Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Loren Bouchard. I'm the creator and one of the showrunners of Bob's Burgers, an animated comedy which airs on television. As showrunner, I'm responsible for overseeing stories and scripts, recordings and edits, storyboards, designs, animation and color. I also spot music with our composers, then review final mix of dialogue, sound effects, and music before we deliver to the network.
In addition to this work, which I love, I also sometimes allow myself a guilty pleasure - I occasionally compose and perform music for the show. I say guilty pleasure because I often feel like I'm under-qualified as a musician, and that I wouldn't get to contribute music if I didn't "know somebody" which, in this case, is me. But fortunately so far no one has stopped me, so I just keep doing it.
What hardware do you use?
I do all of my work - musical and otherwise - on a MacBook Pro 15". It's the latest model, I think - the 2.6GHz one that came out in 2013. I have 16 gigs of RAM in it, and I have to say, it's incredibly powerful - I never miss having a desktop system. I routinely push Pro Tools to run in a way that would have choked my desktop machine only a few years ago.
I also use an old AKG 414 microphone, API pre-amps and limiters, both Apogee and Universal Audio interfaces, and small-ish Focal monitors.
I'd also be lost without my ukuleles (various), tenor guitars (Gibson and Eastwood, modified), and Casio keyboards (SK-5 and MT-70). I use an old upright piano to compose on. And recently my six year old's drum kit made it into a recording. I'm very impressed with my new Nord Piano 2 too.
And what software?
For script writing, we use Final Draft, as everyone in Hollywood does, I believe. (Though I have to admit, I print out everything and make notes in the margins, on paper.)
For music I use Pro Tools. My every day plug-ins are Native Instruments Kontakt, FabFilter EQ and Limiter, and various SoundToys plugins. I also use Native Instruments Guitar Rig, and Exponential Audio Phoenix reverb.
What would be your dream setup?
I spend a fair amount of time online digging up odd instruments like the Hohner Guitaret, the glass xylophone or the aquaphone. I also love the sound and the innocence of old keyboards, particularly the ones that were considered toys, or "home organs", So I guess my dream setup would probably look a lot like a flea market that was well mic'ed up, plugged in, batteries fresh, ready to record.