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My bootstrapped recording gear and pipeline (as a producer and audio engineer)

I make electronic music with synthesizers and drum machines, but I play them without quantization, out of a speaker into a microphone.

My bootstrapped recording gear and pipeline (as a producer and audio engineer)
Photo by Erwi / Unsplash. Not my studio, but some of the same gear.

Gear is expensive and it's tough to become a producer and/or audio engineer in an area with so few studios, none of which need someone to scrub toilets.

I make electronic music with synthesizers and drum machines, but I play them without quantization, out of a speaker into a microphone.

As my friend Cwylie0 says, "You gotta move some air."

Recording

My current recording setup is a Maschine MkI and a MicroKORG, plugged into a Surface Pro 5 running Ableton 11.

I have various plugins I’ve picked up over the years, but I’ve been working on reducing the amount and instead getting really good at the ones I have.

Plugged into the Surface is a small Pyle USB mixer, which sends audio to my 20 year old AudioChoice PA.

The PA is mic'd with with a 10 year old Blue Yeti and a second cheap dynamic mic, a Pyle I picked up about a year ago.

The Blue Yeti is USB and the Pyle is is plugged into a bigger, different Pyle USB Preamp.

The Preamp USBs into a 10 year old MacBook Pro (pre-M chips) running the latest version of Logic Pro (without the features that require an M chip).

You might be thinking “wow this guy really likes Pyle”.

I am gear agnostic. Pyle fits my budget. I use what I can afford.

Mixing and Mastering

Everything is mixed with various plugins from iZotope and IK.

Once something is recorded, arranged, and mostly mixed, the final steps is running the mix downs through a Tascam 202 MkIII cassette dubber to give them warmth and saturation.

The audio then goes back through the Pyle Preamp into the MacBook Pro and Logic, for final mastering.

Mastering is also done with various plugins from iZoptope and IK.

Playing Instruments

The Maschine that I play on obviously needs samples from somewhere, or digital instruments.

Samples are collected various ways:

  • iPhone 14 Plus
  • ~10 year old Zoom H4n
  • EIKI cassette recorder, sometimes w/ built in mic and sometimes with previously mentioned Pyle microphone
  • Cheap piezo mic I picked up, plugged into any of the above.

The samples are then cleaned up in Logic with my normal mastering plugins from iZotope and IK.

Sometimes I bust out the guitar(s).

I have an old Les Paul-style Lotus that is older than me (was my dads before I was born), and a Castilla classical acoustic guitar my dad bought me for Christmas ~20 years ago. It has a slightly warped neck which makes some notes sound pretty unique.

I have a couple Digitech floor processors and various guitar pedals I might run them through.

The acoustic does not have a pickup so I sometimes mic it or other times I plug the piezo in and run it through some effects, too.

All of that gets plugged into the little Pyle USB mixer, which runs the audio into the old PA, which is mic'd into the MacBook Pro.

Sometimes I just play the guitar, sometimes a mess around and find out what I can get out of the effects.

Then I will record a note at middle-C and run it through Decent Sampler and turn that into what most people assume is a soft synth sound. But it’s actually sampled guitar w/ effects.

I also have a Yamaha Clavinova PF P-100 that was my best friend’s dad’s touring keyboard before he passed away. I don’t play it much, but that will change soon.

And then I have various little toy synths and keyboards like a couple Casio VL-Tones, a Gakken “analog” SX-150 Mk II (is it really analog?), and a Korg Monotron an ex-girlfriend bought me many years ago when that line first came out.

Performing Live

When performing I mostly DJ with a Pioneer DDJ-400 and DJay on the same MacBook Pro that I use for recording.

About a year ago, I picked up an old APC40 MkI and I'm starting to break my music down into loops that I can trigger in Ableton with that. It’s got all sorts of knobs and buttons I can program, so there's a lot of opportunity here.

Help Support My Journey

Please buy some music from one of my projects: