I'm a musician, and I say that because I have been a musician longer than I have been anything else, and I think on balance I've spent more time learning to play instruments, playing and creating music than I have any other single thing. Web programming is starting to edge up there, and I don't spend as much time on music anymore. I view this as a problem I need to solve, not a predictable trend in life patterns after 30, thanks! =)

About 15 years ago I stopped playing in traditional bands and started making music with computers. I certainly wasn't alone, this was the mid-90s. Grunge rock was turning into crap like Matchbox 20, NiN was in their heyday and raves were starting to come to North America. The first non-industrial music I heard that I loved was Underworld, in Trainspotting.

Back then it was really, really difficult to make electronic music, and it was all done with really expensive hardware synth and samplers, but there was just beginning to be an industry around using computers for music creation and production, and since then that industry has exploded. I am the poster boy for that industry in may ways, as all of my music was intitially produced completely on a computer using software.

Over the last 4-5 years, I've acquired a long-ish list of various gear that seemed to make sense at the time:

• a desktop virtual analog synth ( Novation Nova )
• a 14 channel mixer ( Mackie 1402 )
• not 1 but 2 kaoss pad effects units ( KP1 and KP2 )
• a nice big Midi controller with lots of sliders and knobs ( Kontrol49 )
• another midi controller with really big motorized sliders ( BCF2000 )
• a small, compact firewire card ( Focusrite Saffire, limited to 2 inputs! )
• a TC Powercore PCI card and an accompanying Access Virus plugin license

...all of which has to go to re-arrange my Studio around some guiding principles I have slowly, agonizingly arrived at over years of toil.

Principle 1: I have to love the sound of something if it is going to stay. I have always liked the sound of my Nova, but I don't love it the way I do some much cheaper soft synths.

Principle 2: It has to be usable, in a no-stop-energy intuitive / flexible kind of way. I hate that the BCF2000 is so fiddly with programming, or that the Kontrol49 is so big and requires manual mapping. I also own a Novation Nocturn and, since last summer it is practically the only Midi controller I use.

Principle 3: the primary sounds in my music need to be things I created myself from scratch. I really *really* like the sound of the Access Virus plugin, but I hate programming it. I hate the plugin interface it has, which is horrible in comparison to much cheaper things like FAW Circle. Circle also sounds great!

Principle 4: workflow is king. If I can't easily and intuitively get from a single bleep to a 16-bar potential track idea in an hour or two, something is really really wrong. And if there is some particular piece of gear I never use in the process, I should chuck it.

Principle 4.5: re-connecting things is NOT king. I need a set up where anything can be recorded in my setup at any time, not by fiddling with the mixer to route things from a send/return. I need a soundcard with enough inputs.