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S1E03 – Gear and Tools Required as a Producer

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Music production gear has truly become affordable!

Be careful with the information you read online in regards to this digital vs. analog debate. The digital route totally outweighs the analog route in terms of benefits and convenience!

However, we still have to purchase some hardware tools to be most effective as a music producer.

It’s important you purchase the right gear right from the start. Not only to save money, but also for enjoyment. If you have the right gear that suits you and your workflow, it will motivate you to continue to practice music production, and break pass that point to truly excel in this craft!

In this episode, we cover:

  • Gear Required to Produce Music
  • What to Look for When Purchasing Certain Music Production Gear
  • Different Ways to Produce Beats
  • How to Save Money When Buying Your Gear
FL Studio Music Production Equipment

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Questions about this episode

Transcript

S1E03 – Gear and Tools Required as a Producer

  1. Hey, this is Gratuitous. Welcome to Music Production Made Simple, the show that
  2. focuses on best practices about music production, which is based on FL Studio.
  3. If you're wanting to become the best producer you could be, subscribe and listen
  4. weekly. You can also check out my courses, which teach you the principles and basics
  5. of music production. They'll get you up and running quickly.
  6. In addition, I also have books on Amazon and tons of music on Spotify.
  7. Always feel free to hit me up at high at it'sgratuitous.com.
  8. So let's get into the episode.
  9. Alright, so welcome to episode number three.
  10. This episode is called Gears and Tools Required as a Producer.
  11. So what I've done for you guys is I've actually created a free course.
  12. It's 100% for free. You don't have to sign up with your email or anything.
  13. There's no catch. The course is called Essential Gear Needed to Make Beats.
  14. Okay. It'll give you a little taste test of my actual membership of what to expect
  15. out of future courses from me.
  16. and this course is going to teach you the gear that you need and how to save money.
  17. Okay. I give you a write-up as well as I provide links.
  18. They're Amazon affiliate links, so I will get a commission if you click and
  19. purchase, which I would appreciate.
  20. But the knowledge is there, okay?
  21. So again, it's 100% for free. Just come to the actual episode page.
  22. This is episode number three. Go to the resource section, click the link, take the
  23. course, learn the gear and save money, okay?
  24. So I just want to talk a little bit about myself and my experience of purchasing
  25. gear. because you know, I've made some really good purchases as well as some poor
  26. purchasing decisions. and I think I could help you buy the right gear as well as
  27. save money, okay? Because that's really the goal.
  28. You know, you want the highest quality gear while saving money.
  29. So when I purchased my gear, in my very beginnings, it's like, yes, you need your
  30. essentials. Your essentials is pretty much your MIDI keyboard, your audio interface,
  31. your speakers, and then your pretty much like your music program.
  32. And that is really like a super minimal setup.
  33. And then, you know, acoustic treatment, that is probably even more important than
  34. getting super high quality speakers, which I'll talk about later because the
  35. environment that you're mixing your music in is very, very important, okay.
  36. So when you were first introduced to making music, I typically find that this is
  37. what influences what type of gear that you're gonna want to buy.
  38. Okay, so there's really two main ways to produce beats that is like original
  39. compositions and sampling. Okay, so sampled beats.
  40. So I personally take the approach of original compositions, and the reason for that
  41. is because you have 100% ownership, right?
  42. You don't have to worry about copyright infringement or anything like that.
  43. you know, you have an original sound because you have created the music, it's your
  44. own melodies. But original compositions are a little bit harder to create, okay,
  45. because you're gonna need to know some music theory.
  46. And if you guys want to check out my course, it's called Music Theory and Cores for
  47. Beatmakers. I break down music theory really, really simple so that you can get up
  48. and running and know how to you know work with chords and stuff like that.
  49. but you know, so you're gonna have to know some music theory to program these MIDI
  50. notes to create these beautiful compositions, okay.
  51. So, you know, there's a little bit of knowledge behind creating these original
  52. compositions, and then sampling.
  53. So, sampling has been around for a very, very long time.
  54. It's really what has founded hip hop, it's called an MPC, it's a drum machine.
  55. I'll leave a link in the resource section if you want to click through it, check out
  56. a little article on MPC. Nowadays, there's tools like machine and stuff like that,
  57. which have taken a more of like a software hardware combination approach.
