A last minute 2021 holiday gift guide for musicians

Struggling to find a gift for a musician? Well, find plenty of great options below!

A guest post by  Zoë Young of SoundFly.

From the silly to the serious, there’s sure to be something on this list your favorite music lover will adore.

And it should go without saying — but the gift of music learning is something any musician would appreciate. Email us at support@soundfly.com to purchase gift certificates for subscriptions to our premium music courses or for 4- or 6-week custom coaching sessions with a personal mentor of your recipient’s choosing.

And now to the gifts!

The Stocking Stuffers

Chatty Feet Music-Themed Socks — $12

Let’s start with some literal stockings! For the music lover who appreciates a good pun, sock company Chatty Feet has a selection of music-related footware, that should delight your extremities for years to come, including David Towie, Eltoe John, Footgang Mozart, and more!

Hanging Cord Racks — $24.99

I was scrolling through Instagram the other day and saw a post by one of our course instructors, Andrew Huang, about three things every home studio should have. The list, which also included a table-mounted mic stand and a paintbrush for dusting between knobs and buttons, featured these hanging cable racks, which allow you to hang all your patch cables and other cords without having to wrap them. Ingenious.

Here’s a 20-slot one available at Sweetwater, but there are a variety of brands and sizes to choose from. (Relatedly, if you’re an Andrew Huang fan, his course on making music with everyday objects is free! Finish up your holiday shopping and check it out.)

The Songwriting Decks — $34

If the songwriter in your life is looking to up their game and maybe get into sync work or co-writing, where they’ll need to be able to write to a brief, this deck of songwriting challenges is just what they need to get started. Recommended by Soundfly Student Jasmine Fellows, who herself received this this deck as a gift, this handy set of prompts can help your loved one break through moments of writer’s block and get creating.

The Musician’s Notebook — $8 and up

For the songwriter on the go, journals from The Musicians Notebook are hard to beat(ba-dum!). With staff paper on one side and lined notebook pages on the other, these notebooks are perfect for jotting down musical ideas as they come. They’re available in pocket size through to full, 8.5″x11″ books, so there’s sure to be one that will fit your stocking!

Repurposed Guitar Pick Earrings — $12 each

The online store for repurposed goods-turned-wearables, Paw and Claw Designs, has a ton of handmade styles to choose from in their online store. So as long as your gifting recipient enjoys wearing a piece of what makes rock n’ roll so iconic, they’re going to love to get jewelry that screams: “Free Bird!”

Music Theory Posters — $6.22

We’re all about using the Circle of Fifths to help generate chord progressions with creative and exciting harmonic movement, but you can’t use what you don’t know! So check out some of the beautiful designs for music theory “cheat” posters by Penny and Horse on Etsy, meant for you to hang on your studio wall in case you need a dose of inspiration!

For The Beatles Lover

Given many on our team have sunk eight hours this December into Peter Jackson’smega Disney+ docuseries Get Back, I’m giving the Beatles their own little subsection of this list. Thanks again to Jasmine Fellows for her recommendations here!

LEGO’s The Beatles — $179.99

My eyes and fingertips hurt just thinking about this one, but this LEGO set allows you to build each of the four portraits above (not at the same time, to make four wall hangings, you need 4 sets), and comes complete with an podcast and playlist to listen to as you work. Each portrait is made out of thousands of single LEGO blocks for a pointillism-inspired project you can build again and again.

Paul McCartney, The Lyrics — $60

This beautiful box set is perfect for the person who walked away from eight hours of Beatles b-roll thinking “Yeah, it was great, but I wanted more.”

The Gear

Make Noise’s Strega — $599

This creative desktop synth allows you to patch with your fingers. It’s what our in-house synths guru, John Hull, the instructor of our wildly in-depth course Advanced Synths and Patch Design for Producers (as well as our free intro synths course series, Demystifying Synths) has on his Christmas list.

And if the synth lover in your life is looking for a little inspiration in the new year, keep an eye on our premium course subscription, where we’ll be adding a new synth-heavy course starring Com Truise in early 2022!

Critter & Guitari’s Eyesy — $359.99

Another Soundfly holiday gift guide, another Critter & Guitari toy. We can’t help ourselves! If you have your sights set on performing live more often in 2022, the Eyesycould be just what you need to take your live show to the next level. This “video synth” creates visuals from your music in real-time and can be hooked directly to a TV or projector for captivating visualizations to accompany your next performance.

Blue Yeti Nano Microphone — $109.99

Soundfly student Erik Andersen brought up this well-rounded budget microphone as a great intro mic for musicians who are ready to dip their toes into the world of vocals! Also a favorite of podcasters, this powerful microphone is designed to sit desktop so that you don’t need mic stands and additional gear to get started recording. For an even bigger gift, pair this mic with a gift certificate for a Soundfly subscription for access to courses like Kimbra: Vocal Creativity, Arranging, & Production or Modern Pop Vocal Production. (Around the Soundfly office, we’re also fond of the Shure SM58 for a handheld option, and the SM7B for the next step up in microphones.)

