Hey what's going on out there I'm Sean Divine hope you all are doing
well today's video we are going to be talking
about the best beatmaking setups in 2019 and beyond I'm gonna share with you
my first beat making setup as well as some suggestions for those of you who
are just getting started in beat making or maybe you're an artist and you want
to start diving into getting your setup going also have some friends along with
me today who are gonna share their perspectives Saint Joe from Sounds and
Gear.com as well as Stefan Guy so let's go ahead and dive right in I'm gonna let
them share their first beat making setups as well as their suggestions and
then I'll follow and give you guys a little bit of perspective from my side
as well. Hey what's up this is Saint Joe SoundsandGear.com here to answer a
couple of questions for Sean Divine appreciate you having me the first
question is what did I get started with in terms of production I messed around
with a few different you know apps on the computer back in the day like hip
hop ejay and stuff like that but the very first piece of equipment I purchased was
a boss dr5 it was a drum machine this was back in 2001 where drum machines
were you know still pretty popular you can go in the store and find them but
the thing about the boss dr5 was the fact that not only do they have drum
sounds but it also had instrument tracks you can actually make pretty much full
beats in their had kind of like some chord stuff in there so it was pretty
cool now in terms of what I would suggest for those getting started right
now I always like to answer this question by asking the person first what
do they have and what type of music they're trying to make or how they want
to go about making their music so I'm gonna give a couple of different answers
first if you're already on an iOS device you know iPhone or iPad and I would
definitely suggest starting there with different iOS apps like Imaschine MPC
Pro, Garageband, Blocks wave, beat maker 3 stuff like that because you can
really get a lot of stuff done with those apps and then some of them also
allow you to use plugin so you can load up you know crazy effects like
like dirt from MSX audio of course you know even instruments from people like
gospel musicians pure synth you have like workstations so you really
have plugins that you can expand on if you're using an app that allows you to
use that so that's a really dope way to get started and if you want to kind of
expand that you can start adding you know MIDI controllers pad controllers
and stuff to the iOS device and you can really get a lot of work done plus it
doesn't take up a lot of real estate so if you already have something like that
or if you're looking to not take up a lot of space I would definitely suggest
that now if you're more going for the computer setup but you still want kind
of some hands-on control for me I still feel like maschine from Native
Instruments is a great way to go because it gives you kind of the best of both
worlds and then you also get a lot of software and sounds with it when you
purchase it not just the imaschine library but they give you a lot of stuff in
terms of you know komplete and some of their other plugins and things like that
so I still feel like that is a great way to go now if you're somebody who prefers
kind of the standalone workflow maybe you don't really want to work with the
computer or anything like that for me at this point I still feel like Akai has
that kind of on lock with the MPC's whether it be the MPC live the Force or
the MPC X I feel like that gives you a great standalone workflow if that's what
you're looking for but maybe you already have a Mac or something like that you
already have GarageBand on there for free then use that yeah I'm saying so at
the end of the day it's really um use what you can use what you have access to
and the more that you start you know making music and finding your workflow
you'll kind of figure out what exactly fits what you're trying to do and maybe
you can upgrade or downgrade or just add to what you already have so hopefully
this kind of helps somebody out and inspires you but there's a lot of
options so the main point of my answer is there's something out there for
everybody and there's no reason for you not to be creative I'll see y'all later
peace. Hey what's up guys Stefan here firstly thank you Sean for having me on your
channel it's always a pleasure to collaborate with you and secondly
secondly and secondly apologies for the sound
I've just moved into a new apartment with no acoustic treatment but we'll get
onto that Sean asked me what my first piece of
gear or what my first setup was when I first started out making music
it was simply just a Yamaha DJX that is it
the Yamaha DJX had a sequencer built in and that's what I first started using I
was making beats with the sounds built into the yamaha djx and sequence in
straight into the yamaha djx it wasn't until my older brother said to me Stefan
was like bro you know what we have reason downstairs reason by
propellerheads so then I moved on to making music with reason still with the
yamaha djx but that was my set up keyboard and my DAW since then I've gone
from many different setups I've had bigger setups in a dedicated space with
outboard gear and loads of different pieces of gear all the way to a bedroom
studio which still had quite a bit of gear but obviously I couldn't fit as
much in to my bedroom where to now where I'm in an apartment and I've almost gone
full circle because now I've stripped it back completely again and my main usage
is a laptop and a keyboard pretty much my setup that I had with my yamaja DJ X
and reason I've also got a machine mk3 at the Micro one in all honesty I just
wanted to strip it back in this apartment because I understood that to
