Analog Four and my iPhone. The A4 is perfect for songwriting IMO. The iPhone is always recording when I’m fleshing out song ideas so that I can listen back to them and hear what is, or isn’t working.
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have you tried sending more LFOs from iPhone to A4 like in the Elektron video?
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its looking like the Take-5 might be the most inspiring thing i’ve ever bought but i think i agree that the digitone really expanded what was possible with one portable box. its a great tool for just really digging in and composing full pieces using nothing else. i too wish that elektron would expand this architecture with potentially more voices but more importantly, a more versatile synth engine. i could spend hours just meticulously crafting arrangements and sound design with the digitone, but i often imagine what it would be like with even more audio processing tools or synthesis options.
the octatrack really enabled me to go completely dawless by multi tracking with loops into flex tracks, routing every piece of gear into thru tracks, routing midi to each piece of gear with multiple different channels, mangling and chopping clips of live audio and doing meticulous sound sculpting with those, sequencing percussive sounds, and doing light mastering and fx processing, but i mostly sequence synths via midi with digitone.
the launchpad helped me a lot too, since i still dont know music theory. the scale modes are very nice. it also feels more tactile and pleasant to play than a keyboard, but that might change. i do enjoy having 5 octaves on one 64 pad grid/page though
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I made the most songs with Octatrack as a brain. Without it a lot of things I wouldn’t have done.
And because rules are here to break: roland mc-707 in combo.
In fact, OT sequences mc-707. Most of the time.
…centerpieces as creating boosters through the decades of my sonic career…
90ies…mpc2000 with internal fx board and single outs…recorded to tape machines or pro tools…
zero years…various laptops running ableton…
21st century, 2nd decade…various elektron hardware…recorded to logic…
21st century, 3rd decade…NOW…bitwig running on various laptops…
and throughout all those years…a MICROPHONE and lot’s of pieces of paper…
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I think it’d be dead easy to pick a piece of gear that has had a profound influence on me at a given time (could be the DT or the M8 in particular recently - the Nord Micromodular or Reaktor have been similar contenders in the past) but if it was really to be one thing that has stood the test of time and has weather my various whims then it’s Ableton Live.
Whilst I could write music entirely without a DAW, the reality is that Live always gets used at some point and I don’t think I’ve completed a song without since the glory days of Buzz around the turn of the millennium. In fact, since I got a computer with an SSD drive, it boots so fast that I just use it as an all purpose audio editor for mundane tasks like cutting up live recordings to put onto my MP3 player.
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cracked copy of ableton 7 when i was 15, coming from audacity it was mind blowing to be able to edit effects in real time.
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Probably a boring answer, but these two fuckers 32 years ago:
Mixed and recorded with the far less glamourous this:
To be fair aside from the shit build quality it was alright, it had a bbd delay built in (which only had pretty short delay times) and not terrible EQ, I still have some tapes I made on it and they still play fine. I am going to remix and release them someday
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Renoise did it for me, most recently
2nd would be Digitakt
3rd would be Komplete M32
4th would be Maschine
Hopefully M8 Tracker in a couple weeks
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That beast looks amazing!!
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Amstrad Studio 100 £299 in 1988
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I’d say the Monomachine SFX6. even though I (sadly) no longer own one. it was the first piece of gear that really made me realize how I would like to write electronic music, and what kind of music that would be. it wasn’t the sound so much as just the ability to play a melody into the sequencer, move to another track and play another melody into that sequence, then eventually another pattern, etc. and then build songs off of the patterns using song mode. it was just so quick and easy to do this with the SFX6. I eventually used this approach in the Octatrack to sequence external gear, and now I do it in the Cirklon.
before the Monomachine, I was doing less with melodies and more with percussion sounds, and I had no flow or real change within the songs. it was just “leave these parts muted, then later un-mute them, then mute some other stuff, change some volumes and filter frequencies, etc” all within one or two patterns. instead of creating multiple patterns with significant melodic changes and structuring these into a song.
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I’d like to hear more about how you play the melodies and move to another track. This is something I have not managed yet with sequencers.
do you mean writing melodies that fit well together? the basis of my approach is like that of a 4 or 5 piece band, I guess: typically there’s a lead part and a bass part (which anchors everything/works with the drums/typically uses key notes of the lead part’s melodic progression), and then I start to get a feel for what else is needed. sometimes another lead-ish part to work off of the main lead. sometimes a couple accent melodies or chords. or even just pads. or multiple options of these that do come in/out during a given section of the song. lots of options… just keep them all in the same key and you’re half way there. the rest is just kind of developing an ear for melodies you like.
or do you mean how technically to do this within a specific sequencer?
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Helping Alan Sugar scrape up his pennies to chuck at Spurs a few years down the line!
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The biggest productivity boost I ever had wasn’t from something I bought, but rather something I didn’t buy. About 15 years ago I went a year without having tv/internet at home. I made so much music that year and really grew artistically.
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I’ve been through phases in the last 12 months where different devices have helped me be more productive… Analog Four and Rytm, Ableton 11, MC707, and the biggest one has probably been the Akai MPC Live 2 that’s become the centrepiece of my studio and remote set ups now.
BUT, I think THE single most productive piece for me has not been about the device itself, but the mental approach. The Zoom H4n.
Making the decision to record to 2 track way more frequently than I was has been the biggest improvement for me… it could have been any 2-track device really, but it’s been the Zoom H4n.
I’ve also really liked it for ambient field recordings that have found there way in my music.
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Squarp Pyramid. All of a sudden it arrived, and most of the limitations sequencing a hardware rig disappeared.
When reading and looking at videos of the Pyramid, it gave the feeling that you could create an orchestra of synth and drum machines playing symphony style piece. Don’t know why, I just imagined myself doing that 
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Haha. Totally. I mean really you could. And there’s always the draw to do lots of stuff with it since it’s capable.
Mainly now I use it pretty simply I think. Just nice not being limited by track length/time signature or only a few midi channels. Pretty dope.