Powerful Dawless Recording Setup (For Any Genre)

making music on a computer screen sucks at least for me I spend a good part of my day looking at a computer screen and having to sit in front of a Daw to create music always felt more like work rather than creative play that's why in 20120 I set aside a small Corner in my home office to build up a hardware-based music recording studio fast forward 3 years and I produced several releases in this here corner I also bought and sold a bunch of gear along the way and I learned a lot about what it takes to put together a dollar setup that helps me do what's most important to me which is to keep taking ideas and stories from my head and translating them into finished songs if you're thinking about putting together or improving your existing doll setup then stick around because we'll be talking about the following the different elements that are capable hardware setup needs to Encompass what elements I've been using and how they've work worked out for me and we'll also take a look at what other gear we'll need to make sure that everything runs like clockwork but before we begin let's get some semantics out of the way dolls can mean a lot of different things depending on who you are asking if you're going full dolls this means that your music will never touch a Daw plain and simple I've tried this approach in the past where I would record the stereo out of my mixer and call that a finished track and I find this works great for live performances and jamming where the music that's being made will only be heard once but when recording music that will be released publicly and listen to many times I prefer to record and compose everything using Hardware instruments where each instrument is recorded to its own separate track so that I can do my final mix in a DAW and using this hybrid approach for the past two releases has worked out perfectly for me the Daw that I'm using is Harrison mixbus 30 2C which has an old school analog mixing desk workflow comes with a bunch of excellent stock plugins and allows me to get my mix sounding just right within a reasonable amount of time speaking of mixers the very first thing you'll need to figure out is how you're going to record the music that you are making if you're using multiple instruments you'll need a mixer of some kind to record all of those different inputs the common recommendation is to always get a mixer that can handle more inputs than what you think you will need but I personally see no problem working within reasonable limitations as this is the place where I find my creative side shines the brightest and if I plan it all out in advance I won't have empty mixer input staring me in the face and catalyzing that nasty gear acquisition fire that burns deep inside me if you have no intention of further mixing your recordings then recording the stereo out of the mixer is all that you will need and you won't need more than a simple handheld recorder to accomplish just that if however you plan on recording each of the instruments to its separate track then you'll need a mixer that's also a multi-track recorder luckily these days there are a couple of affordable options that you can choose from and the Tas cam model range is a popular choice among doless enthusiasts the first thing you'll notice is that I've got my Model 12 positioned vertically which has been an enormous space saver in addition to providing me with a quick overview and easy access to things that matter the cool thing about this recorder is that you can choose at what point of the signal chain you want to record pre-c compressor post compressor or post EQ I have it set up for pre-compressed recording because I will apply quite a bit of compression and EQ during my mixing process but it's great being able to apply a bit of EQ to different instruments while tracking without having crude processing included in the multitrack recording I'll probably do another video where I go more in depth as to how I exactly use the Model 12 in my process so let me know down in the comments if there are any specific questions you would like me to address in that upcoming video the next piece of gear we'll look at is the main brain of this whole dolls operation the electron digitone Keys is the main sequencer and Main synth behind everything that I do it sends midi clock notes and CC messages to all of my other gear and it's the Baseline and cord machine on most of my tracks I've already done a deep dive into how the digitone fits into my process and if you've missed that video be sure to check it out to get a much better idea of how all of this works well together unless you're making space out ambient you'll likely need a drum machine of some sort the drummer I've chosen for this task is the Roland TR 6s what I love about it is is that it has most of the features of its older brother the tr8s while coming in at a much smaller size I especially like having easy access to track faders since I like doing a complete drum submix before recording the stereo out to the Model 12 which means I'll be eqing and adding effects to each of the drum tracks as well as the master this process can get very menu DIY with this tiny little screen here but I'll usually slip into the Flow State when I'm dialing in my drums and once I'm happy how everything plays together there's really no need to keep digging into the menus again and if I need to make some quick performance tweaks I can do