be honest I don't need all of those those bits for the music that I'm making
right now I can afford to just have a small setup and for a lot of you I think
that's the same assuming you have a computer whether that's a desktop
computer a laptop or an iPad what you really need is a MIDI controller
anything from two octaves to four octaves my right here is three octaves
and that's why I like it it's just a happy medium
it's nice and small on my desk taking up a little real estate but then it's
enough keys for me to actually play it also has a port for a sustain pedal
which for me is master at a keyboard player but there's many other options
out there this will set you back around 100 bucks but there are cheaper
keyboards obviously the smaller keyboards with two octaves are going to
be cheaper in most cases and then after that a pair of headphones I've got the
Beyerdynamic 770 pro right here and the 80ohms one and most of the
time when I'm just beat making and I'm not
recording audio because I only really record audio for YouTube I will just
plug these straight into my macbook and these are 80 ohms macbook can drive
these fine I can get good volume out of these headphones but why do I say your
headphones over studio monitors well this is my situation for me personally
I'm in an apartment you might be an apartment too and if you want to be an
upstanding citizen like myself then you don't want to create too much noise
headphones are a great option plus if your room sounds like trash like mine
then you know there's no point spending a lot of money on a great pair of studio
monitors because what you're hearing is gonna be highly altered by the sound of
the room so for me headphones for now are a great option so we've got a
computer a keyboard and a pair of headphones that's enough to make music
believe me that is enough that's all you need to make music all of your sounds and
effects are gonna be in your computer and that's where you want to invest most
of your money and get in a digital audio workstation that you work well with and
potentially getting more sounds and effects later on down the road
and that's pretty much it guys I hope you found this useful but was
comprehensive enough again my name is Stefan thank you again Sean for having me on
your channel and I'll catch you guys around you can find me in the comments
section as well if you have any questions I'll be there alright guys
take care. As far as my first beat making setup I ended up getting a Korg Electribe
EM-1 which was a groove box the Electribe had 2 synth parts 4 drum parts, 16 step
sequencer very very simple but it was the first kind of dive into being able
to sequence beats which was just so cool to me and I had acid Sony Acid which is
a loop based sequencer and then I got Reason 1.0 which was a really good step
for me because reason has this visual sort of style where you're dealing with
hardware so you're actually wiring things you're learning about signal flow
and I was also getting my hands into synthesis by you know using like the
Subtractor and some other synths that we're in there it
helped me to learn synthesis very quickly so Reason maybe a software that
those of you out there who want to you know kind of start at the ground and
learn some of that stuff about studio signal flow and the way that all that
stuff is gonna be routed, synthesis, may be a good idea for you as far as what I
would recommend in 2019 and beyond if you can pick up a used MacBook Pro and
then you know you can start with the free GarageBand that is included on that
and then you can work your way up into Logic which is what I use Stefan uses
Logic as well but if you're a PC guy you know get a used PC go for FL Studio in
terms of you know the value packed in those DAWs I don't think there's a
better choice out there especially starting out the MacBook that I had
before this one was running Omnisphere all the Output stuff you know all the
newest synths and Logic, sold it used for like $300 or $350 so just to tell you
you can get something incredibly capable that is going to you know set you up for
years and years I've just found that making beats
I'm very location specific in terms of inspiration a lot of times so my
surroundings have you know influenced a lot of the beats that I've made over the
years and having a laptop being able to take that set up anywhere you know even
when I'm in the bigger Studios working on mixes or whatever I've got my laptop
you're gonna be able to infinitely expand the environment that you're
making beats versus you get one of these keyboards you're pretty much locked in
some of the newer stuff is is kind of moving in the direction of being more
software based but I just wouldn't recommend starting with you know one of
these pieces of hardware especially in the landscape of technology these days
this stuff is really fun Joe talked a little bit about it Stefan talked a bit
about it we all started on hardware and hardware is tactile so there's something
very different about reaching up here and controlling a synth, making a patch
here obviously a lot of the software nowadays is changing the way that we're
getting more tactile with it but just to tell you guys that that's really it for
me is just having the hands-on is cool I am
making more and more beats on my phone you know just to tell you some of the
software I have on that Korg Gadget you can do everything with Korg Gadget in
terms of beat making Beat Hawk from UVI also a good one alright y'all so I hope
you enjoyed hearing about our first beat making setups but also I hope you got
some perspective in terms of maybe sending you in the right direction Joe
and Stefan thanks for being on here with me if you guys have any questions for
any of us feel free to leave a comment below if you learned anything in the video
please like subscribe and consider sharing we'll talk to you soon