Producing Electronic/MIDI-based Music - Where To Start?

I started making electronic music almost 20 years ago, when people basically didn't have DAWs or the ability to use computers to make music. I was using all outboard gear in those days.

Fast-forward a decade: I transitioned away from electronic music and became involved with live music - bands, musicians, etc. This all happening right as the power of software DAWs began to offer a powerful solution.

Fast-forward another decade: I now have years and thousands of hours of session-time under my belt as an engineer, but almost entirely in the realm of live musicians, with little electronic music/MIDI work to speak of. During the transition to computer DAWs, I felt like working on them was so clunky, tedious and slow in comparison to the outboard gear I was used to. I became dispassionate about it.

Now though, I'd like to get back into it, but would like a little advice form those who have been doing it for a while now.

What pitfalls can you warn me of - techniques, gear and software? What software and hardware products are must-haves for ease-of-use and professional quality?

Let me know if you're advice is more geared towards "realistic" productions or "synthesized" productions too. I'm open to both, although lean a bit more towards the synthetic sounds.

Thanks so much!!!

I started out using CV and gate signals with sequencers, playing it all by hand  and putting it all together using multi track analog tape. Then moved into midi, sequencers working with a lot of synth hardware. First the sequencers such as the Roland MC500 or Yamaha QX 1 then onto computers handling midi. I have been a fan of computers since they came out. Handling Midi at first and then moving into audio and finally virtual instruments.

There are no pitfalls only great technology to make it even easier and more interesting. I have moved from a (very) large hardware set-up to only three keyboards (One controller and two synth workstations) and 4 rack devices, all of which take up little space but can can do an enormous amount. I use a digital mixing system that is loaded with DSP power and can handle all the signal routing in  the studio. This is coupled to my main central computer. I use three computers that can tie in together at once if required or separate onto individual tasks. Including being three complete virtual studios in themselves!

Virtual instruments are amazing. I love them. They sound very good indeed. They can go into territory that hardware devices cannot go. Sound quality is very good and exciting now. There is a lot of research to do in that area. Do it and learn about how varied they all are and how different they can sound from each other, just like the real instruments did. All that tape and analog mixer environment can be realised digitally and used in parts of your mix now rather than all of it. 

You just need some great ideas, be able to play and execute them and then the rest is very capable now with what the best software and small amounts of hardware can do. A modern music production system can be quite small and yet amazingly powerful. Working with loops is very interesting, (time and pitch stretching now amazing!) new technologies are generating newer music to go with it. All you need is an interesting controller with some keys, pads, sliders, rotary encoders and buttons and you have got a very expressive input device. 

In a Sonar forum it would be appropriate to say look into their software as a starting point. But there are other software programs out there and they do work on very high levels of reliability and solidness in terms of using them. Many programs come with virtual instruments and plugins standard and can get you up and running in a very big way very quickly. You have got to find the software DAW that connects to you on some sort of emotional level. It took me years to build a physical set-up that had the power to do what a computer and some software can do now. It uses a fraction of the energy now to do all this, reduces the need for massive power, midi and audio distribution systems. I have no patch bays at all now, only a simple small amount of cabling. The signal flow is all digital now, lossless and sounds terrific! What it achieves is almost limitless. The sound of analog be it consoles or synths can be created at any point in your project these days with a lot of control. It is great to move from the digital to the analog world so easily coming in and going out of A to D and D to A etc.. Using external effects, playing things live over sequences. We can play to click tracks or live performances can be tempo mapped now with amazing precision. Software can be synchronised to live performances now. More expression is possible going into the digital music production world now than ever before.

My set-up can handle anything conceptually from a total live 24 track recording session to a full on all synth extravaganza! And everything in between. If you build it and set it up right you can do that. It does not have to be geared towards one or the other. I have a Sonor drum kit miked and can track at any time. I also have acoustic and electric guitars, a bass and guitar amps, African and Latin percussion, piano and violin, viola live recording options. I use a large format condenser mic to do all the studio close up recording work. With care the finest recordings and environments can be realised.  Monitoring systems (headphones and microphones) are at their best right now. Amazingly high levels of accurate sound production is possible now more than ever before. There are no excuses now for not producing a killer mix and killer well mastered production too.  

A computer is best the starting point for a powerful music production set-up. It is so easy to involve any external hardware. I believe 4 rack mount devices and two keyboards can handle any situation just by themselves. It is good to input data two handed on two controllers at the same time if you can. I work with a microphone strapped onto my head so I can vocalise any ideas into the DAW at any time. The way everything can be recalled now is amazing. No matter how complex a mix may be it can be recalled with the utmost precision. This changes everything and makes it so much easier to work with multiple projects at once. 

You can live by and make money from doing this if you believe it enough and can make it happen. Good times for being creative and thinking up great things and using the technology to make them happen. It is never a better time as well for learning and becoming educated with all this. Forums like this are a good starting point, magazines, courses in your city, on line learning both paid courses and free. Private one on one training with an experienced teacher. There are a million tutorials out there now on how to just use your software or program that a amazing synth. Lots of help and access to so much information.

Fast computer, see above.  And a modern interface.  And a keyboard controller (if you don't have any of your old midi keys around).

SONAR x2 Producer, which not only does linear recording but has acid-style looping, the matrix (still needs work) and a step sequencer, so you can do non-linear recording in a linear environment.  Sonar is pretty slick and was easiest for me to grok of all the DAWs I tried.  Producer comes w/ a bunch of synths - I think it includes Rapture now and Z3TA 1+ (both top of the line synths).

You can expand your soft synths from there.  for a couple of hundred dollars you can collect all the various synth modes - sampling (which DimPro incl. does, tho not as full-featured as some others), FM, Granular, Additive, etc.

My most useful tools (other than the big three from Cake - Rapture, Z3ta [1&2], Dimension Pro) are

1. Kontak for sampling.  I don't drop too many samples in it but there are a ton of premade engines from everybody.  Hollow Sun is a good one.

2.  Alchemy for additive/VA/granular.  It covers a lot of ground and, again, there are a lot of sounds out there ready to be manipulated.  More of a weird sound maker, but it is a solid VA (virtual analog) and works well w/ Cake synths, which are " brighter" sounding and cut.  Alchemy sounds thicker, rounder.

If you like electronic drums I highly recommend Ugo Audio.com.  He has several free synths and an electronic  drum synth for cheap.  Again, more for electronic sounding productions, but good from industrial/metal.  And Rez is a very good free single voice synth.

@