  58. The whole thing is what you're doing is you're taking a loop, you're slicing it up,
  59. and then you're rearranging those slices to create a different melody out of that
  60. melody or out of that song. Okay, so sampled beats give you a very, very special and
  61. unique sound. it's very hard to achieve the same sound through original
  62. compositions. When you are sampling someone else's music, you have to be careful of
  63. copyright, o?kay Because you're using someone else's music, like I was talking to
  64. you in the last episode. Once you become a music producer, your product is like your
  65. copyright, okay, and you never want to really give that away ever for free..
  66. Like you want to negotiate, you know, down to the wire
  67. If you are going to give up your copyright, you know, you want to make sure it is
  68. within your best interest, okay.
  69. Now you have to be really really careful what you believe with copyright and what
  70. holds true in like court and stuff like that.
  71. Because you you know, you'll hear people within the industry, it's like, oh, if it's
  72. only like a little small snippet, you don't have to worry about you know getting
  73. sample clearance, and that is using like pretty much permission to use someone
  74. else's copyright, which is like their song.
  75. So always be careful with that stuff.
  76. Now, here's a cool trick that I've discovered over the years to sample, and that is
  77. actually sampling your own music.
  78. You kind of get like the best of both worlds, you know, like you're able to sample
  79. your music and you don't have to worry about copyright.
  80. So, what you do is you just create your own melody and you chop it up just as if you
  81. know you were to chop up a real sample.
  82. if you want a step-by-step walkthrough on this, I have created a course, it's called
  83. sample your own music. I'll also leave that in the resources as well.
  84. And I just teach you how to you know record a loop, how to chop it up, how to create
  85. you know these slices and create melodies out of different loops, as well as you
  86. know how to apply effects and make it sound better, okay?
  87. Because you know, sampling is a very, very special sound, and in my opinion, to be a
  88. good producer, you want to learn both original compositions as well as sampling
  89. because you can always incorporate all these different techniques into your
  90. compositions at different times, depending on the track.
  91. Okay, and so like I was saying, so how you were first introduced to making beats,
  92. you know, for myself. Like a friend introduced me to making original compositions.
  93. So, as I was going out to buy my gear, I was more catered towards buying like a MIDI
  94. keyboard so I could make original compositions.
  95. But if you were introduced to music. production to like a friend and he had an MPC
  96. or whatever, you might be more leaning towards like sampling and that style of
  97. making beats So it's just important to know what style of music that you're wanting
  98. to create. That way you can buy the right gear for your style of music.
  99. Again, it's gonna allow you to save money as well as get the right gear for the best
  100. performance. Okay, so I just want to move into our next section now.
  101. Okay, so the gear needed as a producer nowadays is simple.
  102. Okay, back in the day, studios were super super expensive.
  103. You needed all the hardware gear, you needed space, you needed to maintain that
  104. gear, you needed cables. Nowadays, we have a music program, and everything is
  105. included in that music program.
  106. You have as many compressors as you like, as many EQs, reverbs, delays, and it's
  107. just a matter of just opening up the plugin, and you can easily route audio from one
  108. insert to another insert by a matter of a click.
  109. The workflow was absolutely amazing with these music programs.
  110. You know, again, when you read on forums and you have that older generation of
  111. loving the analog gear and stuff like that.
  112. It's just we have it so easy now, okay.
  113. The music production software that we have, this is the way to do it.
  114. It's so much easier. So this keeps our studios super minimal looking, right?
  115. Like, we don't need again all like this hardware gear, we don't need tons of space.
  116. It's super super simple, right?
  117. You just load up your project, you could recall a project that you were previously
  118. working on, or if you wanted to retweak a mix, it's just a matter of opening up that
  119. project. It's nowadays it's incredibly affordable.
  120. Like FL Studios, like $300 for like the signature edition, and you have a
  121. full-fledged studio inside of your computer.
  122. You know, computers are becoming way more powerful, they're able to handle this
  123. stuff a lot easier. It's really, really cool how far computers and music production
  124. have come. Okay, so I just want to move into the actual hardware that you are. gonna
  125. need to set up a little decent studio
  126. So nowadays, in all honesty, I think about for about $3,000, you guys can get an
  127. incredible studio. Like you guys can get a really good computer, decent speakers,
  128. audio interface, MIDI keyboard, and you know, your actual music production program.
