Schredds

I have been listening to electronica for many years now but I know absolutely nothing about the equipment used to create this type of music, please excuse my ignorance. I am interested in learning how to and eventually creating my own music. I would like to know what type of equipment is used, all of it, from the bottom to the top, and a ballpark price range of the different peices of equipment. Like I said before all of this is completely new to me and I know nothing about it so if any of you guys could provide me with some information would be awesome.
Cheers
Schredds

takamine_x2

You can create good electronica music witha program called Fruity Loops. Plus you can get yourself a decent midi board for around $100 USD, and a keyboard with D.A.T. capabilities built in for under $500. This is, of course low-balling prices for someone starting out. The equipment needed to create good electronica is fairly easy and cheap to obtain. However, if you then plan to DJ the needed equipment and funds go up dramatically.

Ultimately you can produce great tracks with nothing more than Fruity Loops, so I'd start there.

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Freebase Dali

Schredda, it would take me hours to inform you effectively... I don't just drop the FL bomb on people and walk away. But I think the best thing for you to do is just research some info.
I can "simply" tell you that it involves a DAW (if you're going for software) that includes samplers, synths, vst FX plugins, etc... but there's really a lot more to it than what program you're using, or what hardware for that matter.

Instead of me writing a whole electronic music production education thread, just post any particular questions, or we can even start from the top at a specific point... but I really don't have the time to try and go through the whole thing at once.
Hit up some Google, then head back to the thread and throw down on any questions you have that I can help with.

I know a lot about this stuff, as I've been doing it since the late 90's... but what you're asking for is an entire website of a reply. hehe... So if you can get a basic idea off Google or something, hit me up with questions one at a time and I'll be able to answer them.
And no... FruityLoops is not a suitable answer for anything except cheap prices and low expectations.

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Schredds

Ya I figured what I was asking was a lil over the top, lol, I am interested no doubt, and like I said I honestly have no idea what Im talking about or even where to start. I will do some reasearch and educate. I dont expect anyone to sit there for a week and teach me, gimme a lil while and Ill get back to you Freebase, cheers bro.

Schredds

Yo Freebase, alright, aside from all the downloadable programs and such, and all the computers, hardware, and software needed for creating the music, which doesnt seem too terribly complicated, is the main piece of equipment used to physically make the music the midi board combined with keyboards and foot pedals? Lets say, If Im not out to lunch in thinking the keyboards and foot pedals are in fact used for making the music, is it a better idea to have a separate system where each of the components has its own midi output? One more thing what is the purpose of a scan board?, Ive seen 32 way and 64 way scan boards mention but cant seem to find much information on it.

Freebase Dali

Not sure where the scan board comes into play...
But here's a basic rundown:

Sequencer
This is where you compose, arrange, sequence, trigger, effect, etc... all your sound elements. It's the heart of your setup. Here is where you perform both audio and MIDI sequencing. It can be either software, or hardware.
Here's an example of this in software:


What you're doing in a sequencer (which is the core "workstation" in any music software) is placing any samples you may be using, placing your MIDI editors for use in triggering soft-synths, or even hardware synths via MIDI cable, setting your project tempo, and basically building your song structure.

The sound generation aspects are your synthesizers (for pads, synth leads, etc), Beat machines (for programming your drum lines), and Samplers (for triggering any sample).
These portions of your setup are where you're getting your actual audio from. In a hardware setup, it's the same concept, except you have actual hardware.. Most of the time, the hardware you're using will be MIDI clock synced to a host (your hardware sequencer) so that everything stays in sync with your sequencer.

Another aspect is your mixer:

In the software world, this does the same thing as any hardware mixer that might comprise a hardware setup. It's where you set the volumes and panning and route FX sends for each individual channel that your elements are routed through.

There's more to it, but that's what's physically needed to actually create the music. There's many different ways to create your setup, but the above is the typical standard for any kind of electronic music creation.
What you have to understand is that there isn't a single "piece of equipment" that creates the music. It's a joining of different elements that's necessary to allow the creation of a full on song.
Software solutions, such as Reason, are simply the digital representations of hardware solutions. They do the same thing, but offer an all-in-one package that's invariably cheaper and just as effective.

In recap:

Synthesizers and samplers/beat machines
This is where your audio comes from.

Host sequencer
This is where you control the audio sources and create the structure of your song.

Mixer
This is where you set your levels.


There's a lot more to it, but that is the basic setup.
Now, I'm not sure where you're getting "pedals" from, but some people prefer to use MIDI keyboards to play their software synthesizers because it provides tactile control and allows for a more human touch. It's really no different than physically playing a hardware synthesizer in a hardware setup. The MIDI keyboard is simply a way to control a software sound program, be it a soft-synth, sampler, beatbox, whatever.

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Freebase Dali

Here's my temporary setup:


It's a software/hardware hybrid setup, as I do a lot of actual recording, but for electronic music, 90 percent of it is created on my computer in Cakewalk's Sonar 7 Producer edition.
There is very little more than a good program required to create electronic music. It's really up to the producer if he wants to have an extravagant setup or not, but it is in no way required.

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Schredds

I was reading a few articles I found by doing a google search, each of the articles had mentioned foot pedals, and of course this being the first time learning about this stuff, I have no idea which article are informing me or leading me down a dead end road. It seemed to be a hard subject to find results for. The information you've layed down here really helps, it makes much more sence coming from someone who is actually doing it, and that setup looks cool man, why temporary though, are you planning on expanding it or wut dude?
Cheers bro.

Schredds

Thats what I was gonna ask you next, it seemed to me that there was, which did seem odd, and its pretty obvious in your post that thats not that case at all, forgive my ignorance, hahah.

Freebase Dali

Setup is temp because I'm getting a new place and will have room to set everything up. It's kinda at its minimal right now, and not really at an optimal placement.


If you have the time, you may want to read through Tweakheadz Guide
It's a pretty big guide, but a lot of the information you want is in there in some shape or form.
On the left of the page there's a link navigator... just go through all of those. By the end of it, you'll have acquired a pretty solid understanding of what goes into music production.

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