Equipment for creating Electronic, Trance, House, etc., etc. music....?
 

I have been listening to electronica for many years now but I know absolutely nothing about the equipment used to create this type of music, please excuse my ignorance. I am interested in learning how to and eventually creating my own music. I would like to know what type of equipment is used, all of it, from the bottom to the top, and a ballpark price range of the different peices of equipment. Like I said before all of this is completely new to me and I know nothing about it so if any of you guys could provide me with some information would be awesome.
Cheers
Schredds

:dj:

You can create good electronica music witha program called Fruity Loops. Plus you can get yourself a decent midi board for around $100 USD, and a keyboard with D.A.T. capabilities built in for under $500. This is, of course low-balling prices for someone starting out. The equipment needed to create good electronica is fairly easy and cheap to obtain. However, if you then plan to DJ the needed equipment and funds go up dramatically.

Ultimately you can produce great tracks with nothing more than Fruity Loops, so I'd start there.

Schredda, it would take me hours to inform you effectively... I don't just drop the FL bomb on people and walk away. But I think the best thing for you to do is just research some info.
I can "simply" tell you that it involves a DAW (if you're going for software) that includes samplers, synths, vst FX plugins, etc... but there's really a lot more to it than what program you're using, or what hardware for that matter.

Instead of me writing a whole electronic music production education thread, just post any particular questions, or we can even start from the top at a specific point... but I really don't have the time to try and go through the whole thing at once.
Hit up some Google, then head back to the thread and throw down on any questions you have that I can help with.

I know a lot about this stuff, as I've been doing it since the late 90's... but what you're asking for is an entire website of a reply. hehe... So if you can get a basic idea off Google or something, hit me up with questions one at a time and I'll be able to answer them.
And no... FruityLoops is not a suitable answer for anything except cheap prices and low expectations.

Ya I figured what I was asking was a lil over the top, lol, I am interested no doubt, and like I said I honestly have no idea what Im talking about or even where to start. I will do some reasearch and educate. I dont expect anyone to sit there for a week and teach me, gimme a lil while and Ill get back to you Freebase, cheers bro.

Yo Freebase, alright, aside from all the downloadable programs and such, and all the computers, hardware, and software needed for creating the music, which doesnt seem too terribly complicated, is the main piece of equipment used to physically make the music the midi board combined with keyboards and foot pedals? Lets say, If Im not out to lunch in thinking the keyboards and foot pedals are in fact used for making the music, is it a better idea to have a separate system where each of the components has its own midi output? One more thing what is the purpose of a scan board?, Ive seen 32 way and 64 way scan boards mention but cant seem to find much information on it.

Not sure where the scan board comes into play...
But here's a basic rundown:

Sequencer
This is where you compose, arrange, sequence, trigger, effect, etc... all your sound elements. It's the heart of your setup. Here is where you perform both audio and MIDI sequencing. It can be either software, or hardware.
Here's an example of this in software:
http://music-recording.co.uk/files/i...screenshot.jpg

What you're doing in a sequencer (which is the core "workstation" in any music software) is placing any samples you may be using, placing your MIDI editors for use in triggering soft-synths, or even hardware synths via MIDI cable, setting your project tempo, and basically building your song structure.

The sound generation aspects are your synthesizers (for pads, synth leads, etc), Beat machines (for programming your drum lines), and Samplers (for triggering any sample).
These portions of your setup are where you're getting your actual audio from. In a hardware setup, it's the same concept, except you have actual hardware.. Most of the time, the hardware you're using will be MIDI clock synced to a host (your hardware sequencer) so that everything stays in sync with your sequencer.

Another aspect is your mixer:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/images/mixer2.jpg
In the software world, this does the same thing as any hardware mixer that might comprise a hardware setup. It's where you set the volumes and panning and route FX sends for each individual channel that your elements are routed through.

There's more to it, but that's what's physically needed to actually create the music. There's many different ways to create your setup, but the above is the typical standard for any kind of electronic music creation.
What you have to understand is that there isn't a single "piece of equipment" that creates the music. It's a joining of different elements that's necessary to allow the creation of a full on song.
Software solutions, such as Reason, are simply the digital representations of hardware solutions. They do the same thing, but offer an all-in-one package that's invariably cheaper and just as effective.

In recap:

Synthesizers and samplers/beat machines
This is where your audio comes from.

Host sequencer
This is where you control the audio sources and create the structure of your song.

Mixer
This is where you set your levels.


There's a lot more to it, but that is the basic setup.
Now, I'm not sure where you're getting "pedals" from, but some people prefer to use MIDI keyboards to play their software synthesizers because it provides tactile control and allows for a more human touch. It's really no different than physically playing a hardware synthesizer in a hardware setup. The MIDI keyboard is simply a way to control a software sound program, be it a soft-synth, sampler, beatbox, whatever.

