tools to make electronic music with

created on Jan 5 2025

some gear I recommend looking into and considering:

• Korg Volca series: small compact boxes that cover many different approaches of creating sounds
  • Are Korg Volcas Serious Instruments or Just Toys?
• Elektron Model:Cycles and Model:Samples: synth and sampler respectively
• Roland AIRA Compact series: similar to the Korg Volcas
• Novation Circuit Track: synths + drums
• Arturia DrumBrute Impact: analog drums
• Teenage Engineering PO-33 K.O! sampler
• Roland TR8: drums
• Roland TR8S: drums + sampler
• Arturia Microfreak
• any secondhand gear you find within budget that looks cool, after seeing what sort of sounds it can make

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I began looking at modular gear but opted for something less customisable and overwhelming. Gonna try explain different categories of gear to make music with.

modular

Modular setups involve buying components individually and connecting (“patching”) them together. Whenever you see setups with many coloured cables all over the place they’re most likely modular or semi-modular. So instead of buying a box with everything in it, you buy separate components and connect them together. I decided to look at less customisable gear for multiple reasons:

• since you’re buying components individually, it can be quite expensive to buy the essential modules to make sounds with (400+)
• many modules come as PCBs without housing, so you need to organise them onto “racks”
• since you’re buying individual components you kinda need to understand what the components do, and I feel like I had much more learning to do before knowing what the hell is a VCO, LFO, caring about different delay and reverb effect.

you might wanna check out music synthesis glossary for more info about individual components and terms in the modular world.

your computer

Software like garageband, ableton, logic (known as digital audio workstations or DAWs) are worth exploring and allow you to do more than you could buying gear, which is great but I’ve enjoyed exploring within the constraints of different gear I’ve used.

note: whenever I use the word ‘MIDI’ I’m referring to the language devices use to communicate.

There’s a lot of fun software around for making different sounds too, like

Digital versions of all the hardware exist too, and there are apps that let you build virtual modular racks (VCV Rack, miRack). I’ve spent some time with them but wanted the physical feel of knobs and buttons.

Now that I have the physical gear I find myself spending more time with software for music too, tho I haven’t really used DAWs for anything more than recording and MIDI.

analog vs digital

Analog synths generate sounds (continuous waveforms) through electrical circuits, while digital synths use computer algorithms running on electrical circuits. Modern digital gear sometimes include analog components, like analog filters.

samplers (sampled-based synths)

Samplers are gear that can record sounds and play multiple of them back at the same time. A lot of samplers are actually sampler players and require you to transfer samples over from your computer/phone since they lack recording capabilities. You’ll have a bunch of tracks you can load sounds into, play with the start/end times of each sound and other ways to shape it, add fx.

DAWs usually have sampling tools too, and ableton actually makes it really easy to work with and chop up samples.

You’ll find physical samplers with beatpads which allow you to control rows/columns of tracks which can help when playing live.

there’s a ton of fun sampler apps that let you record and mangle samples.

• aphex twin created this to generate a sound from a bunch of other sounds https://gitlab.com/then-try-this/samplebrain
• koala sampler
• drambo
• flip sampler
• samplr

gear I’ve used / recommendations

• always look at secondhand gear tho cos you’ll be able to get higher budget gear and discover cool new gear that you’ve never seen before.
• Korg Volca Sample / Sample2 (~€150): my first sampler, really compact and does what you’d expect it to.
  • memory’s kinda limited and you have 100-200 slots.
  • I have the Sample2 which has more memory and sample slots, but there’s a custom [pajen firmware] for the original Sample that can actually make it a more worthwhile buy
• Elektron Model:Samples (~€300): got this one recently and it’s the Korg Volca Sampler’s big brother, with bigger pads and knobs, but less tracks (6 vs 10) but you can play multiple sounds on a track sooo
• Roland TR8S: the original TR8 has all the OG Roland drum samples but doesn’t let you transfer your own, hence the ‘S’ for Sample
• Teenage Enginering pocket operators (~€80):
• Teenage Engineering Ep-133 K.O. II (~€300)

subtractive synths

an approach to synthesising sounds that involves “sculpting” rich complex sounds and “carving” away parts until you’re happy with the sound.

in practice you take a harmonically rich waveform, like a square wave with multiple frequencies, and use filters to remove frequencies and shape how it changes over time. to use a guitar analogy, the string being plucked is a rich sound and the physical guitar filters the sound.

gear I’ve used / recommendations

• Korg Monologue
• Behringer Model D

frequency-modulation (FM) synths

The beauty of FM is that it can create sounds that would be impossible with traditional instruments or basic waveforms.

A different approach to synthesising sounds that involves shaping a sound and its personality/timbre by using waves to modulate other waves, creating new frequencies and changing the sound’s character. You’ll hear the words carrier (the sound you hear) and modulator (the sound used to shift the sound you’re hearing). Imagine pressing your finger on a guitar string and moving it up and down rapidly. The main string vibrating would be the carrier wave, and your finger movement would be the modulator, but with electronic waves instead of strings/vibration.

You start off with simple sine waves and build complex harmonics by modulating waveforms, or modulating other parameters that you can change, like the decay of a sound or filters.

gear I’ve used / recommendations

• Korg Volca FM / FM2
• Elektron Digitone / Digitone II (not only FM) / Digitone Keys (has a proper keyboard)
• Yamaha DX

MIDI controllers

essentially remote controls for DAWs and software that don’t make any sound themselves but let you map software buttons to physical buttons, knobs, pads, wheels and sliders using MIDI.

Can use these to control software for visuals too, and a whole bunch of other stuff really.