The minute you start making music with more than one hardware instrument, set up questions start to come up. Just like there’s no best synth, I don’t think there’s a perfect setup or hardware workflow for everyone.

In this video, and if there’s interest, in future videos in this series, I bring in a producer and performer whose work I appreciate and I think we can learn from, and I ask them questions about how they make music – everything from audio and MIDI routing to sequencing, recording and mixing.

I’ve been following Jouni Ollila AKA BURG for a while, not only for the quality of his music, but also for how effortlessly he commands, syncs and glides above a massive setup of electronic instruments. Now, you obviously don’t need to have a large hardware set up to make music, but hopefully there are elements of his setup and workflow that you can find applicable in your music:

TIMELINE:

0:00 Intro

1:00 Audio routing

2:05 Creative submix

3:10 MIDI routing

4:50 Master clock

5:35 MIDI channels

6:20 Noise issues

7:30 Managing cables

9:35 Ergonomics

10:50 Sequencing

14:55 Sidechain

16:35 Using high pass filters

18:00 Layering

19:00 Referencing

19:45 Mix & theme

20:45 FX pedals

22:15 Recording

24:20 Templates

25:25 DAW’s role

26:55 Master / remix

29:45 Outro