  129. And that's pretty much it. We really don't need more than that.
  130. but the thing is where the expense really comes in to play nowadays with music
  131. production is your room and your acoustics, which I'll cover a little bit near the
  132. end of this podcast. Okay. So I'm first gonna start with your audio interface, okay?
  133. So your audio interface is just a sound card that you plug in through USB to your
  134. computer. And what it does is it allows you to plug in these special types of
  135. speakers. You know, they're called reference monitor speakers.
  136. It allows you to plug in microphones like the one I'm talking to you on right now.
  137. I'm talking to you on a Shure SM7B.
  138. You can plug it in with an XLR cable, you can plug your headphones in, they come
  139. with like the preamps so that you can turn up and down the volume.
  140. They also have drivers to get better performance out of your music production
  141. software, okay. So typically the audio interfaces driver performs a lot better than
  142. what comes with your music production software, like ASIO for all, or in the case of
  143. FL Studio, they have the FL Studio ASIO.
  144. That one actually performs pretty good.
  145. I would recommend using the FL Studio ASIO one.
  146. But I have found that the FocusRate driver performs even a little bit better than
  147. that FL Studio ASIO. but back in the day, my audio interface at the time,
  148. I found that like ASIO for all performed better than even like the audio interface's
  149. driver. So it's just a matter of kind of playing with what gives you better
  150. performance. But many times these audio interfaces they come with a driver, and
  151. typically they're supposed to give you better performance out of your computer.
  152. Okay., Now in terms of like the price point, you have to be thinking about how many
  153. microphones will you be recording at once, as well as what kind of gear are you
  154. going to be connecting to this audio interface.
  155. Okay. So nowadays for myself, my setup is very, very minimal.
  156. But as I was starting up, I was trying to do all these different things because I
  157. wanted to learn music production.
  158. I bought this like hardware preamp, and then I bought like a patch bay, and I was
  159. like, Oh, I want to connect this all.
  160. I was kind of wanting to go a little bit more of the hardware route, just to kind of
  161. get my hands on that stuff. But again, as I've started to discover over the years,
  162. it's like that stuff's expensive, it takes up room, and in all honesty, it's just
  163. like I can do all that stuff inside of my actual music production program.
  164. However, over the years, I did buy a nice preamp.
  165. it's the art voice channel. and what that allows me to do is just get a nicer,
  166. cleaner signal and get a little bit more control over my recording with like some EQ
  167. and compression before it actually gets recorded.
  168. But again, that's more of like a luxury.
  169. So, what I'm trying to say with your audio interface, you have to think about how
  170. many microphones are you going to be recording at once.
  171. Also, the gear. So, on the back of the audio interface, what can you plug in to it?
  172. So, in the case of the Focus Rank 2 i2, I I think it just has two outputs.
  173. So, in other words, one goes to your left speaker and one goes to your right
  174. speaker. But back in the day, I had like a Mackey control universal, and so a Mackey
  175. control universal was a MIDI controller with motorized faders.
  176. And the reason why you want motorized faders is because it gives you like that real
  177. hands-on mixing feel. So, for example, if you went from one bank to another bank of
  178. sounds, the faders would actually switch to where the actual faders would be.
  179. The old audio interface I had, you were able to plug in MIDI connections.
  180. Okay, so like the super old MIDI connections.
  181. Like nowadays, we just use USB for MIDI, and that's the most simple way.
  182. Like you just plug it in USB to your computer, and that's MIDI..
  183. It works But the older gear, they actually had two cables, and it was an in and an
  184. out, and you had to use MIDI cables.
  185. So, for example, that MACI control, it had an in and an out, and that plugged into
  186. the back of my audio interface at the time because I had a focus right Scarlet 2i4.
  187. Okay, so I still was only able to record two microphones at a time, but I allowed me
  188. to connect more things on the back.
  189. but over the years, like I said, my workflow has gotten to the point of just
  190. keyboard and mouse, so I don't use that Mackie control anymore.
  191. And the focus rate 2i2 no longer even allows me to connect that kind of stuff
  192. because I just decided over the years, it's like the only thing I plug into this
  193. audio interface is my microphone, and I use this preamp to help give me a cleaner
  194. signal, and that's it. Typically, I would recommend just keep it simple.