Here's my temporary setup:
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/5289/tempsetup.jpg

It's a software/hardware hybrid setup, as I do a lot of actual recording, but for electronic music, 90 percent of it is created on my computer in Cakewalk's Sonar 7 Producer edition.
There is very little more than a good program required to create electronic music. It's really up to the producer if he wants to have an extravagant setup or not, but it is in no way required.

I was reading a few articles I found by doing a google search, each of the articles had mentioned foot pedals, and of course this being the first time learning about this stuff, I have no idea which article are informing me or leading me down a dead end road. It seemed to be a hard subject to find results for. The information you've layed down here really helps, it makes much more sence coming from someone who is actually doing it, and that setup looks cool man, why temporary though, are you planning on expanding it or wut dude?
Cheers bro.

Thats what I was gonna ask you next, it seemed to me that there was, which did seem odd, and its pretty obvious in your post that thats not that case at all, forgive my ignorance, hahah.

Setup is temp because I'm getting a new place and will have room to set everything up. It's kinda at its minimal right now, and not really at an optimal placement.


If you have the time, you may want to read through Tweakheadz Guide
It's a pretty big guide, but a lot of the information you want is in there in some shape or form.
On the left of the page there's a link navigator... just go through all of those. By the end of it, you'll have acquired a pretty solid understanding of what goes into music production.

Oh nice, I wondering if you had a guide or a link of any sort to some good solid info. Thats great, I will definetly give that a read through. Thanks dude.

If you want to buy some gear I recommend PSSL.com. I dont produce, but I mix and Ive never had a problem with them.

Freebase has got you covered pretty well, but I'd thought I'd mention a couple of things to you also. Unlike some genres, there's not a single way to make electronica. Some people use oscillators (like Silver Apples) some people use keyboards. Either way, you want to make sure that your sound is completely customizable. That's normally where your footpedals and sample stations come in.

Footpedals are generally just filters, but a couple I'd recommend are:
The Lovepedal Kanji series--great pedals, I own one, and am about to buy the distortion. They sound great on almost any instrument whether it's guitar, bass, keyboard, or even drums.
Pigtronix Mothership--awesome pedal. This is recommended if you plan on having a musician play with you. It works best on guitar and Bass, but can easily punch up some good sounds on even the cheapest keyboard.


Vintage Synth--is a great website for gear whores like me. It'll give you ratings and reviews on the most popular and/or modern synth keyboards, drum machines etc.

You could also look into buying a MIDI controller and getting a laptop with Reason on it for sampling. Actually, I was looking into buying Kore 2 in stead of Reason as a replacement because of the physical interface option. Sample libraries are incredibly expensive though, so it might be recommended to stick with using a recording/sequencing program to make samples.

Also, if you ever feel ready to make some music, I'd recommend including a real drummer--not necessarily because I think it sounds better, but because drummers can add allot more energy to the music than a standard electronic drum kit. *But* that decision is all up to you.

I've honestly only scratched the surface here, but I thought I'd encourage you to try making the music live.

peace,
-nick

Oscillators are a component of any synth.
What Silver Apples did was basically just creating a synthesizer from individual equipment... eg.. oscillators, filters, pedals, etc.
Not that it's bad, because it's truly customizable, but there are plenty of fully customizable synths out there that perform the same function and eliminate the need for a ton of unnecessary gear.

I definitely encourage creative experimentation, but for the sake of simplicity in Schredd's case, I thought I'd point that out.

Hi,

I reccommend taking everybody elses advice about the programs and such. If you want to get into something a bit more original or experimental, I'd reccommend downloading the VST plug-ins Umbra-Free and Impulse. For drums, I'd reccommend Drumatic 3 or ezdrummer (can be modded for electronica). All but the latter are free plug-ins and are as easy to use with your Midi sequencer, piano roll, whatever.

Hope it helps, good luck :)

Thanks for all the responces so far, Freebase, the Tweakheadz guide is money, Im still workin on it, work has been rediculous lately, so I havent spent much time on the computer, I still have a ways to go on it but cheers for the link bro.

Shredds,

Here are a few great starting books "The Desktop Studio "A Guide To Computer-Based Audio Production" By Emile D. Menasché.
Next would be "Music Theory For Computer Musicians" By Dr. Michael Hewitt.
I use Propellerhead's Reason 4 so I also purchased "Introducing Reason 4" By Cliff Truesdell. Check these out and one book will lead you to another and so forth.

EstaticVibes ~~♪~~d(^_^)b~~♪~~-E-^√1bez :dj:

You can make professional music, especially electronic, with just a laptop, even a cellphone nowadays

Anyone who says FL studio is not professional simply does not know how to use it. It is a digital workstation like any other form of software. 9th Wonder is a professional producer working with big names and he uses it, so dont listen to people who down talk it because you can get professional results with it. Dougie Fresh made a song with Slick Rick with nothing but a microphone and a 4 track and its called Lodi Dodi. It just takes creativity and hard work and you can get nice results.