Small, cheap instruments have a way of forcing decisions. With four knobs and eight steps you stop tweaking and start writing, and the limitations become a sound of their own.
Headphones and monitoring matter more than any synth. If you cannot hear the low end clearly, no plugin will save the mix, and you will only find out when it plays on a real system.
Limits Make Records
Buy used, learn deeply and sell what you do not touch for a month. That advice is free and will save you more than any sale.
- A drum machine with swing
- Decent cables, labelled
- A notebook for patches
- One small synth you know inside out
I made the whole album on a machine that fits in a pencil case.
Gear talk can get expensive fast, so here is the honest version: most of the records we love were made on modest setups by people who knew their tools very well.
This made me dig out my old gear. Thanks for the push.
Hard disagree on one point, but I love that you went there.
Good point, I had not thought about it that way.