  195. Don't even worry about the hardware stuff.
  196. If you're gonna be recording, yeah, you might want to get like a nice preamp just to
  197. get a nice clean signal, but beside that, a simple audio interface, this does great.
  198. Okay, so I just have the focus right scarlet 2i2 second generation, okay.
  199. So let's talk about a MIDI keyboard.
  200. Okay, so I consider a MIDI keyboard like the main hub of my studio workflow.
  201. Okay, so the most important thing with the MIDI keyboard is to have the transport
  202. buttons, okay. So that's your stop, play, record, and looping features in FL Studio.
  203. If you hit the loop button, it allows you to go from song mode to pattern mode, and
  204. that is just really really important just for a workflow thing.
  205. Like if you just want to listen to like the pattern, you just you know hit the
  206. button quickly and listen to the pattern, and then you can quickly go back to you
  207. know the whole composition in song mode.
  208. And the easiest way to set up those transport control buttons again, that's the stop
  209. play, record, loop and stuff like that.
  210. that If you hit F10 inside of FL Studio, you'll see you have a MIDI controller..
  211. Click on the MIDI controller, and then there is presets
  212. in my case, I have a Axiom 49.
  213. I actually use the Oxygen 49 slash 61 preset, and that integrates really really good
  214. with my MIDI keyboard here. The next thing you want to look for in a MIDI keyboard
  215. is this the quality of the keys.
  216. You know, when you buy like the super super cheap, like I'm talking maybe like a 90
  217. keyboard, the keys are gonna feel cheap.
  218. At the end of the day, you're still gonna get like the same results out of it for
  219. the most part. It just might not be as enjoyable to play as you're actually
  220. recording because you can always go in and edit those MIDI notes to adjust your
  221. velocity, your timing, and all that stuff, right?
  222. It's just a matter of having a keyboard to play to get it into your music production
  223. program to make that process more fluent as well as be able to be more creative,
  224. okay? So quality keys, I would say is worth paying that extra, you know, 70 to
  225. 100 in comparison to like the lower end models, okay.
  226. You have to be careful with MIDI keyboards, they can get extremely expensive for
  227. features that you do not use, and it's always going to be reflected in that price,
  228. okay. So I'll talk about that in a minute, okay.
  229. the next thing, you know, so you know, it is nice to kind of have like knobs.
  230. Now the sliders I would say are pointless on a MIDI keyboard.
  231. And the reason for that is because I just told you about the Mackie control where it
  232. had motorized faders. Now they do make MIDI keyboards with motorized faders.
  233. I think Behringer makes one. I'm not telling you to buy that, I'm just letting you
  234. know that. And the reason why manual faders are so pointless on a MIDI keyboard is
  235. because if you try to use them for mixing, since they're not motorized, what happens
  236. is so right now. I have nine faders
  237. Okay, so if I adjust them a certain way and then I hit next to go to the next bank
  238. of nine sounds, well, it's like these faders are not lined up with what my screen is
  239. showing me. And as soon as I move a fader, you know, that actual fader will
  240. change in volume or wherever the parameter is, to somewhere where I don't want.
  241. it's kind of hard to explain, but if you've experienced trying to mix with a MIDI
  242. keyboard, the manual sliders, in my opinion, I think they're just pointless to have
  243. on a MIDI keyboard. The knobs are nice though, because you can, you know, control
  244. your parameters, such as like on like your VST if you're doing some sound design or
  245. something like that. Okay. same with like the drum pads.
  246. Most MIDI keyboards, like what they're doing is like they're jam-packing all these
  247. features in, and then they're just kind of upselling you on it.
  248. If you're wanting drum pads, I'd recommend just actually buying a drum pad
  249. controller. That way, you know, you're gonna get higher quality pads, and you know,
  250. it's just actually designed for that purpose.
  251. I have a 49-key keyboard. I find that that's a nice medium.
  252. I find the smaller keyboards pretty restrictive, like it's different if you're using
  253. them for travel, that's one thing, but inside your actual studio, like you know,
  254. you're not able to play over octaves, right?
