Music Production Blog: Vintage Synths, Racks, Studio Gear and more

Synths, Modules and Soundbanks

The bulk of what I write. Rack modules and workstations from the late eighties through the nineties, mostly bought secondhand, mostly documented badly everywhere else.

• The full Roland JV, JD and XV range, module by module, including which expansion boards earn their price.
• Why one Italian company builds the keybed under your Moog, Sequential or Waldorf.
• Getting SY85 banks into a Yamaha TG500, plus 60 free soundbanks, and the same job for the SY55 and TG55.
• Additive synthesis on the Kawai K5000, and the underrated Roland Alpha Juno.
• Free software that runs real hardware firmware: Xenia for the Waldorf Microwave XT and OsTIrus for the Access Virus.

MPC and Samplers

Akai’s workflow has outlived four generations of hardware. What each machine adds, and how to get your own material into it.

• The MPC Live III in full: eight-core CPU, 8GB RAM, 128GB NVMe, and whether it justifies replacing a Live II.
• Where the workflow came from, tracing the MPC line back to the 1988 MPC60 and Roger Linn.
• MPC Live II against Logic Pro on iPad, similar money, opposite philosophies.
• Custom wavetables: the OS 3.9 import route, and a free Ensoniq Fizmo set to start with.

Effects, Compressors and Signal Chain

The boxes between the synth and the mix. What each one does to a signal, what it costs today, and whether a plugin covers it.

• Three machines, one name: the QuadraVerb QV1, Q2 and Q20 compared.
• How a 300 dollar Alesis 3630 shaped French house, and why the pumping still gets chased.
• A budget reverb that holds up: the Yamaha REV500, reviewed honestly.
• Hardware stereo compressors for the mix bus, and patchbay versus extra converters when you run out of inputs.
• Whether analog gear actually sounds better. The blind-test evidence says something less flattering than the forums do. The related question of analog versus digital synths matters less than beginners are told.

Sound Design and Technique

Rebuilding specific sounds, and the techniques underneath them.

• The Faithless “Insomnia” pizzicato rebuilt in Serum 2, and the Emulator II preset behind “Papa Don’t Preach”.
• Loading your own wavetables into the MPC on OS 3.9, and a free set built from an Ensoniq Fizmo.
• Series and parallel filter routing, and processing the Arturia Drumbrute through its individual outputs.
• Mixing 808s so the low end survives both a club system and a phone speaker.
• Off the synth bench for once: tone-matching the Black Album guitar sound on a Hotone Ampero II.

Mastering and Monitoring

The end of the chain, where most self-taught producers go wrong first.

• What mastering actually is, and the pseudo-mastering habit almost everyone picks up.
• Building an honest monitoring path before you trust a single decision you make on it.

Working as a Producer

Less gear, more of the parts nobody warns you about.

• Nine ways producers actually earn, and the contract clauses that stop a collaboration going bad.
• Producing around a full-time job, and which day jobs leave creative energy intact.
• Whether production can be self-taught, and whether paid courses are worth it.
• Networking without burning your reputation, and using YouTube as a producer.
• Tightening your production workflow, and building a team once solo stops scaling.
• Looking further out: what a spatial DAW on the Apple Vision Pro could and couldn’t do for producers.

New Posts and What’s Coming

New guides go up when I finish testing something, which is irregular and honest about it. Recent work has gone into the Roland JV range, the QuadraVerb family and MPC wavetables. If you want a specific piece of gear covered, or you own something on this list and think I got it wrong, tell me. Corrections from people who own the machine are the fastest way this site gets better.