I'm pretty new to synthesizers and music in general so this is probably going to sound a bit long winded but I am looking for some advise on where to start.
After a long time fiddling with various DAWs to no success I bought a OP-Z on a whim and found it was 50-100x easier to make something resembling "music" on that than anything I've tried before, I think it's mostly to do with the hands on nature that made things click. Eventually I got the keyboard-gate so it's pretty much unusable now and have upgraded to a digitakt to function as my primary sequencer and sampler. Obviously you can do a crazy amount with samples but I also feel I am lacking a way to create more original sounds that are far away from drums or bass lines that fit well into a grid. What I want to do is have something develop over a longer duration and be less rigid/more expressive, I figure anything with a keyboard will let me play as poorly as I can manage, but also being able to change the fundamentals that make up a sound on the fly is very interesting to me.
From the research I've done I'm kinda on the fence on which path to go down yet also mostly overwhelmed by the options out there. First would be to try a hybrid setup, I've played around with a few VSTs and they seem to do what I want but have absolutely awful interfaces, that is I have to use the mouse to change every little thing, which is no fun at all. I did find the minilab mkii which on paper fixes most of the short comings with using a computer, but I am still stuck having to use the computer through the whole process then.
Second would be to just buy a synth. The problem I'm facing here is which one? There are so many options and trade offs, even the really expensive gear all have the drawback in that they're as wide as a car which isn't going to work in my current desk setup (I'm also not made of money, lmao). Stuff like the volca fm and j-6 sound really cool and fit into the budget but lack a keyboard, there are some very expressive looking korg synths that are relatively small and won't bankrupt me but I don't know if I actually want a fm, wavetable, etc. I kind of want something that does everything like a computer but also does it right so I'm not menu diving or spending more money than would make sense given my current abilities.
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