Dance Music Music Recording Studio

This is how the studio is looking as we head into 2010. You can click on any of the pictures for a larger view.

A list of soft synths used in the studio is here.

Equipment list

This year, 2009 has seen some changes in the studio.

The Juno 6 which I have owned for 25 years was sold for £300.

I was sort of sorry to see the back of the Juno 6 as it has featured in quite a few tracks. It is especially missed with it's custom DCB and CV input which I fitted myself. These allowed me to control the Juno 6 by Midi, via the Kenton Pro 4 which is a Midi to CV / DCB / KADI interface.

The SH-201 was also sold for £300. The SH-201 just didn't cut it for me. With no LCD display, when I wanted to turn on or off Midi Sync, or adjust various other parameters, there were combinations of key presses to remember, or look up in the manual, no patch names, just numbers and no display of parameter values... Above all no audio advantage over the JP-8000. Although the SH-201 is an awesome piece of kit for the money, it just wasn't for me.

The Access Virus TI Keyboard was looking very tasty, also the Virus Classic Desktop. as was some of Nord's gear like the Lead 3.

With a price tag of £700 the Waldorf Q won the day for me, with 5 octave aftertouch sensitive keyboard, three oscillators per voice, three LFO's and dual filters. Even with only 16 note polyphony the Waldorf Q is one fat synth.

The money from the Juno 6 and the SH-201 nearly bought me the Waldorf Q, which I am just becoming acquainted with. In terms of synthesizing power and variation of sound possibilities, I think it was a very fair deal. An Access Virus TI Keyboard would have been nicer, but the price tag is a little too high right now. Even second hand / Pre Loved.

The user manuals for most of this gear can be found here.

Waldorf Q

With 5 octave aftertouch sensitive keyboard, three oscillators per voice, three LFO's, dual filters, dual ADSR, 16 part multitimbral, 16 note polyphonic, 8 separate high quality effects, multi outputs, 2 foot switch inputs and sweep pedal input. The list goes on...

Roland JP8000

A Trance legend! I have owned this beast from new. The arpeggiator is brilliant.

Roland SH201

Sold 2009 for £300

Roland Juno 6

Sold 2009 for £300

Roland SH101

I'm never gonna sell this baby. With retro fitted external CV for VCF, routed to Midi velocity in the Kenton Pro 4, this is a dream bass machine!

Roland MC202

This MC202 has just been resurrected from the 'Unused' pile. Just fitted her with external CV in for VCF.

Korg MS20 Legacy Collection

Consisting of the Korg MS20 hardware controller, and three of Korgs legendary analog synths modelled in the digital domain as VSTs: Korg MS20, Korg Poly6 and the Korg Wavestation. The Korg Legacy Cell which is included in the suite allows you to layer up to four instruments to give some truly awesome sounds!

M-Audio Oxygen 61 Master Keyboard

This 5 octave master keyboard is pretty good. With 9 sliders, 8 knobs and 15 buttons. The Midi functions of all these controls can be defined from the Oxygen 61 itself or by using M-Audio's 'Enigma' editor / librarian. Also various velocity curves can be selected, but there is no aftertouch.

Korg Radias

The Radias's V-Patch feature is a winner, you can route just about anything to anything, like velocity to release time. There are a total of 6 V-Patch parameters. The vocoder is good to, not to mention the programmable sequencer and motion sequencer. Some really good noises and it lights up like a Christmas tree!

Novation Bass Station Rack

An analog sound modelling synthesizer module aimed at producing bass sounds. 2 oscillators, LFO, filter and ADSR.

Novation DrumStation Rack

An analog sound modelling synthesizer which aims to reproduce the classic Roland TR-808 and TR-909 sounds of the 1980s. Most of the drum part parameters can be modified. i.e. Pitch, pitch decay, amplitude decay, snappiness, noise mix etc. Some good drum sounds. The module is fitted with separate outputs.

Yamaha TG500

A multitimbral synth module with some good pads and drum sounds, built in effects and multiple outputs. I like this module.

Emu Esi4000

This 32 note polyphonic sampler has good sound manipulation capabilities. Mines got an 8GByte SCSI Drive, which was massive back then! I got a good library of sounds for it. Multiple outputs, the filters are crap and its got no effects, but still very useful.

Muliverse

Multiverse Rhythm Synthesiser. A home brew idea for creating beautiful natural rhythms. Full info is here. This is the only one ever made so far.