  255. And then maybe even like the 61, I would recommend too.
  256. That would be nice to have. But again, depending on like the size of your desk and
  257. your studio, the 49 is a nice size, it allows you to play a couple octaves and you
  258. can easily just press the octave buttons to go up and down octaves.
  259. Okay. The next things is like a pitch and mod wheel, those are pretty important on a
  260. MIDI keyboard. just if you're wanting to do some automation within your actual
  261. productions or just like kind of play around with sounds and stuff like that.
  262. Okay, so let's quickly cover those points again on a MIDI keyboard, which I highly
  263. suggest to you. Okay, so again, you want to make sure that your MIDI keyboard has
  264. those transport controls. Pretty much all of them do, but again, that's the stop
  265. record the play. again, it's just for a workflow thing.
  266. If you are going to record, you know, you hit record, you hit play.
  267. If you screw up, you just hit stop, you hit control Z to undo.
  268. Again, it's just a workflow thing.
  269. the knobs are really, really nice to have.
  270. And again, I really feel that it's worth paying, you know, the extra however much
  271. just to get some more quality keys.
  272. Now, I'm not talking to get like amazing quality, but just better than just the the
  273. super super cheap MIDI keyboard feel.
  274. Anything more than that, what's happening is these companies are just jam-packing
  275. features, and you know, these MIDI keyboards they can get so expensive.
  276. But the thing is a MIDI keyboard has no sounds in it by itself, okay?
  277. And that's confusing when you're starting up because you're like, Well, where are my
  278. sounds? So the MIDI keyboard is all about just controlling your actual music
  279. production program. That's why I call the MIDI keyboard like the main hub of my
  280. studio, because it's controlling the sounds within my software.
  281. For a MIDI keyboard, I'd recommend the M Audio Oxygen.
  282. I really feel that that's like your best bang for buck.
  283. You get decent keys, you get your knobs, all that kind of stuff, your transport
  284. controls, but you're not getting gouged on the price.
  285. Okay. If you look at like, for example, like a company like native instruments,
  286. they've recently been releasing like their MIDI controller, and yes, it looks cool,
  287. it has is almost all flashy, it integrates really good with their stuff.
  288. But again, with FL Studio, you just want a super simple MIDI keyboard.
  289. Trust me, it's gonna save you money and it's gonna give you amazing results, okay.
  290. Just be careful not to be paying just this premium for a MIDI keyboard, which
  291. doesn't even come with sounds, okay.
  292. So let's move on to speakers, okay.
  293. So the whole goal of speakers for a studio is to give you a flat response.
  294. So what that means is as a producer, what we're wanting to do is hear the music as
  295. accurate as possible, and we're wanting translation.
  296. So that's the whole goal of mixing.
  297. Okay. So when we are actually mixing our music, we want the actual music to sound
  298. good on every single audio platform, whether that be earbuds, speakers in a car,
  299. on a TV, wherever. That's the goal, okay.
  300. And we want speakers that can give the truest response of that music to our
  301. ears so that we can mix it properly, we can make accurate decisions, okay.
  302. So these speakers are called reference monitor speakers.
  303. Pretty much when you're starting up, any reputable brand will give you decent
  304. results, you know, like Yamaha, KRK.
  305. I started with M audio when I first started up.
  306. Now, when you're picking a speaker, since we are creating like base-heavy music, you
  307. know, hip hop, dance, stuff like that.
  308. I personally would suggest an eight-inch speaker.
  309. when I first purchased these types of speakers, I bought a five-inch speaker, and it
  310. was amazing how much bass they lacked.
  311. Okay, so the five-inch speakers, like had they like they had no bass, and I was
  312. like, because like they're pretty big, like even the five-inch speakers, like you
  313. get them, like you're super excited, you plug them in, and you're like, there was no
  314. base for me to hear what's going on in the low end, and that's really important as
  315. you're mixing your music. You want to hear what's in the low end so you can mix it
  316. properly. So over the years, I eventually got eight-inch speakers, those are really
  317. good, just even by themselves.
  318. But I also suggest getting a subwoofer.
  319. But with a subwoofer, you have to make sure that you know you're not adjusting the
  320. volume super loud on the sub. You want it just so that you are hearing that low end
  321. a little bit better. You're also gonna need four speaker cables when it comes to
  322. using a sub because what happens is it leaves the audio interface, it goes into the
  323. sub, the left and right channel..
