Who are you, and what do you do?
I'm Jeffrey Brodsky. I make electronic music, dance music, pop music, music for television and commercials, and play drums in the bands YACHT and RAC.
What hardware do you use?
I use a 27" iMac for recording all my music through an Apogee Duet jamming on a Roland Juno-106 and I recently got a Moog Voyager which I'm in love with. I also record with lots of little toys and other synths like the Critter & Guitari Pocket Piano, the Korg volca bass and the Korg monotron DELAY, which is an amazing way to make any super clean, crop, boring, sound like a broken dusty piece of vintage electronics.
I also record a lot with my 4th generation iPad because there are so many killer synth and music apps out there. I do my playback through the KRK ROKIT 6s which sound pretty good for the price. I'll play any old drum kit but my favorite cymbals are the Istanbul 70s and the Zildjian 14" K hihats.
And what software?
Ableton Live is the centerpiece of my music production life, but I couldn't do what I do without the Arturia suite of plugins, or a bunch of amazing Kontakt plugins like the AbbeyRoad drums.
Also, like I said, there are some epic iPad apps that I love like Korg Gadget, TweakyBeat, SeekBeats, DM1, Magellan, and Animoog. I also recently made a song I'm pretty excited about using the John Cage App.
What would be your dream setup?
Nothing too fancy, just something where everything is always wired up and ready to go. That way you don't have to trouble shoot the vocal mic, or pull out another cable to record a synth, or mic up a drum kit through a mixer and then do a stereo mix down into a two-input audio interface, etc.
I would love it if everything were always ready to go so that, when inspirations strikes, I can just hit record and capture all the good ideas.