A 5-Minute Primer on Building a Home Studio for Electronic Music

Hardware: There is an absolute ton of electronic equipment that can be used to produce music. This goes without saying; hard synthesizers, mixers, and effects controllers can produce excellent tones and make the experience much more interactive and organic feeling. Additionally almost any sound can be sampled and manipulated and there is a plethora of gear made exactly for this.

Some gear to look into and consider includes:

Midi controllers - This is a very open ended term, but ultimately this is a controller for mapping digital actions to. Many of these include single or multiple octave keyboards, button pads, adjustable knobs, sliders, and more. Akai, M-Audio, and Native Instruments are all good brands that make multiple styles of midi controllers.

Synths/Keys - Writing music with a mouse isn't always the most fun, and hard keys are great alternative to this. Many synthesizers include a midi port so you can record directly into your audio workstation. High quality synthesizers will allow you to customize your sounds and add effects as well.

Mixers - Can be used to map effects to, but this is mostly a tool for DJ'ing and mixing multiple tracks together. However, this can become a useful tool for making your own songs more interesting by mixing them down and bouncing that sample rather than the original track.

Effects - There are many hard effects programmers, it just depends what your desired effect is, be it filter, flanger, chorus, delay, phaser, reverb, distortion, or anything else. Often times other pieces of equipment will come with programmable effects.

Software: There is an abundance of software for producing music on your computer, and your computer solely. Not only does this keep things simple but allows you to go mobile and make music from any location should you have you headphones and laptop. Digging for plugins and patches can often feel like digging through crates of vinyl for samples.

DAW's -Firstly, you will need to pick a DAW to work with. This acronym stands for digital audio workstation and refers to programs like FL Studio, Apple Logic Pro, Reason, Cubase, Sony Acid, Ableton Live, Reaper, and others. None of these are the objective best and there are many more to be explored. Find the workstation that you are the most comfortable in and that has the best and most consistent workflow for you and run with it.

Plugins - These pieces of software can be purchased or often downloaded and run through your DAW. They usually act as digital versions of many common pieces of hardware. By this I mean entirely digital synthesizers, effects controllers, and drum sequencers. Plugins are what make an entirely software driven studio possible and prevent the hardware clutter of the 80's and 90's. When it comes to plugins you will want to dig and dig online in forums and electronic music communities because good synths and patches can be like gold, just like excellent drum samples. Find what kind of synthesizer feels best for you and build an arsenal that you can master.

http://hubpages.com/entertainment/The-College-Hobbyist-A-5-Minute-Primer-on-Electronic-Music-Production