This can be anything. Try to think of the item gave the biggest leap in the exploration and crafting of your personal sound. What did it make you realize? What made you want to buy that piece of kit in the first place?
It can be something like:
the guitar- this ones my personal pick. as someone who started off with violin lessons at a young age, I never really explored harmony the way I can on the guitar. I never really thought of chords on the violin because you’re really only ever playing one string at a time (minus doublestops), and that limited my view on the importance of harmony in music. now that I’ve gained a bit of experience on the guitar, I cant tell if I still think drums are the most important piece for where I want to take my sound at the moment. still have a lot to learn, but when I learned complex chords and how they transition between themselves, it led to the biggest improvement that helped me get closer to the sound that I want to claim. big shoutout to polyphia and their music for igniting that spark for me on guitar
a vst synth- many producers(if not all) that make electronic-birthed music will come in contact with synth plugins, and seeing how different synths are popularized and abused in different genres is super interesting to me. a lot of trap producers will hover around synths like nexus, omnisphere, and romplers. then you have serum, where basically every electronic subgenre gets some action, as there are oceans of subgenres created with just this plugin alone. also, in the soundcloud scene, there are a lot of underground artists that really dig in and use autotune as an instrument. super unique sounding vocals, stacks, and adlibs. turns out random atonal yelling into the mic can sound good(thanks yeat)??
an audio visualizer plugin- another thing that really helped me understand sound was the minimeters plugin. it includes a bunch of different graphs that really help you see different visual representations of sound. threw it on the end of my master bus and never looked back. this gave me a new layer of reference that I can use to further analyze and polish my sound just by running a-b reference tests, and helped me understand why my productions weren’t hitting the spot like some of the big name artists you see. it also touches slightly on the topic of aphantasia in music, but I want to create a separate thread for that discussion.
a mixer- where you learned how to properly blend different elements and really zone in and listen to how things sound rather than having to focus on creating or playing an instrument. I don’t have a dedicated mixer for my setup, but do want to purchase a mixer in the future, because as elektron users know, hardware shows us that having something immediate can definitely provide a completely different feel/workflow/result than sticking in the box
a certain drum machine- maybe you’re super rhythmically focused and this one machine just had the setup that lets you shine. the rytm is my second pick for my question. I got into fingerdrumming for a short bit in highschool, and when I discovered elektron I nearly shat myself. I knew I needed the rytm as soon as I knew it existed- analog synthesis/distortion? a compressor that I can crank and still have it sounding nice? a place to store all my beats? sampling, resampling the analog circuits, resampling samples, and then even more resampling? I think the rytm was my most guilt-free purchase, even though it gave my wallet a very healthy diet. right now I would argue its more fun for me to just find and memorize new grooves through fingerdrumming than it is for me to find new chords on the guitar, but I’m sure the party will make its way back to the guitar eventually- cause I need to get better at non-pentatonic soloing…
honorable mention goes to all the MIDI wizards out there, as thats another territory I need to explore that can be huge for where I want to take my music. I think that the MIDI system itself can be an answer for some, with just how many possibilities there are with controllers and software. I think its super cool being able to understand the intricacies of how these boxes work. I would love to just come up with ideas for instruments with unique use cases like they’ve done here at elektron, but there are a lot of intricacies between hardware, software, and electrical engineering that would be a big roadblock. Thats why I think MIDI works well for this answer. It kinda lets you bypass a lot of learning you would have to do in order to create an instrument yourselves. It definitely bridges the gap for people who have hardware and want to make custom setups. I haven’t learned how to properly utilize MIDI yet, but from what I’ve read on this forum, the possibilities are practically endless if you have an elektron box, a bomebox, and various types of MIDI controllers.
