Gear of the Decade

The Noughties are over - goodbye Big Brother (almost), adios MySpace (kind of), farewell the music industry as a whole (yep) - wipe away your tears and embrace a new decade. The twenty-tens are here to stay (for a while at least) and here at FM not only do we look to the future (it's in the name) but we proudly salute the past. After all, where would the future be without generations of innovations and ideas and it's with this in mind that we put together our quick homage to the decade that was.

And for producers, musicians and engineers, it's been a hell of a ride. The cost of quality productions fell along with the perceived cost of music (d'oh) and with the hardware and software advancements we've seen in the past ten years, it's arguably easier than ever to get stuck in to producing professional music. We've decided to champion the gear that impressed us most, but we need your help. We've split our feature into five categories, and we need you to comment like you've never commented before and express your vote for each of the headings. The categories are as follows, with some examples to get you thinking:

Best Hardware Synth

(microKorg?)

Best Studio Gear

(LiquidMix?)

Best Software Synth

(ImpOSCar?)

DAW of the Decade

(Ableton?)

Innovation of the Decade

(Melodyne?)

So make yourself heard and put your favourite bit of kit of software forward - and please don't say 'the Apple Mac'! Also, make sure you follow us on Twitter for more announcements and for even faster voting:

FM Twitter

FM223 - On sale January 23rd