How I Make Music: My Production Setup
A lot of musicians ask me about the gear on the shelf or the plugins in Logic. Those conversations are fun, but they miss something essential: the best tool in the studio is musicianship. The setup mattersâit shapes what's possible and influences the sound that emergesâbut it's not the heart of the work. The heart is knowing what you're listening for, having trained ears from years of playing multiple instruments, and being intentional about how sound translates feeling.
This post is about my production setup and the philosophy behind itânot as a spec sheet, but as a story of how I built an environment in Oakland that lets me bring ideas to life. If you're starting your own studio or wondering how Ch.1 came together, this is the context.
Musicianship First, Engineering Second
I've played piano since I was three, picked up violin in elementary school, guitar in my teens, and later drums, keys, and bass. That multi-instrumentalist foundation is everything in a production setup. When I'm arranging a track, I'm not thinking "what would a producer do?" I'm thinking "what would a drummer hear?" or "how would a bassist lock into this pocket?"
This shapes the studio philosophy: musicianship first, engineering second. It means my first instinct is to play something rather than program it. It means I'm listening for feel before I listen for frequency response. It means the engineer in me serves the musician in me, not the other way around.
The best mixing decision is often the right performance. The best EQ move is often the right note. Gear doesn't compose or playâpeople do.
This isn't anti-technology. It's pro-intention. I use Logic Pro, custom gear, hybrid analog-to-digital workflows, and all the modern tools. But they're in service of what the musician in me hears first.
The Core Instruments
My setup centers on instruments I can play, not just trigger. This is fundamental to the Ch.1 soundâalmost everything has a human performance layer underneath it.
Piano & Keys
I grew up on piano, so it's my first instinct for harmonic exploration. When I'm sketching a new track, I'm often at the keys working through chord progressions, modulations, and melodic ideas. A Rhodes Stage MK2 gives me that warm, organic tone that sits naturally in a funk and soul context. The keyboard setup also includes synths for deeper sound designâarpeggios, pads, textural elements that live in the mid-to-high frequency space.
Bass
Every groove lives and dies by the bass-drum relationship. I play bass regularlyâboth recorded bass performances and live triggering of synth lines. This keeps me locked into the pocket perspective; when you're playing bass, you feel the drummer's intentions in your body. That translates into arrangement and mixing decisions later.
Drums & Percussion
I'm a drummer. Not professionally trained in the traditional sense, but I spent years learning rhythm, timing, and the physical nature of percussion. My drum kit and percussion collection aren't just sound sources; they're instruments I can pick up and play when I'm working through groove ideas. That hands-on experience informs how I approach rhythm in productionâwhether I'm playing live drums, programming sequences, or building hybrid patterns that blend human timing with grid precision.
Guitar
Guitar came late but deep. The electric guitar adds texture, harmonic color, and rhythmic complexity that rounds out the instrumental palette. For Ch.1, guitar sits behind the mix as a textural elementâadding grit and analog warmth without dominating the groove.
The Hybrid Workflow: Analog Warmth Meets Modern Tools
My studio is unapologetically hybrid. I work with custom analog gearâhandcrafted preamps, transformers, and console designs that add harmonic color and organic saturation. Parallel to that, I use modern software (Logic Pro, UAD plugins, third-party tools) for precision, flexibility, and the specific sonic possibilities of digital processing.
The workflow looks like this: I record live performances through analog preamps and gear, which shapes the tone at the source. Then I mix in the box, leveraging both digital and analog emulation tools. This gives me the best of both worldsâthe warmth and natural harmonic character of analog hardware during recording, plus the recall, automation, and flexibility of digital mixing.
Recording & Tracking
When I'm trackingâwhether it's piano, bass, drums, guitar, or vocalsâthe signal passes through quality preamps and converters that add subtle coloration. This isn't about color for its own sake; it's about capturing performances with a certain character baked in, which then informs mixing decisions.
Monitoring & Feedback
Good monitoring is invisible. You want speakers that tell you the truth about what's happening in your mix without flattering or misleading you. A solid monitoring setup means you can make EQ and compression decisions that translateânot just to other speakers, but to headphones, car speakers, and the streaming services where your music lives.
The Recording Environment: Oakland, Studio S
I work in a dedicated studio space in Oakland that's been refined over years of sessions. It's acoustically treated, equipped with isolation for quiet recording, and organized to facilitate flowâfrom sketching to arrangement to final mixing.
The environment shapes creativity. When the room is set up right, you're not fighting phase issues or unwanted reflections. You're not second-guessing what you're hearing. You're free to focus on the music. That's the point of treating the space carefully and organizing gear deliberately.
This is also where I've built capacity for live recordingâboth solo performances and full-band sessions. The infrastructure supports Studio S services: recording, mixing, mastering, and full production for other artists. But for my own work, it's a private space where I can explore without compromise.
How This Shaped Ch.1
Ch.1 isn't a beat tape. It's not a collection of drum loops layered with synths. It's four compositions where every element was intentional: composed, performed, recorded, and mixed with the philosophy that musicianship leads.
BellDingThing (the opener) came from hours at the piano exploring a specific emotional spaceânot searching for a vibe, but composing an introduction that would set the tone for the entire EP. The bell sound that gives it its name is a recorded performance, not a sample or synth preset.
SloppyDrippy is where you hear the multi-instrumentalist approach peak: the groove is locked because I played it, listened to it, felt it. The wetness comes from deliberate reverb choices, not accidental room reflections. Every "sloppy" moment is intentionalâpocket comes from knowing exactly how tight to be.
Sonar and Tynomite! continue this thread, with spatial depth, harmonic sophistication, and the kind of production clarity that only comes from recording with intent and mixing with ears trained across multiple instruments.
The setup allowed all of this. But the setup is just scaffolding. The actual work was composition, performance, and craftâthe things that come from musicianship.
The Workflow in Practice
If you're curious about my actual step-by-step processâthe phases from ideation through masteringâI wrote a separate post on the production workflow. That's the methodology. This post is the environment that makes the methodology possible.
What I'll say here: having a setup you trust, in a space you love, with instruments you can actually play, changes everything. It removes friction. It lets you move fast when inspiration hits. It gives you the tools to execute the vision you hear in your head.
For Producers & Musicians
If you're starting a studio or considering gear investments, here's what I'd advocate: buy what you can actually use. A $300 audio interface in a treated room beats a $3,000 interface in a untreated bedroom. An instrument you play beats a plugin that sounds great but feels remote. A mentor or community beats solitude.
And if you're interested in the production sideâhow to think about musicianship, arrangement, mixingâI also teach production through Professor of Funk, a teaching practice focused on building musician-producers, not just beat makers. Same philosophy: musicianship first.
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