Who are you, and what do you do?
I am a drummer/musician and rhythmic conceptualist, who has noticed the beauty of both standard and non-standard rhythm.
What hardware do you use?
I am using a Mac Pro 64 bit workstation, a MOTU 828 MK3 Hybrid Firewire & USB Audio Interface and a lot of external hard drives.
I play a 5 piece Gretsch drumset with additional drums added to it. The toms are 10", 12" and 16" and the Bass drum is a 22". There are extra snare drums all around the kit. An 8" Gretsch mighty mini on the left, a 10" Gretsch mighty mini on the right, a 14" 1952 Slingerland snare drum on the far right above a second 16" floor tom converted to Bass drum below it.
I use extra hi hats that may even be plastic hi hats at times. I have 9 pedals to trigger snare drums, bass drums, hi-hats of various description, bells and other sound sources.
The cymbals I use are Zildjian and are mainly 13" and 14" hi hats, 16" china, 20" ride cymbal, 15" and 16" crash cymbals and other funky junky cymbals for effect. When I record, my favorite Bass drum mic is an Electro voice EV RE20, RE-series dynamic large diaphragm microphone. I use AKG 451 mics as overheads and they are great! Sennheiser 421 mics for toms. Shure SM57 mics for snares. These are my favorite mics but I use others as well.
And what software?
I am using Apple Logic Pro studio to record everything. Final Cut Pro (for video stuff) but will probably learn Avid soon.
What would be your dream setup?
I would love to have a real time rhythmic analyser, almost like a geiger counter, that would do live real time transcriptions based on parameters that I could punch in like BPM (beats per minute) and start to finish lengths. I have always noticed the beauty in rhythms that occur in nature. Similar to the beauty of the fractal geometry of tree branches. It's great to use some of the rhythms that nature creates to discover new sounding things. Sometimes there are rhythmic events that occur through man-made means as well like fireworks put to the backdrop of a beat.
You don't have to know what these rhythms are notationally as a listener, you just have to sit back and allow their trance to start working by listening to them.
I however, enjoy analysing unique rhythm for their use within specific rhythmic environments that I prepare for the listener so that they may just sit back and hear something they may not have heard before. Also, repetition may be a key factor, as it may be through repetition that we have a chance to absorb these rhythms and get to understand them. To repeat almost anything allows that anything to be turned into some kind of groove.
This does not discount standard rhythm, it adds to it and allows new doors to be opened that one may pass through to arrive at a place they'd never been before or take them on a journey that could allow their own observations to take them to another world and possibly even time travel.