  324. So that's two cables, and then it leaves the sub left and right again into the
  325. speaker, okay So you're gonna need four, and many times you have to be thinking
  326. about your cable length, okay?
  327. Because many times, like your sub may not be close to your speakers or whatever.
  328. So you're gonna need to get your audio to the sub, and then you're also gonna need
  329. the audio back to the speakers, and sometimes even like the left speakers further
  330. away than like the right speaker.
  331. So those are just things you have to think about as you're purchasing.
  332. Over my years, I have just opted into purchasing longer audio cables than I actually
  333. need. People within the audio industry, like they're gonna be like, No, you have to
  334. buy audio cables that are perfect, like you know, the perfect length.
  335. and in all honesty, it's like I personally would like the convenience if I end up
  336. moving or if I change my studio around, you know, it's like I can move stuff around,
  337. I don't have to go and buy more audio cables.
  338. Like now, if I was like in a super professional studio where I know I'm setting it
  339. up one time, yes, you know, I'm gonna make sure that my cables are the same length
  340. and pretty much however long they need to be, for all that kind of stuff when it
  341. comes to noise, and you know, but really, like when we're just bedroom studio
  342. producers, like don't care about that stuff.
  343. Like convenience is more important, okay.
  344. Now, depending on your living situation, sometimes you can't have speakers, so
  345. headphones would be your alternative, okay.
  346. So, just to give you an idea, I use the the bare dynamic DT990 pros.
  347. But even if your living situation does allow you to have speakers, many times it's
  348. nice just to check the mix on the headphones.
  349. And even if you're working with vocals, a lot of times it allows you to hear you
  350. know the actual stare stereo spectrum just a little bit better with headphones, and
  351. you can just kind of compare to what's going on with your speakers to the
  352. headphones, it is back and forth, okay.
  353. So, again, at the end of the day, it's just all about translation.
  354. of That's what you're wanting out your speakers.
  355. But here's the kicker, okay? So acoustic treatment and your room.
  356. So, this is what dictates how good your speakers are gonna sound.
  357. So, a lot of people think that you know you're gonna have to buy really expensive
  358. speakers to hear the audio better, but really your room that you're in is extremely
  359. important, and typically it's gonna be like your most expensive to fix your room,
  360. okay? And it's called acoustic treatment.
  361. And what it's doing is it's absorbing frequencies so that it's reducing the
  362. reflections because what happens is when the audio leaves your speakers, you know,
  363. it bounces off the walls, and then what happens is the new audio that's coming out
  364. is coming to your ears, but the old audio is still bouncing around your room and it
  365. comes back and it skews these frequencies, and you get like phase cancellation and
  366. stuff like that. So you're not able to actually mix the music properly.
  367. You know, if you ever walk into a room with no acoustic treatment and you clap, you
  368. know, it has like that reverb sound.
  369. But if you walk into a room with lots of acoustic treatment and you try and clap,
  370. you know, that clap is you know dampened a lot, okay.
  371. So the things I can tell you about acoustic treatment.
  372. Now, you know, I'm not an acoustician, okay?
  373. So there's people who are actually trained to know you know, like the frequency
  374. response of your room and you know how to treat it.
  375. Okay, so here's some things I can pass on to you, okay?
  376. So the first things that you want to do is you want to tame your first reflection
  377. points. So when the audio comes out of your speakers, where does it first hit the
  378. walls? Okay, that's where you want to tame to help dampen that reflection, okay?
  379. That way you can hear your music more accurately.
  380. And by doing that, many times your stereo image, you can hear it a lot better.
  381. You can also start hearing, you know, more accurate adjustments to things like
  382. reverb and compression and stuff like that..
  383. The next biggest thing, which is very, very important is your bass traps
  384. So, what happens is audio, the bass gets really really trapped in all like your
  385. corners of your rooms, okay? So it's very, very important to tame the base.
  386. So, again, I don't know tons about acoustic treatment, but that's gonna get you
  387. going and give you a little bit of a better understanding.
  388. It's just very important to treat your room, okay?
  389. Because you know, people think like you need all this expensive gear, but if your
  390. room is not treated, you're really just burning money for no reason, okay.
