These past few years I’ve gotten really into hardware-based music production. I can’t think of any deep philosophical topic to write about today so I figured I’d write about my musical journey these past few years, and maybe I can offer some tips to anyone who might be looking into getting started with a Dawless setup. For those who don’t know, a Dawless setup basically means a music production or studio setup that isn’t centered around a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. Having been a long-time user of FL Studio, I decided to put it to the side a few years ago and get started with something that, while technically still a DAW, allowed me to get away from the computer. That was the Akai MPC One. I’ve always been into hip-hop, especially old-school, soulful, jazzy hip-hop. Having worked in call centers most of my life, I wanted to have first-hand experience of how it felt to make a beat by chopping samples and banging out rhythms on the pads, on a dedicated instrument away from the computer. When I got the MPC I was immediately hooked. It was so much more hands-on than a mouse and keyboard, and I watched countless YouTube tutorials and read the MPC Bible, which is a 700-page document which I bought separately from the MPC. I learned the ins and outs of how it worked and had lots of fun with it. Now, at this point most people would get a synthesizer, but I was already having lots of fun with the included VSTs that are included in the MPC software, and what caught my eye next was actually another sampler, namely the Elektron Digitakt. Although it’s a lot more limited than the MPC in terms of all it can do, that was actually kind of the appeal for me. The MPC, while it’s not technically a computer, still functions as a DAW. It has a decent-sized touch-screen, and one can adjust parameters on the screen, or with 4 knobs, called Q-Links. The Digitakt, on the other hand, has a much, much smaller screen, and it is only to display information on the parameters being changed. All changes are actually made with the eight knobs it has, that have different functions depending on the page one is navigating. The pages are changed with dedicated buttons for them. The Digitakt was also super fun, and I was creating all kinds of trippy rhythms on it that I wouldn’t have been able to come up with on the MPC. After a while of playing with both these instruments, and even combining them with MIDI to create one super-sampler, I decided it was time to pull the trigger on an actual hardware synthesizer. I wasn’t willing to get something extremely expensive, so after a bit of research, I settled on the budget-friendly yet extremely powerful Arturia MicroFreak. Although I had played around with VSTs, or virtual instruments, over the years, the lack of hands-on control didn’t really pull me into modifying the presets that came with these programs. I knew a bit about the basic synth parameters, like envelopes and such, but I wanted to really understand what I was doing and dive into the world of sound design, so again, I watched countless YouTube videos and started creating trippy presets on the MicroFreak. Now, this post was actually supposed to mention some important things, such as how I chose an audio interface and mixer, a MIDI keyboard, and how I basically started building my home studio. I realize now that, as I got super excited talking about the actual instruments I was playing with, I left out all this important information that could help beginners who are looking to start a home studio. After all, you need something to record sound from any hardware instruments you get. Anyway, I’ll get into this information in tomorrow’s post, so if you want to know more about how that all happened, stay tuned for tomorrow’s post!
I appreciate you reading.
rebel eye 