Gear / Hyperportability
Moving out of the US has forced me to evaluate the gear I use to optimize for portability - but I am still an unabashed fan of the gear I own. Here is the gear I’m currently using to make things.
Hardware
Most of the time I’m doing things on an iPad Pro 10.5” (256GB) or an iPhone 7 Plus in Slate Black (also 256GB).
Heavy music production, code tinkering and design gets done on a late 2013 MacBook Pro with retina display, which I share with my wife. I also wear an Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS only, suckers).
I listen to audio with Apple AirPods or a pair of Sony MDR-7506s. I sometimes still play piano, and when I do it’s on a Korg nanoKEY 61 MIDI controller; on the go, I might bring along a Novation Launchkey 25.
Vocals used to be recorded in a padded closet with a Shure SM-58 fed into an Apogee Duet v3. But now, since my best-available recording space is a closet on the opposite side of my apartment from any reasonable workspace, I opt for a Samson Meteor USB mic, fed directly into my iPad Pro for tracking in GarageBand.
Software
Virtually everything that involves text starts in [Drafts 5], and then usually ends up in either [Things 3], [MindNode 5], Apple Notes, [Google Docs] or a text file edited in [Pretext]. I publish to the web using Wordpress, and sometimes tinker with my websites using Transmit (RIP), Coda or Kodex.
Most of my music is recorded using Logic Pro X or (when mobile, [GarageBand for iOS]). It’s all then backed up via Splice. Occasionally I’ll pull some samples or soft synths from Reason 9. My favorite piano sound is the SONiVOX Eighty Eight, and my vocals sound much better thanks to iZotope Nectar 2 and Stereo Imager.
When on the go or too lazy to sit at a desk, I compose or tinker with song ideas using [iGrand Piano for iPad], the Moog [Model 15], the fantastic drum machine DM-1 or [Novation Launchpad].
