My Music Hobby
Here's what hardware I have used, or that I am currently using.
I first got into MIDI with my high school's Korg M1. (this was the first true Workstation that started a revolution for keyboards) I had CakeWalk 2.0 at home that I used with Windows 3.1. I wasn't allowed to take the schools keyboard home that much at all, so I bought my first MIDI keyboard, the Yamaha PSR-500. Needless to say, I played it hard. By the time I sold it (almost 2 years ago) the keys were worn a little. Anyway, the sounds on the PSR-500 weren't as nice as the sounds on the M1, so I then got a Korg X5DR Sound Module my freshman year of College. A Sound Module is basically a small box full of sounds that is controlled (through MIDI) by a keyboard (my PSR-500). Needless to say, I had an explosion of ideas because of the X5DR during my freshman and sophomore years at college. It helped me a lot with my Music Theory projects.
After I left West Chester, I didn't play the keyboard as much because computers were taking more and more of my time. This kind of bothered me and I wanted to re-ignite that spark. I had a friend that was interested in my PSR-500 and I needed something with a broader range of sounds, better piano sounds, and with 88-keys so that I wouldn't have to be hitting the octave buttons. Alas, I found the Korg N1. It is a studio/performance synthesizer. It doesn't have a built in sequencer which I didn't need since the computer does that job. I'll post some pictures of it when I get around to it!
So now I am still learning the N1 (the manual kinda stinks) and once I am up to speed I will start pumping out new songs for a brand new album I want to make. So far, I have one track finished. The first track is a song I did for Courtney awhile back using my X5DR. I may redo it using the piano sounds from my new N1, but we'll see.