Best soft/hardware for Minimal/Tech House

DJapperz

DJapperz

New member
I was wondering what do you think is the best soft- and hardware for minimal and tech-house productions?

I work with:
  • FL10
  • Akai MPK Mini

So what software and hardware would you still recommend? I try to go low budget.
Is buying an midi sampler like a NI Maschine worth it? Do you use it much or is it mostly for live?
Any hardware synths that are rather cheap and very good? (I want a Virust TI Desktop but thats too expensive)

Also I don't work with an audio interface now. I just have a kinch-jack cable hooked up to an old amplifier and my 300 watt studio speakers. Do I really need an audio interface?
 
You really don't "need" much of anything at all for tech/minimal, though I will say a lot of the great minimal and techno feel comes from very seasoned producers working with a lot of analog gear. You've got plenty of soft synths, and though there are other good synths as well, you don't need a ton of them. You should learn how to use Massive, FM8, z3ta really well before diving into tons of other synths. IMO, its much more useful to know a few synths really well, rather than sort of know tons of synths. And synths like Massive or FM8 have so much capability it's almost impossible to know how to make every sound on them. Personally, I dislike Genesis, Vanguard, Albino, and z3ta+. I owned Vanguard but didn't really use it much, and I've used the others at friend's houses and they just sound very boring imo.


Soft synths that I've really enjoyed using are Massive, Camel Audio Alchemy, Diva, DCAM synth squad. They're worth checking out, but again, I would say to extensively learn two very different synths until you know how to make a good amount of sounds using them. When you feel like you've exhausted them, or end up programming the same type of lead every time you work with it, it's time to try something else.

Tech house, techno, and minimal aren't about using the same gear or using a specific soft or hardware set. They're all about the groove, and the feel. Its quite important to use synths, be it hardware or software, that you're really comfortable working with. If you aren't comfortable with it, you won't be inspired using it, and you'll end up trying to make certain sounds you've heard before, instead of just programming stuff because it sounds good. Slim Phatty's are $850 new, the new Korg MS-20 Mini is $600, or there's a bit more hard analog of a feel synths like Dark Energy, which is great for cheap, but is very quirky - you can't program it like you do a regular synth.

Really though, some producers have multitudes of synths and hardware filters and the like, and some just have a few that they really love. A lot of times, a producers "sound" comes from synths they're comfortable using and the particular way they use them.
 
Thanks for the reply man, really appreciate it!
You're right about Genesis, Vanguard, Albino, and z3ta+ these are not really suited for these genres. Imo those are more VSTi's for stuff like trance, but sometimes they are helpfull though.
 
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