that with the faders and knobs on top a big limitation that the TR 6s has is that every Noe is tied to the grid meaning that you can't use micro timing to slightly nudge notes out of their position thereby making the groove sound a bit more organic however the this is not a problem for me since I sequenced the TR 6s from the digitone which does indeed have step micro timing even when sending out to MIDI and that's one of the key benefits to having a powerful dolls setup if you do it right one piece of gear can feed off the functionality of another thereby expanding your musical options and if this video is expanding your views on what a dollar setup can be then go right ahead and give it a thumbs up now let me ask you what would a doll set a b without an analog synthesizer nothing it would be nothing I'm not an analog purist obviously but I do enjoy having a fun little synth with a lot of knobs and excellent effects on hand and that's exactly what the dreadbox Typhon is I'm a big proponent of functionality but throwing in a bit of fun here and there never hurt nobody and finally we get to this here piece of wood hanging in the corner of my studio what I found really open opens up a dollar setup is the addition of an instrument or voice that can add some sort of organic mess and provide a contrast to the waterfall of programmed and somewhat predictable Electronics this is a custom made brenus Morgan headless guitar sourced from local wood and handbuilt right here in Serbia with a 26.5 in scale neck and a single Bridge position high output hand wound humbucker pickup I'll be doing a thorough video on this Unique Piece of acoustic art so let me know if there's anything specific you like to know about it whichever instrument you decide to use you likely need some way of adding Drive Distortion or effects to it now this here cable leaves the guitar and goes straight into the boss GX 100 which then takes care of all my amp Sims pedal Sims effects and a whole lot more the presets it comes with are deceptively atrocious but that's okay because I love creating my own and in order to do that I've got the GX up here on my desk for easy access uh this makes the expression pedal on it useless but luckily it takes pedal input so I've got another expression seesaw under the desk right next to my cable spaghetti as you can probably tell I love my mind numbing High Gain Distortion tones which make me question whether what I'm feeling is pain or pleasure or both but the gx100 can also pull off something like [Music] this the first musical instrument I started playing were the drums some two decades ago now but keeping a full drum kit at home has always been a struggle for me especially when I used to travel a lot and move across continents on a regular basis and so I finally gave up on that dream in 2010 fast forward to today and I still have that drumming drive inside me and desire to hit things in a rhythmic fashion I figured that an electric drum pad would satisfy this craving so I got myself an elisis sample pad Pro these days I mostly use it for triggering other instruments so I've got it hooked up via midi to the digitone and from there I can pass midi signal onto other tracks and other pieces of gear it's probably the instrument that sees the least amount of use in my process but I have a feeling it will have its time to shine on my next release now that we've covered all the fun stuff let's look at a couple of more things you need to figure out when putting together a dolls setup the monitors I'm using are 5in coaxial front ported Fluid Audio fx50s they're active monitors with a d-class amplifier and a couple of controls on the back to sculpt the sound in accordance with the room you're using them in I've got a midi cable running from the digitone into this simple midi through box and then I've got cables running out to my other pieces of gear that are receiving midi signals I just don't bother with daisy chaining midi cables just get something cheap like this and this one's powered by my pedal power supply for added Simplicity speaking of power I've got all my gear connected to a single power strip to reduce hum and Buzz a power switch to make sure everything is off when I want it to be and a surge protector for lighting I'm using a lifx bulb which is great for setting the mood I want although it's been a while since the mood has been anything other than green around here it connects to Wi-Fi and can easily be controlled using the app I've also got a boss gt001 sitting here which used to be my guitar processor before I got the gx1 100 it's such a useful piece of gear that it's not worth selling at current prices and and I plan on doing a separate video on why I think this little box punches way above its weight and last but not least we've got my trusty notepad here usually I love taking down notes on my phone but when I'm composing and recording the last thing I want are phone induced distractions so the trusty old pen and paper come in very handy here but let me know about the little tricks and techniques you use to keep your dolls process going Flawless next I'll be doing more videos that go in depth into each piece of gear that I use in my studio so be sure to subscribe if that interests you and I'll see you [Music] around

Channel: nedogled

Views: 9,067

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Id: xUoLQU3-QxM

Length: 11min 44sec (704 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024