You want to buy your music producer loved one a gift for Christmas, their birthday, whatever - what do you get them? This is a list of gifts for music producers ranging from less than $100 to several hundred dollars. Remember, music products are incredibly personal so you should make sure its something they can actually use, and that they don't already have it. I'll try to explain what these products are used for as well as I can, but make sure to click the links and do your research before buying them.
Category: General Music Stuff
This category will apply to most music people, and the items tend to be cheaper than the rest on the list.
External Hard Drives
I have like 15 TB or hard drive storage, and most music creators have at least a couple of external hard drives laying around. Every time a new project is created or a recording is captured, precious disk space is used. Since musical creations take time and can't always be recreated, backups are essential. I'll link to a few that I have personal experience with and can recommend. For an added bonus, maybe buy them a year to a cloud backup service.
Cables
This will require a little bit of research to find what type of cable they need, but almost every musician uses a whole bunch of cables. They don't last forever, and you never realize you need another one until its too late. There are a few main categories of cables:
- Line Cables (balanced cables, most common type used for keyboards, routing gear, etc)
- Guitar Cables (unbalanced cables)
- XLR Cables (microphone cables)
- Adapter Cables (stereo to dual mono, XLR to line, USB 3 type C to USB 2)
The list goes on and on, but you should be able to find a cable they'd benefit from. Here's some links to cables to buy.
Adapters
This is a simple one, most music creators constantly need 1/8" to 1/4" adapters. This is because headphones can come in both sizes, but audio interfaces pretty much always only have 1/4". There are also other more niche cases to use them as well. These are the ones I own:
Category: Cool but Not Too Expensive
This category is where we get into the fun stuff, but remember you'll need to do some research to make sure they'll like any of these gifts.
Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface - $159.99
This is a super good audio interface for people just getting into recording music. An audio interface allows someone to plug a microphone or guitar or keyboard into their computer. They can range from $20 to over $1,000, but this one in particular is what I think is the best for anyone to get as their first audio interface (unless they're recording drums or something). Perfect for music producers that want to get into recording real sounds, for vocalists who want to get into recording, or for guitarists who want to get into recording.
Roli Touchpad Block M - $99.99
I got this cool device recently, and I love it. You can get it for only $99.99 on sale, or $199 the rest of the year. Its whats known as a MIDI controller, and it lets a producer physically play music with their hands. It has a sort of touch surface that can display a grid of buttons, which lets you play drums or keyboard like sounds. Pretty much anyone that makes music on a computer will love this thing.
For reference, its about the size of your hand.
Maschine Mikro - $269
The Maschine Mikro is a smaller version of their more expensive Maschine. Its an excellent tool for physically tapping in beats, or jamming melodies. It also comes with a whole bunch of software and sounds included in the price. If your loved one is a beginner looking to get into music production, this is probably the cheapest way for them to get started. At the same time if they've been doing this a while, they'll get a ton of value out of it.