Couch Guitar Straps — $24-78

Got a guitarist on your list? Check out the vegan leather guitar straps from Couch! They’re environmentally-friendly and cruelty-free — often made out of up-cycled car fabric, seatbelts, and deadstock fabrics — and they’ve got a style sure to match anyone’s sound. Shoutout to Soundfly Student James Hervey who has this one, made out of ’80s Mercedes seat upholstery vinyl, on his list this year.

Downloadable and Online Gifts

Virtual instruments, effects plugins, DAWs, and more make great last-minute presents. There are a nearly infinite number of them out there, and they’re immune to supply-chain slowdowns!

FabFilter’s Software Instruments, Plugins, and Bundles — Ranging from $34-$749.25

We’re big fans of Fabfilter’s whole suite of products, and all of their bundles are on sale through January 1st, 2022, so it’s a great time to invest in a range of products sure to transform your sound. Their tools are a favorite of our course instructors Kimbra and Sırma, and upcoming instructor Ryan Lott (keep an eye out for that course announcement in the new year!).

Spitfire Audio Digital Instruments — Ranging from $29 to $3000+

Here’s another reasonably vague gift guide recommendation, because choosing just one of Spitfire’s industry-standard digital instruments is like being asked to choose between children. They’ve got some spectacular strings collections, which you can quickly and easily take to the next level with our free courses Making Realistic MIDI Strings, as well as full orchestral suites, individual instruments, artist collaborations, and so much more.

iZotope’s Massive Holiday Bundle — $149 now through December 31st

Now through December 31st, you can get probably the bundle deal of a lifetime if suites of electronic music production plugins is your thing. Sweetwater is teaming up with iZotope to offer their full, updated suite of music production software at a massively discounted $2,119 off this year! Deal of a lifetime? The Diamond collection includes: RX Elements v8, Ozone 9 Standard, Neutron 3 Standard, Trash 2, Iris 2, R2, Excalibur, PhoenixVerb, BreakTweaker, BreakTweaker Expansion Cinematic Textures, BreakTweaker Expansion Kicks and Snares by BeatPort Sounds, BreakTweaker Expansion Modern Grooves by Black Octopus, BreakTweaker Expansion Vintage Machines, Stutter Edit 2, Neoverb, and Nectar 3 Plus.

Or, if you’re trepidatious to purchase right away, iZotope is another proud partner of ours, which means Soundfly subscribers can get an extended 30-day free trial to try out iZotope’s Music Production Suite Pro before purchasing any licenses.

Cthulhu, The Chord and Arp Monster — $39

Priced like a stocking stuffer, but powerful enough to entertain your favorite musician for weeks, this chord player and pattern-based arpeggiator plug-in lets artist explore different chord patterns and variations to help shake up their songwriting styles. (Another hat tip to Erik Andersen who put this one on his own wish list this year!)

SoundGym Ear Training Tools — Pro accounts start at $9.90/month depending on the billing you select

SoundGym is a gym membership for your ears. Try out any of their more than 20 games to work on your EQ skills, test how well you can keep a beat, recognize intervals, and so much more.

And did you know SoundGym offers an exclusive deal to Soundfly subscribers? Anyone enrolled in our premium course subscription can get 30% off their SoundGym subscription! It’s a great deal for anyone with a few musical resolutions they hope to meet next year.

Cameo Holiday Wishes from a Celebrity — Ranging from $50 to $500

Look, it’s been two years of this pandemic… Sometimes we all just need a quick and healthy booster shot of good vibes and positivity. Why not get your best bud a personalized Cameo shout out from their favorite artist, or at least a guilty pleasure childhood favorite celeb that’s really just an inside joke you’re not afraid to lean into… (We get it.)

One More, Just for Fun

LEGO’s Grand Piano — $529.99

I didn’t expect to be putting two LEGO items on this list, but when I saw that the keys of this LEGO piano actually play along to the music on the set’s accompanying app, I couldn’t leave it off the list. It is outlandishly elaborate and really quite cool.

Soundfly Subscriptions

Last, but most certainly not least, the best gift for the musician in your life is without a doubt a Soundfly subscription. For $234, you can buy your loved one a year of learning that will help them uncover new passions, gain insight into their favorite artists’ creative processes, build their skillsets, and so much more.

In addition to unlimited access to all of our creative music courses, Soundfly subscribers are invited to join our online Slack community of instructors, artists, and users, where you can get feedback on work, meet collaborators, ask questions, and much more (like contributing to our holiday gift guide!). Plus, in the first few months of 2022, we’ll have courses launching with experimental footwork and percussive producer Jlin, composer Ryan Lott (of Son Lux), and electronic synthwave producer Com Truise.

Send us an email at support@soundfly.com and we’ll get you set up with a gift certificate right away!