We are the music makers - producers?

TB03 is great as is the SH01-A

You could get him Push or Push 2? It really opens Ableton up massively

Ah good shout, always wanted to try out one of those

Cheers I will look in to them. Hope you’re well dude.

& @EB Have either of you or anyone else anything to say about a Roli?

I've not used one myself. I know a lot of people really like them for expression control which I guess you could also MIDI map to various parameters within your DAW. I assume they can do the same 'In Key' trick that Push can do, so you'll never hit a bum note in any scale!

OK cheers, so maybe my scepticism is unfounded.

Might try a subtle ‘chat’ with the kid about what hardware is ‘best’ i.e. what he’d love. I think Push does sound very good.

Push is amazing

What about something like a PO-32. It's a little sampler/sequencer.

I'm GASing over the Elektron Digitakt - anyone used/using one?

Hey Skully. Sorry for the late reply, I've not been on here for a while. I'm going to give you some thoughts that might or might not be suitable - it's very hard to know what your son would take to or connect with - but this is what I've found to be useful in my own experience.

First off, don't get Logic, it's barely any different to Ableton (both great though, and I use Logic regularly). The Roli stuff, for me, is indeed a bit gimmicky. I assume you mean the Seaboard? You get a bit of extra manual modulation (with sliding your fingers and stuff) but you lose a lot of the fast playability and feedback of a normal keyboard. Or at least, I found I did. It felt like playing a wetsuit full of pencils to me. The Roli blocks stuff - I wouldn't bother. Expensive and definitely gimmicky.

So, I think the thing is, when you're starting out making music, the thing that makes your music interesting and develops your own 'voice' is the sound of you learning and exploring your instrument - finding the limits and experimenting with getting around them or making it do things it wasn't really designed to do. If you start on a DAW (like Ableton or Logic) you will not find those limits. A DAW is very safe and very powerful and there are so many available sounds and presets and effects and so on, you will just keep adding things that sound "fine" and never even pushing one of those sounds to its limits. It also doesn't help that the sound design interface is deeply unmusical by default (mouse & keyboard).

Ableton Push is great but only addresses the interface bit.

I think something like an acid box / groovebox might be a good idea. The TB-03 is great but it really only does that one sound, and if he isn't into that sound then it won't get used for long. I would suggest having a look at the Korg Monologue. I feel like it's a modern 303 in lots of ways… sounds really good, and the sequencer especially can get some great stuff happening really fast, and I think that's something that might be a "wow" moment after dealing with Ableton. Plus it's got a keyboard and a cool little oscilloscope that shows the waveform, and it can do microtuning stuff that Aphex Twin helped with. You can also pick them up for about £200 new, which is a bargain.

I think something like that might also help with learning synthesis properly - simple layout, one knob per function, etc.

Alternatively, a sampler can be a really creative and inspiring tool. You can start with anything and get to somewhere completely different. I have a Teenage Engineering OP-1 that I don't use for finished tracks, but for coming up with sounds, and ideas for tracks, it's amazing. Really creative. Expensive though. Their new OP-Z is also interesting but doesn't actually sample (yet). Korg Electribe sampler is fun and ok but a bit awkward and I think your son might find it unnecessarily limiting in terms of arranging tracks.

An Elektron Digitakt is probably the most interesting affordable hardware sampler (I won't mention the Octatrack, it's a crazy rabbithole), though it is still expensive. Sounds great though, and does so much, in a really interesting way.

Another thing to think about might be the Armin van Buuren or Deadmau5 MasterClass.com courses. When you're learning electronic music production, the frustration mainly comes not from the gear but your own lack of knowledge. I've not taken any of those courses but I have heard that they're quite well-produced.

Alternatively, a soundcard / audio interface and a good pair of monitoring headphones will also help improve things because he'll be better able to pick out what's happening in the tracks he likes, and better hear what it is he's doing in terms of mixing, EQing, etc. Let me know if you want any recommendations on interfaces or headphones.

Anyway, sorry for the essay, hope it's not too late and that you find your son something that helps him progress and have fun with his music.

I'm GASing over the Elektron Digitakt - anyone used/using one?

Great little box if you can live with:

• mono samples
  
• no kits, only patterns
  
• no arranger / songmode, only pattern chains that don't get saved
  
• proper Overbridge software still isn't ready so you can't record tracks individually (and you can't send e.g. a kick sound out of a separate physical output, because it only has L/R main outs)
  
  

It has a very sweet sound thanks to a cheeky bit of top end EQ it puts on everything. And it has all the nice Elektron sequencer tricks. Fun, creative, immediate, much less of a learning curve than the Elektron boxes of old.

