authentic, but it's as close as I'm going to get without spending a ton of money.

New track: Smer Worschd -


Late-night clubbin'.

EDIT:

Here's the new sunday track: Mission 3000.

Korg has a number of new products coming out including a volca sampler and two new electribes! I'm not posting links because I'm on my phone but its my understanding that samples can only be loaded to the volca via iOS, which means I'm going to have to pass. A shame really. Going to look into the electribes and hope they're more accessible.