My bootstrapped recording gear and pipeline (as a solo industrial musician)

Gear is expensive and it’s tough to become a producer and/or audio engineer in an area with so few studios, none of which need someone to scrub toilets.

I make electronic music with synthesizers and drum machines, but I play them without quantization, out of a speaker into a microphone.

As my friend Cwylie0 says, “You gotta move some air.”

Recording

My current recording setup is a Maschine MkI (March 2025 Update:) Maschine+ (just purchased, much to my bank account’s dismay) which I am in love with and a MicroKORG, plugged into a Surface Pro 5 running Ableton 11.

I have various plugins I’ve picked up over the years, but I’ve been working on reducing the amount and instead getting really good at the ones I have.

Plugged into the Surface is a small Pyle USB mixer, which sends audio to my 20 year old AudioChoice PA.

The PA is mic’d with with a 10 year old Blue Yeti and a second cheap dynamic mic, a Pyle I picked up about a year ago.

The Blue Yeti is USB and the Pyle is is plugged into a bigger, different Pyle USB Preamp.

The Preamp USBs into a 10 year old MacBook Pro (pre-M chips) running the latest version of Logic Pro (without the features that require an M chip).

You might be thinking “wow this guy really likes Pyle”.

I am gear agnostic. Pyle fits my budget. I use what I can afford.

Mixing and Mastering

Everything is mixed with various plugins from iZotope and IK.

Once something is recorded, arranged, and mostly mixed, the final steps is running the mix downs through a Tascam 202 MkIII (March 2025 Update: The Tascam has a busted belt somewhere so I’m currently using:) Optimus SCT-89 cassette dubber to give them warmth and saturation.

The audio then goes back through the Pyle Preamp into the MacBook Pro and Logic, for final mastering.

Mastering is also done with various plugins from iZoptope and IK.

Playing Instruments

The Maschine that I play on obviously needs samples from somewhere, or digital instruments.

Samples are collected various ways:

• iPhone 14 Plus
• ~10 year old Zoom H4n
• EIKI cassette recorder, sometimes w/ built in mic and sometimes with previously mentioned Pyle microphone
• Cheap piezo mic I picked up, plugged into any of the above.

The samples are then cleaned up in Logic with my normal mastering plugins from iZotope and IK.

Sometimes I bust out the guitar(s).

I have an old Les Paul-style Lotus that is older than me (was my dads before I was born), and a Castilla classical acoustic guitar my dad bought me for Christmas over 20 years ago. It has a slightly warped neck which makes some notes sound pretty unique.

I have a couple Digitech floor processors and various guitar pedals I might run them through.

The acoustic does not have a pickup so I sometimes mic it or other times I plug the piezo in and run it through some effects, too.

All of that gets plugged into the little Pyle USB mixer, which runs the audio into the old PA, which is mic’d into the MacBook Pro.

Sometimes I just play the guitar, sometimes a mess around and find out what I can get out of the effects.

Then I will record a note at middle-C and run it through Decent Sampler and turn that into what most people assume is a soft synth sound. But it’s actually sampled guitar w/ effects.

I also have a Yamaha Clavinova PF P-100 that was my best friend’s dad’s keyboard before he passed away. I like the default piano and epiano sounds in it, so I use them a lot. But usually add effects.

And then I have various little toy synths and keyboards like a couple Casio VL-Tones, a Gakken “analog” SX-150 Mk II (March 2025 Update: it fell off a shelf and isn’t working right now), and a Korg Monotron an ex-girlfriend bought me many years ago when that line first came out.

Performing Live

When performing I mostly DJ with a Pioneer DDJ-400 and DJay on the same MacBook Pro that I use for recording, but…

…(March 2025 Update:) With the Maschine+, I’m starting to break my music down into loops that I can trigger in Ableton or Maschine 3 (software) to perform live.

I’m also borrowing an APC40 MkII, which integrates directly with Ableton, and I’m starting to work that into my set. It’s got all sorts of knobs and buttons I can program, so there’s a lot of opportunity here.

Help Support My Journey

I made a lot of financial mistakes in my past trying to make my music career work. Because of that, I’m almost always broke as a joke. Please buy some music from one of my projects so I can keep going:

• If you like Industrial music, check out megabyteGhost: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/dead-mans-switch
• If you prefer Instrumental Hip Hop, check out the beatMage:  https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/a-day-at-the-carnival-with-the-beat-mage
• And if you like Ambient music, check out Prefecture_Audio: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/prefecture-audio-ii-swamp

megabyteGhost

it me.