How difficult are Nine Inch Nails songs to play on synth?

[SynthWizard]

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How difficult are Nine Inch Nails songs to play on synth?

Hey everyone.

I just saw a bunch of videos of the synth leads of some NIN songs (even with spot on sound! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZlvpMtEIv4) and I'm feeling like starting to play keyboards/synths, but I don't have one and it feels like a HUGE world, both in sound design and execution. In some of those videos the guy says he's achieved those sounds by connecting this, to that, to those, etc. and it's all very confusing for a layman like me. Do I really need all that stuff? Is it very expensive to get into synths and electronic music making?

I also know nothing about music theory and I think I'd need lessons to learn at least the basic chords.

To give you some context, I've been playing guitar and bass (self-taught) for basically 7 years and I just recently started my first attempts of making electronic music (mainly harsh noise, dark ambient, drone and stuff like that, but I want to try industrial too... I also like techno, IDM, dub, jungle and many other genres, btw). I mean, I also like stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=19OVaIT0lbs or The Prodigy, Throbbing Gristle, In Slaughter Natives, or whatever Justin Broadrick does.

By the way, I love NIN and they're probably the reason why I love sound design so much (I haven't got any modulation pedals yet, but I've been wanting to get some for some time... I have several distortion pedals, though).

I have little to no experience in mixing, mastering and overall production, but I want to delve deeper into that. So far, I've only experimented with Audacity (paulstretching, normalizing, looping stuff, pitch shifting and stuff like that).

Probably some of what I just said seems out of context, but I know that it can all be related to the world of synths, and as of now I have no idea if I should get a synth and try, and, in that case, which synth would suit me and my needs. I've also been wanting to try a drum machine for sometime, and I've never ever programmed drums yet. But youtube tutorials are quite heavy to watch sometimes, so I prefer to learn stuff by doing it and experimenting on my own, perhaps. At times I also find it tiresome to randomly move sliders on Audacity without really knowing what I'm doing, though. Maybe having physical stuff helps?

So yeah, the whole post now seems to deviate a little bit from the title, but that'd be my initial motivation, so I need to know. Feel free to give me tips about any of the things I mentioned.

Thanks to anyone who helps.

submitted by /u/FrancisSalva
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