Yesterday I wrote about my journey into hardware-based music production over the last few years. I had initially intended for it to be a useful post about certain things I’m sure would be helpful for anyone who’s only getting into the idea of setting up a home studio, or just starting to mess around with some synthesizers and drum machines. I ended up getting a bit sidetracked and writing about some of the machines that have provided me with a lot of inspiration up till now, namely the Akai MPC One, the Elektron Digitakt, and the Arturia MicroFreak. Today, I intend to actually stick to my original idea, and write about some utilities which are absolutely necessary in order to get started with hardware-based music production. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my introduction into this fascinating world was the Akai MPC One. When I first got it, I simply connected my earphones into the earphone jack, and had a lot of fun making beats that way. Coming from a DAW, namely FL Studio, I continued the same workflow on the MPC. I would create a beat with the MPC song mode, and export it as a WAV file into the SD card I’d inserted into the MPC. Over time, as I started to play around with jamming on the MPC, using the pads to mute and unmute different sections of the beat in order to create variety. I started to prefer the spontaneous results I would get from this, over my previous workflow of creating a rigid structure for the beat and simply exporting it as an audio file. The issue now was that I had to find a way to record these jams. Before I got the MPC, I didn’t even know what an audio interface was. Now I know it’s a very basic piece of equipment used in pretty much all studios, whether home studios or professional ones. An audio interface usually connects to your computer over USB, which allows you to record whatever audio source you connect into it. After some research, I picked up a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. It has two audio inputs, which were necessary due to the MPC being a stereo sound source, which means it sends audio through a left and a right signal, both of which need to connect to the audio interface for a full signal to be recorded. I confess I didn’t give any of this much thought, and I didn’t even think that I might need more inputs in the very near future. I was enjoying the hell out of my MPC, and I didn’t want to spend much more, all I wanted was a way to record my beats and jams. So, I got the interface and it was cool for a while, until I started eyeing the Digitakt, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post. The Digitakt is also a stereo sound source, and I would need two more connections in order to be able to record it into the computer. I didn’t want to have to be disconnecting cables in order to record either the MPC or the Digitakt, so I upgraded to a Focusrite 4i4, which has 4 inputs, as well as 4 outputs. I’ll continue describing my journey into hardware-based music production in tomorrow’s post, but for now just keep this in mind: if you’re interested in getting into this, understand that you’ll probably enjoy it and want some more synths or drum machines in the future, so rather than getting an interface with few inputs, try to save up some extra money to get an interface that will allow you to expand your setup. Your other option apart from an audio interface would be a mixer, and this is exactly where I’ll pick up for tomorrow’s post.
I appreciate you reading.
rebel eye 