Autechre Build my studio

Ten years ago (almost to the day) I quit making music in the middle of a live set in the guts of a bowling alley in Bellingham, Washington.

And today I decided I want to start making music again.

Way back then, I had 56U of rack synthesizers (Access, Waldorf, Clavia, Yamaha, etc). I played around with Reaktor a very small amount, but used software for basic sequencing purposes, and created some generative noodles in Max/MSP.

The music I was making back then was in the vein of LP5 to Gantz Graf Autechre, pre-Kesto Pan Sonic, with a dash of Merzbow, and I plan on continuing approximately in that vein... I want to make music that's like getting kicked in the nuts and punched in the gut at the same time.

I'd like to spend around $3000, but could go up to $5000 if there's functionality I absolutely need. My wife has a microKORG and a Sleepdrone 5 that will be a part of the studio. I'm all set for monitors, cables, and computing power. I have no preferences between physical gear and soft synths, as long there's a good physical interface to go with the software.

I like the idea of buying *exactly* what somebody recommends... so if the forum can come to some sort of consensus on the best suggestion or an amalgamation of suggestions I think it would be cool to buy exactly that.

So, go nuts... what and why?

If I were starting over from scratch I'd just get these and a cheap (EDIT: but nice) mixer:

http://www.elektron.se/products

That said I've never used them before and I'm not starting over from scratch.

if i had $3000 and wanted to do autechre-y. noise-y kind of stuff, already had the monitors and computer etc i'd definitely think about a monomachine and machinedrum (or at least one of them). if you got them both second-hand you should be left with roughly $1000? (not sure how much they go for in the US)... then maybe get a decent bread-and butter type synth for pads and the like - Access Virus perhaps.

jupiter8

I had got one of the first SidStations, which I enjoyed. I bought a MachineDrum, but never really did much with it.

You should heavily contemplate putting together a modular. Eurorack has really blown up in the last few years, and the amount of stuff you can do with it will span a much larger palette than a 'wired' synth. If you spent $5000 on a modular you would be more than set. In fact, if you don't have any modular experience, I would recommend spending more like $1500 to start out. Use that to figure out how you work with the modular, what you want to do that you can't do with what you have, and expand from there.

No suggestions about soft synths?

Ooh yeah a modular would be fun too. Those have exploded in popularity over the last few years. That would be great for noise.

monomachine

machinedrum uw

nord modular g1 or g2 with cheap touch screen xp laptop

used macbook pro, ableton, with motu lite interface

ipad + alesis idock with lemur and ableton remote apps

cheap recording mixer like souncraft compact

decent active monitors

rugs for the walls

dont forget to get a few dildo midi controllers and the new margaret mountford endorsed monosynth with her face on.

For soft synths I would get Native Instruments line of synths, including reaktor, massive, absynth and fm8. Also Live is great for manipulating audio and cutting - etc in an easy way. You could also invest in max for live which I have not personally used but it's incredibly deep in what you can do apparently. There's also sylenth1, predator (nice sound) and the fxpansion line http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?area=2 (tremor for drum synth, dcam synth squad for retro pads etc), and fabfilter has nice effects.

1 of these

  On 3/28/2012 at 4:42 PM, amphibious said:

No suggestions about soft synths?

U-He Diva and Madrona Labs Aalto et voilà.

The only two soft synths I liked before I went hardware were the FM7 and the Arturia Moog Modular.

  On 3/29/2012 at 8:59 PM, soundwave said:

The only two soft synths I liked before I went hardware were the FM7 and Shortcircuit.

(Still use software, though, mostly just Reaper to record the hardware but also Reaktor, Renoise, and others, as well as the aforementioned VSTs)

Get Renoise and a spliff. Maybe a mic to record shit. Skill > Gear

As far as soft synths go, I keep using Vember Audio Surge because it's dead easy to use and it's very versatile. Reaktor is great for otherwordly stuff, and Battery is good if you're working with drum sample libraries, but I generally avoid the Native Instruments stuff as much as I can - there's something about their interface and CPU consumption that puts me off (and their presets sound especially cheesy). Waldorf Largo is pretty good, but runs a bit buggy on my PC.

Currently waiting for my Shruthi-1 in the mail, and pondering the idea of plonking 1000 euros for a Monomachine (damn it looks tasty).

it depends on if the computer is included in that $3000 budget or if you already have a suitable one and if so if that computer is a mac or windows machine but i'd say:

1: native instruments komplete 8 ($500 usd, more software instruments than you will probably ever need)

2: adam a7x monitors ($1400 usd)

if you already have a mac:

3: apogee duet audio interface ($600)

4: logic ($200)

5: akai mpk25 controller

if you already have a pc:

3: ableton live ($500)

4: split the remaining $600 on the best audio interface and controller you can find

  On 3/30/2012 at 2:04 PM, kokeboka said:

As far as soft synths go, I keep using Vember Audio Surge because it's dead easy to use and it's very versatile. Reaktor is great for otherwordly stuff, and Battery is good if you're working with drum sample libraries, but I generally avoid the Native Instruments stuff as much as I can - there's something about their interface and CPU consumption that puts me off (and their presets sound especially cheesy). Waldorf Largo is pretty good, but runs a bit buggy on my PC.

 

Currently waiting for my Shruthi-1 in the mail, and pondering the idea of plonking 1000 euros for a Monomachine (damn it looks tasty).

hahah I'm so happy someone shares my opinion of NI stuff. Massive and FM8 are nice, but kontakt is a cranky pile of shit.

  On 4/2/2012 at 4:23 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

 

hahah I'm so happy someone shares my opinion of NI stuff. Massive and FM8 are nice, but kontakt is a cranky pile of shit.

what's your main beefs with kontakt, what is it that makes it 'cranky'? i just bought komplete about a week ago and was looking to start investigating into kontakt this week. from my cursory toying with it, it seems alright.

but yes, fm8 is really cool. i love the sound of my tx81z but having that algorithmic and on-screen envelope editing is sweet.

for one control mapping is a pain in the ass. I find in completely unintuitive. Everytime I want to automate something I have to open the manual. Little stuff like reversing a single sample is impossible. The way it deals with samples is way more geared toward massive layered sample library shit, which I never use. If you just want to dump in some samples and tweak some envelopes an stuff they it's useless. You have to basically make a different instrument for each fucking sample.

Try to set up some midi control on it and get back to me about it. :)

It just fails in all the normal everyday stuff a sampler should do, but has uber complex functionality like scripting and shit like that. I mean what the fuck. Just not my thing at all. I like simple tools.

  On 4/3/2012 at 1:42 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

for one control mapping is a pain in the ass. I find in completely unintuitive. Everytime I want to automate something I have to open the manual. Little stuff like reversing a single sample is impossible. The way it deals with samples is way more geared toward massive layered sample library shit, which I never use. If you just want to dump in some samples and tweak some envelopes an stuff they it's useless. You have to basically make a different instrument for each fucking sample.

 

Try to set up some midi control on it and get back to me about it. :)

 

It just fails in all the normal everyday stuff a sampler should do, but has uber complex functionality like scripting and shit like that. I mean what the fuck. Just not my thing at all. I like simple tools.

gotcha. truth be told, i'd really prefer to use my akai s3000 for sample stuff. it sounds great and has just enough in the ways of filtering and envelope editing to my liking, but it's killing my workflow at the moment. i'm just seeing what's up in the way of software, so kontakt will at least get an honest effort. i really really wish i could just do sample chopping with recycle and load directly into the akai via scsi, but this is apparently not an option.

AudioMulch is a hell of a useful program for music creation. very simple, but it falls in the same camp with suggestions for modular stuff that others are talking about.