We are the music makers - producers?

For that kind of thing, the Yamaha PSS-A50 would be my choice. I got one for my then-10 year old and it's been pretty spot on.

https://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/keyboards/portable_keyboards/pss-a50/index.html

RRP is £110 but probably more like £80 online.

The keyboard action is good quality (and velocity sensitive), it has a good amount of polyphony, and a recording function so you can overdub yourself (or put drums down to play over). Its arpeggiator is quite fun too. And it definitely does EDM-y sounds.

Spot on - thanks.

How do you all break creative stagnation? I'd tried taking a month off which initially got some ideas brewing, but I quickly lost steam. Since I've been setting up a series of simple tasks to keep me occupied but now it feels like I'm just stuck in a loop of doing the production equivalent of data-entry.

Sometimes it takes months to feel inspired. I try another craft for a while. I found the time between inspiration has got longer the older I've got. I'll still be up to something though!

Not sure if these will translate to what sort of stuff you put together, but for me, a combo of the following:

Pick a random key/mode to work in. I often default to a few options that seem to have me fall into repeating the same lines again and again. I've got both a "high-tech" (psuedo-random generation via script) and "low-tech" (a D12 and D8) solution to this which work very nicely.

Build out the instrumentation in a different order. Again, I have a relatively standard way of starting out a track. It's nice to flip that on it's head to see what comes out.

Take a track that you enjoy, dissect it to build out your arrangement in terms of empty blocks and build out those blocks to create something in the same form but very different sounding.

Definitely interested to hear other people's takes also.

Simple answer is to have a deadline. In work, I always have a deadline. If you don't have one, you can noodle forever. Give yourself a deadline, a date you're going to upload etc, otherwise you'll procrastinate, and that will go on indefinitely.

All great feedback. Thanks.

Yeah this is a good way of doing things. Finish everything you start also. Give yourself a week to make a track and post it for public consumption no matter how you feel about it, or at least have someone listen to it. Quantity breeds quality. Last week I did a three min ish jam per night and I've got a definite two track ideas out of it. Consider doing Jamuary for that reason.

Not sure if anyone is interested in this:

https://reggae-loops.com/remix-contest

Load of U-He stuff (inc. Diva) half price via Native Instruments at the moment: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/komplete/u-he-offer-2022

Sharing this because I feel like producers will appreciate it in a different way than non-producers.

https://motionward.bandcamp.com/album/ura-baby-with-a-halo

The best way I can describe it is if Chain-Reaction-style Dub Techno was invented 15-20yrs later, in the UK instead of Germany, with the techniques applied to Grime instrumentals instead of Techno. The first two tracks in particular are really amazing.

Anyone have any suggestions for a hardware stereo compressor with side chain that's under $500USD and isn't a 3630?

FMR Audio do the Really Nice Levelling Amplifier and the Really Nice Compressor. One is a little coloured, one is transparent, though I can't remember which.

I was considering buying the RNLA before settling on the OTO Boum

RNC is the more transparent one, RNLA was introduced as a squashier/less transparent version. I have an RNC. They work really well.

The sidechain input is a little unconventional. It has an insert style where it outputs a mono mix of the inputs on the tip and takes the key input back on the ring. Which means you can run an insert Y-cable with an inline passive HPF to take the bass out of the sidechain signal to stop it overreacting to the kick. Lets you compress a house/techno mix buss quite hard in a live situation.

Fired up the laptop and broke out the mics for the first time in ages over christmas. Really enjoying getting stuck back in. As a big bonus, I recently had my old 1920s upright tuned to pitch so I can add joanna to my ramshackle folkpop efforts. During quiet passages recorded with a single condenser my annoying nose-breathing is annoyingly audible. Gonna have to re-think mic positioning and...?

Also - gonna bin off my Slate Digital subscription and just buy a few more plugins that I love.

still playing around with the electribe. been trying out the different functions and menus on the machine over the last month or two. exploring the machine in a bit more depth. going through each sample and seeing how it can be tweaked

the electribe doesn't have a built in speaker i just connected a denon envaya to the back and the sound is pretty good, have also tried my grado headphones but the envaya's sound is good enough for me

as mick says above he has 1000's of sample on his 101 i've found the range of samples a bit limited on the electribe. loads of bass, drums snares and cymbals but i find the range of other instruments ( sound samples ) is a bit limited. i often wish for a few more sound options when searching through for new audio part. some bjork type sounds bleeps and blurps a few more orchestral instruments and some artificially created noises to mess around with. i find myself returning to a handful of noises that i like. which limits things slightly.

that being said it is very easy to tweak a sample out of all recognition and change it completely with the fx and modulation dials.

haven't touched it since before xmas but i was spending a couple of hours each evening creating a track then playing around with it before deleting. haven't saved anything as yet even though i've made maybe three tracks i really liked in the time i've had it

still enjoying it but would like a few more sound samples. it's also helped me appreciate tunes by professional artists and been listening to the structure of music in a bit more detail when listening to radio 6 and my mp3 player.

i have also discovered i lack any sense of rhythm, i am often a beat or two out when trying to manually put sounds down via the keypads, often take two or three goes to lay down a drum or synth line with some sounds out of time

still enjoying it hugely though

Did you open the lid and point the mic inside? That's how I've done a similar thing, lots of felt and pedal noise but for my purposes that wasn't so bad. didn't pick up too much of my tutting and swearing over lack of skill

I am really enjoying mine as well, I was hoping to have more time on it over Christmas but was ill for some of it and did not have the motivation to do much.

I am getting to grips with quite a few of the functions and the menu system, I found it really useful to have paper copies of the instructions, shortcuts and in particular the parameter guide.

I have sussed their version of automation, it is a but fiddly but can have some good effects. The next things for me to learn are how to link/sequence different parts and how to use the sample function.

Kinda, I took the top and front panel off and pointed a condenser over my shoulder at the sound board. Realised afterwards that I’d left the variable pattern on the mic to omni, which was exacerbating pick-up of my breathing. Moved it closer and set to cardioid… much better.

I might have imagined it but does anyone know of a spring reverb effect that has open springs that you can manipulate with your hands? I'm pretty sure I've seen perc/truss/someone else using one like this but it could all be a dream!

Benidub maybe?

Something like this but without the (significant) DIY element if possible! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFumchuaG0c

Yeah nice this looks like it might do the trick—cheers!

Or this

https://www.juno.co.uk/products/knas-ekdahl-moisturizer-spring-reverb/546682-01/