Start making music,
one device at a time.
A guide for anyone who owns a Digitakt II, MicroFreak, SP-404 MKII and a Kawai piano — and has never produced music. The problem isn't too little gear; it's all of it at once. So we won't add more — we'll make the setup smaller and take one machine per session, building up to finished tracks.
The core four, one job each
- Elektron Digitakt II The brain. Drums, samples, sequencing — and the clock everything else follows.
- Arturia MicroFreak One synth voice. Bass, or lead, or a pad — one job per track.
- Roland SP-404 MKII The end of the chain. Record the jam, add performance FX, resample happy accidents.
- Kawai CA99 Where the music starts. A source of ideas, of key and tempo, and of real piano samples.
The sessions
Meet the Digitakt — a first beat
ReadyOne machine, one drum loop. Nothing else plugged in.
Build a four-part drum loop on the Digitakt II — knowing exactly which button and knob does what — ending with a groove worth looping for two minutes.
Give it a center — bass & musicality
DraftStill just the Digitakt. The Kawai is the idea source.
Turn the Session 1 drum loop into music with a clear key, tempo and a simple bassline found at the piano.
Plug in the MicroFreak — a first synth voice
DraftThe first cable between two machines, and a first synth sound.
Sequence the MicroFreak from the Digitakt as one clear part — a bassline, a lead, or a pad.
Record & perform with the SP-404 MKII
DraftPut a recorder and an effects box at the end of the chain.
Record a two-minute live jam into the SP-404, add one performance effect, and resample a happy accident.
Finish a sketch — arrange & export
DraftAll four core machines together. Finish one real track.
Build the loops so far into a ~2-minute track with a beginning, middle and end, and record the final master.
Meet the PO-33 — a pocket sampler
ReadyA whole sampler, sequencer and FX box in one hand. Standalone.
Sample our own sounds into the PO-33, sequence them into a 16-step pattern, and perform it — all on one tiny battery-powered box.
Waiting in the wings
The Bestie, the Chase Bliss pedals and the Pocket Operators are great — and they all make things sound interesting before the music is actually good. They join the desk in later sessions, on purpose.
- Bastl Bestie A 5-channel mixer to bring everything together — once routing stops being a distraction.
- Chase Bliss Mood Looper / delay weirdness as a send effect on the MicroFreak.
- Chase Bliss Lossy Lo-fi degradation to resample through — character, after the composition is already good.
- PO-32 Tonic A quirky extra drum layer for later.