Apparently it surpassed the lifetime sales of the Octatrack within six months or something, and I can see why.

^ you can put the kick on it’s own channel by panning hard left (for instance).

I wonder if something like a Maschine Mk3 and an SM58 would be useful? It's an instrument (so it opens up Ableton) and it's an audio interface and vocals so your boy gets the ability to record external sources, but its a controller too, and it comes with a whole suite of really nice instruments and effects which sound (out of the box) much better than Ableton.

I know MAschine has problems but if you're looking to expand what he can already do with Ableton, and if what he's trying to do is more post-everything chillout, I don't think an external acid / groovebox is necessarily going to add much to that - I think you're better off giving him more inputs to his existing setup.

But then everything else has to be panned hard right and therefore mono.

I'm having a really painful time programming drums atm. I love the Ableton way of programming drums - you build five or six patterns and you play them live into your song - but I hate using Ableton for sequencing.

I'd really like something like Ableton to be able to play live in Logic as an audio unit / plugin. Any ideas? I've tried using renoise redux for this and it was so complex it made me want to kill myself.

wetsuit full of pencils

Hah! I haven’t been hands on with one but that’s exactly what I imagined.

It’s a good point about working within limits too. One DAW is probably enough at the moment but some cool analog/functionally limited synth or drum machine might inspire.

I’d probably go with a launchpad mini or similar as a cheap way to make ableton more tactile and add one of the Korg re-issued analog synths, budget depending.

Unless you’re doing live takes, is that an issue?
Could always pan it centrally, with other stuff hard left and hard right and use software to split it though.

Sure it’s just a workaround I thought you might find useful. I do.

Sure, it can be done, it's just not ideal for something that is sold as a drum sampler, and it's a shortcoming that wasn't present in any previous Elektron boxes. Also if you do the panning trick you can't really use the master send FX because they're stereo. If you're multitracking into a DAW, Overbridge 2 will solve everything when it finally releases, and for now you can just do multiple takes. It's only a big issue in a live type of setup. Just wanted to mention it.

Hey
Thanks to you and @BleakRefs so much for well considered and helpful responses.

Am exploring the things you’ve both suggested.

A lad at work who’s into production also suggested just buying some files.

I don’t really get how this all works tbh. For instance:

What is a sound card / interface?

At the moment he’s playing stuff on my seperates, but out of a headphone jack which sounds all wheezy and whirry. I’m just thinking about getting a D to A box, and a blutooth reciever, as I don’t want to move the desk/cables across the room.

And I guess he could listen to digital music, I can’t teally be arsed much as I’m basically using Vinyl and FM on the stereo, suits me fine, I hate digital music as it’s just some files in a player, I don’t want them as I can’t be arsed to look for things, use a mouse etc.

Is this just some hokey shit I’m imagining with a d to a? Is a soundcard the same thing?

Oh god.

An audio interface is basically an A/D & D/A in one, geared towards low latency and pro audio signal levels and connectors.
It will definitely improve sound quality over the headphone out but for music production a wire will be better than a Bluetooth job as they have an inherent delay (latency) in the transmission/receiving.

Cheers mate, thanks for info

Why not get him a subscription to one of the sample services or credits at e.g. splice?

Now you’re talking gibberish. I’m nearly 50, and I think vinyl is great.

Is that basically a bunch of samples/data?

What is a sound card / interface?

At the moment he’s playing stuff on my seperates, but out of a headphone jack which sounds all wheezy and whirry. I’m just thinking about getting a D to A box, and a blutooth reciever, as I don’t want to move the desk/cables across the room.

And I guess he could listen to digital music, I can’t teally be arsed much as I’m basically using Vinyl and FM on the stereo, suits me fine, I hate digital music as it’s just some files in a player, I don’t want them as I can’t be arsed to look for things, use a mouse etc.

Is this just some hokey shit I’m imagining with a d to a? Is a soundcard the same thing?

Yeah, what @Dramatic_Hammer said.

A simple USB audio interface like a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 paired with a relatively affordable set of monitoring headphones (by monitoring, I mean headphones that are made to have a neutral frequency response, and not with hyped bass like Beats or whatever) such as DT880s or even good old HD25s will be massively different to what you've described and a lot more conducive to getting better at music production. Though, as with so many things, it can be the start of a slippery slope.

An interface like the 2i2 also has line level outputs for connecting to monitors (usually powered studio monitors). But using quarter inch jack to phono leads you could wire it into your separates just as easily.