Music Quest 8Port SE

8 Midi Inputs and 8 Midi Outputs. Connects to the parallel port on the PC. The outputs of all 8 Midi outputs are synchronised, so if a note is sent to each of the ports at a given time, they all output simultaneously, on time! No more Midi delays. A Midi interface like this is essential once you get a few pieces of equipment. It avoids having to mess with Midi channels and does away with hopeless Midi delays caused by chaining up Midi thru's. It's quite old now but functions perfectly.

This piece of gear was nearly land fill when XP came out, due to the fact that Music Quest / Op-Code did not bring out any updated drivers. Determined not to throw away this £400 bit of kit, I came across Earth Vega Connection. Their drivers work for XP and Vista, breathing new life into the 8Port SE.

Alesis 3630 Compressor

I expect there are a lot better compressors out there, probably a lot more expensive too! This is the only compressor I have owned. It is quiet and has side chain inputs. I do most of my compression / expansion and limiting in Logic Audio, so this just helps me avoid blowing my speakers up really.

Zoom RFX 2200

Hmm, a fairly LO-FI experience, I only use it for an Echo when composing, after that I use the digital delays in Logic. This thing got to many buttons and rotary switches. Kind of user 'F*** OFF'.

Kenton Pro4

Midi to CV convertor. The Kenton Pro4 provides 4 separate of CV and Gate / Trigger outputs. There are also another 4 Auxiliary CV outputs and 4 Midi synched LFO with a variety of wave shapes. you can assign Aftertouch, Velocity and various other controllers as the source for the auxiliary CV outputs. Excellent build quality. Wicked bit of gear. 10/10. Well done Kenton Electronics.

Behringer Eurorack MX2642

A good desk for £300 new. 24 channels in, 2 stereo FX sends, 4 busses. It crackles and needs TLC to get results. The sockets are not gold plated. Fits very nicely into 19" rack enclosure. This mixer has served well, but have out grown it now.

PC Studio Running Emagic

NJD MDC128 Midi to DMX Convertor

The MDC-128 converts the first 128 Midi control values to 128 of the 512 DMX channels. Connected to 4 Abstract Futurescan 1CE's, a RGY250 colour graphics laser and an RGB LED PAR64 light, I use Emagic Logic Audio 5 to control the lights precisely to the music. See the Un Amour Video and the Lighting Page

Studio PC

3.4GHz dual processor Pentium 4 HT with 1GByte of RAM. XP SP2 OS Installed. All unnecessary services / networking turned off as recommended by Black Viper, it's a real bare bones XP. Fitted with Audiowerk 8 sound card and running Emagic Logic Audio 5.5.1. The PC can manage over 24 stereo audio tracks and a sack full of channel insert EQ and Effects. Shame Locic Audio went over to the Apple Mac! Just added a Matrox DualHead2Go. So now she has got 3 monitors giving a total screen resolution of 3840 x 1024!

PC Synth, Running VST Soft Synths

2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 1GByte of RAM. XP SP2 OS Installed. All unnecessary services / networking turned off as recommended by Black Viper. Fitted with an M-Audio Audiophile 2496. Running 'Brainspawn Forte' which is a VST rack software which allows up to 16 VST synths to be run in parallel! OMG!! Oh and this PC got a custom paint job by yours truly.

A list of soft synths run on this PC is here.

Tannoy Reveal Monitors

These Tannoy monitors give a realistic sound reproduction, despite only having 6" rubber surround cones, they go pretty loud as they are very efficient due to precision manufacturing. i.e. closeness of coils to magnets. When combined with the 18" sub (below) they deliver a 'kick arse' sound! I also use a pair of crappy PC speakers for mix down

18" Homebrew Sub Bass

A 600 watt RMS, 18 inch rubber surround sub bass speaker, housed in a 1 inch thick chipboard enclosure. The enclosure is of the 'Infinite Baffle' type of design and has no reflex breather port. A little efficiency is lost by the infinite baffle, but what you loose in efficiency is made up by low end response. this is because the pressure change created by cone movement is not allowed to equalise by rushing back into the reflex port. All sub bass speakers should be made this way.

Homebrew 300W Sub Bass Amp

A 300 watt RMS, sub bass amp with variable 12dB low pass active filter.

Homebrew Foot Pedal Array

Two footswitches and a sweep pedal. Conveniently mounted to a piece of chipboard. This keeps all the foot controls in one place and stops the moving around.

Jasper’s 4 Tier Keyboard Stand

Adjustable aluminium keyboard stand with add-ons I love this keyboard stand by Jasper's. Holds all my keyboards, monitor speakers and LCD monitors in a convenient workspace. The sub bass fits neatly underneath.