My Instruments, Hardware and Software Equipment

2023-04-24

My first instrument was a flute, more precisely a recorder. I was in second grade in elementary school when I started to learn the recorder. My interest in flutes didn't last long. In third grade I switched to another instrument.

My second instrument was the violin. I was nine years old when I first played the violin. At the same time my brother chose the piano and I wanted to learn something different. I sticked to playing the violin regularly for about twelve years. In retrospect I can say that it helped me manifold, for example playing in an orchestra for socialisation, music theory and rhythm for boosting my mathskills and satisfaction for its own musical beauty.

When I was fifteen I started learning the piano on my own. My joy for playing the piano grew stronger and stronger over months and years, until I took piano lessons for three years when I was nineteen years old.

I'm the owner of a DGX-660 Yamaha digital piano. I use it mainly for audio and midi recordings.

For further processing I'm working with the DAWs (digital audio workstations) "Cubase 11" from the company Steinberg and "fl Studio 21" from Image-Line. For EDM, Trance, Techno or other electronic music I'm using only "fl Studio".

For some of my youtube videos I'm using different piano visualizers. I started with the app "SeeMusic" from visualmusicdesign.com, but you have to pay a monthly or annual subscription and they aren't cheap. Later I found a free piano visualizer app piano-vfx.com which is as good as "SeeMusic". A third option, which is widely used, is Synthesia. Synthesia doesn't have fancy particel effects or special visual effects, but it focuses more on learning a piano piece than presenting one.

For music transcription or notation I'm using Finale, MuseScore or Dorico. Honestly working with Dorico I found most enjoyable and comfortable. For only one instrument all Dorico features are free.

And last but not least, which video editing software do I use for my youtube videos? If you don't wanna spend a lot of money for a "Adobe Premiere Pro" subscription I can recommend "Magix Movie Studio".