I had a request from a commenter to list the stuff I use to make music. I’m not a gear junkie by any means; in general I try to get by with spending the least amount of money I can for decent sound quality. Besides, limitations can help you be more creative! Any famous producer would tell you that quality mixes have more to do with a good ear than the gear itself. That said, there is a certain point you want to hit where your gear and software isn’t holding you back from producing good mixes, at least to your ear.
So without further ado, here’s my master list of recording gear, software, and instruments I’ve collected over the past 10 years.
Recording Gear
- MacBook Pro 15″
- MOTU Traveler interface – portable, 4 preamps and lots of other inputs and outputs
- Zoom H4n – the swiss army knife of recorders, great for mobile recording
Microphones
- AT4040 large diaphragm condensers, x2 – great for recording almost any instruments, get two for nice stereo recordings!
- Rode NTG-1 shotgun mic – I got this directional mic for video work, but it’s useful when you need to reduce room tone and get a focused recording of one instrument within an ensemble.
- Shure SM-57 – a swiss-army dynamic microphone, cheap but everyone swears by it
- Shure SM-58 – classic mic for live vocals (but I don’t use it in the studio much)
- Sennheiser Evolution Wireless G3 – I got this lavalier mic for video work, but I’ve used it when I ran out of other condenser mics
- Audix D6 kick drum mic – haven’t used it a ton, but it works well on kick drums
Sound Treatment
I have seven giant monolithic boxes with seemingly random holes drilled in them. They’re called binary amplitude diffusers, and they do a good job of absorbing sound, but also diffusing it in a way that doesn’t make the room dead. You’ll see these in the background of a lot of my studio pictures…
Software
- Ableton Live – my go-to DAW for almost everything, so great for experimenting with electronic music
- Soundtrack Pro – not the best DAW, but it came with Final Cut, so I use it for film sound mixes sometimes
- Finale – user experience is a nightmare for beginners, but you can do any music notation thing you need to with it
- Audacity – I still use this free software for noise reduction
- MilkyTracker – had a brief stint using this for chiptune music
Virtual Instruments
- Ableton Live Suite – comes with pretty great piano, percussion, and orchestral sounds
- Puremagnetik – various synth packs have come in handy, especially their Retro Synths
- Plogue Chipsounds – great chip music presets
- Garritan – these sounds came with Finale, often use the harp from this library
Note: I use the tiny, but effective M-Audio Keystation Mini 32 to record MIDI.
Real Instruments
- Upright piano – with punch-tack attachment built by my friend Mitch
- Fender Stratocaster
- Fender P-bass
- Violin
- Classical guitar
- Steel string guitars – including a fun 3/4 size Martin
- Ukulele
- Hand percussion
- Clarinet – I’m trying to learn!
If you’re interested in music production, you might want to check out my podcast Charlie’s Music Production Lessons, in which I dive into the process of making electronic music.