  391. And so the last thing I want to talk to you about with your gear is how to save
  392. money, okay? So you guys can actually be purchasing this gear in bundle deals and
  393. save tons of money. For example, you know, there's many times bundle deals with
  394. focus right, where you can buy like the audio interface with some headphones and
  395. like a microphone, and with the speakers, many times you can buy speakers with the
  396. stands and like the speaker cables and stuff like that, and you know, it's just
  397. gonna save you some money. I wish I knew that when I started up, I bought everything
  398. individually. and then you know, a couple years in, I realized it's like, oh, you
  399. can buy this stuff in bundle deals.
  400. So that's a little pro tip for you guys, okay.
  401. So I hope this episode has helped you out and kind of gained you some knowledge, you
  402. know, on what to buy and what not to buy.
  403. And you know, at the end of the day, it's about realizing your workflow and how you
  404. work, okay? Because as you progress, what's gonna happen is you are gonna find out
  405. how you work, but in the beginnings, you have no idea, and you're gonna want to try
  406. all these different things. For example, I've tried machine, I've tried MPCs.
  407. At the end of the day, I realize it's like that is not my workflow.
  408. My workflow is FL Studio, and if I want to sample, I actually like using a MIDI
  409. keyboard. I have 49 keys, that gives me 49 slices.
  410. You know, I'm good to go. It's like it it''ss much more simple.
  411. I only have to buy one piece of gear, this MIDI keyboard, and I can treat it to play
  412. piano, I can use it for sound design, I could use it for sampling.
  413. So it's just you know, over the years I found that's my workflow, it's simple.
  414. but when I was starting up, you know, I spent money buying, you know, this Mackey
  415. control universal, like those things like a thousand dollars.
  416. I bought it used, so I got it a little bit cheaper, but at the end of the day, it
  417. was like, yes, it worked with the FL Studio, but not as integrated as I'd like.
  418. Like, you know, for example, I would have liked it to be able to like open up a
  419. plug-in, and then I could actually you know use like the EQ and the compressor and
  420. stuff, but it didn't work that way, like it just worked good for controlling volume,
  421. and it's just like, oh well, I want to be adjusting EQ, so I might as well just use
  422. my most for everything. again, you know, I wanted to try like machine because you
  423. know, I I kept seeing it was really, really popular within the industry, and it's
  424. just like, well, I just don't work that way.
  425. And then in addition, it's like, well, now I'm having to learn like a different
  426. music production program, and it's like that's pulling me away from the time that I
  427. have to create music or create you know a new course or even this podcast or
  428. whatever. It's like you know, I'm trying to learn this other software, I'm not even
  429. creating music anymore. It's like I'm trying to learn the software, okay?
  430. And that's just kind of what I found over the years.
  431. It was just like, hey, you know what?
  432. I bought this machine studio, bought this NPC, I tried them out.
  433. I ended up selling the MPC and the machine studio.
  434. So, what I'm trying to say is over the years, you guys will find your own workflow.
  435. You might have to go through some expensive purchases to figure that out.
  436. But I just want to pass on to you guys.
  437. Keep it simple. Figure out what gear are you gonna need, and then that's gonna save
  438. you a lot of money. Again, my course is a hundred percent for free.
  439. It's called Essential Gear Needed to Make Beats.
  440. It teaches you all about music production gear, how to save money, and what I look
  441. for in each piece of gear that I use.
  442. Again, when it comes to like a MIDI keyboard, audio interface, speakers,
  443. microphones, your actual computer, and stuff like that.
  444. So there's no strings attached.
  445. Think of it as like a taste test of what my other courses will be like.
  446. Okay. So that's the episode. Again, if you guys want to support it, I've left a
  447. button on the episode page just to support it for five dollars a month.
  448. You guys can cancel any time as well.
  449. So thanks for listening. I'll talk to you guys in the next episode.
  450. Thanks for checking out the episode.
  451. If you had any questions, visit it'sgratuitous.com/slash podcast, select an episode
  452. and submit your question at the bottom of the page to the contact form.
  453. If you'd like to take my FL Studio courses, see my current studio and podcasting
  454. gear, read my books, or are interested in lessons.
  455. Visit the link it's gratuitous.com/slash learning.
  456. That page will redirect you to more info and resources.
  457. I hope the best with your productions.
  458. I'm gratuitous, and I'll see you in the next
  459. episode.
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