My Stuff - Purchase History

You can listen to my music here
For how to connect up midi devices click here

I notice some people have questions about certain instruments shown below.  Recently someone wanted to know what is best - the Roland 808 or Korg EMX1.  Well, I find the EMX more tweekable and easier to pick up and start using straight away.   With the MC808 however, you can create sounds on 16 simultaneous midi channels whereas the korg allows for only 6 comprising of  5 keyboard parts and 1 drum part - the drum part can use up to 9 different drum sounds in any one pattern.  I think, at the moment anyway, the Korg EMX wins it for me.

If you are looking for more info about anything you see, please email using the address at the bottom of this page and I will reply as soon as I can.

Roland MC 808 9 February 2008  £489 Dawsons This is my newest toy.  It's a groovebox capable of sampling.  It can house 512MB sample RAM and a 1 GB Compact Flash card.  It also has USB to transfer samples to/from a computer. The USB also works as a midi port.

Korg Electribe (EMX1) 20 June 2007  £358 Promenade Music This will change the way I produce music....

Behringer C1 Microphone 9 June  £33 Now, who can I find who is willing to sing?

Zoom RFX 1100 2 June 2007  £28 Ebay Impulse purchase on a lazy Bank Holiday Monday.  Not bad considering these cost £100 new.

Behringer XENYX 2222FX Mixer 13 April 2007  £186 Of the 22 inputs, this mixer has 8 mono/4 stereo inputs I know I'll use up straight away.  It boasts a built-in FX processor holding 100 different effect presets and comes with a USB adapter to connect with your PC or MAC - Useful if you are not able to connect via your computer's soundcard.

Korg Microkorg 25 December 2006  £244 Saw this in Dawsons for £269.  Their website suggests they will price match, but dispite a couple of emails and phone calls, they wouldn't budge on price, so I bought this from Dolphin Music instead.

M-Audio USB Midisport 2x4 13 March 2006  £35 Ebay Out of midi ports again! This bargain gives me 4 outs and 2 ins so I can hook up to 4 midi devices to my PC.  The picture on the right shows one midi in and one midi out port. There's 3 more midi out ports on the reverse and a USB port to connect to PC or Mac.

EMU ESI 4000 Sampler
14 January 2006  £102 Ebay
I've never used a hardware sampler before so I don't know what to expect.  I've wanted one for a while now (don't ask me why) so I hope it turns out to be a useful bit of kit.

... Almost a 3 year gap of buying nothing at all ...

Roland JV80-19 House Expansion Card for JV/XP Series
23 April 2003 $84 Ebay
This is the first time I had bought something from the U.S. through Ebay, but the price was right!  Including P&P, the total only came to £63.55.  Comparing that to the UK retail price of £150 you can see why I bid for it.  It was very easy to fit to, just a case of unscrewing the expansion port cover of the top of the JV-1080 and inserting the card.  Bargain!

Midiman USB Midisport 2x2
January 2003 £46 Making Waves
Out of midi ports! Oh no! This great little device connects to a USB port on the PC or MAC and gives you two midi outs and two midi ins!

This picture shows two of 'em just to illustrate the front and back of the device

E-MU Xtreme Lead-1
31 December 2002 £300 Dawsons
I originally set out to buy an expansion card for my JV-1080, but £150 for a such a small card just didn't seem worth it, especially when I spotted some 'affordable' bright coloured  modules sitting on the shelf.  They were part of the E-MU range.  I toyed with the idea of buying the E-MU Mo-Phatt, but decided to go home and think about it more, rather than impulse buying - again! ;-)  Looking on the E-MU site to get more information, I read about the Xtreme Lead-1 and listened to a demo.  It sounded nice.  My only hope was that Dawsons had one - I never noticed while I was there.  Next day I went back and yes, they had one, trouble was, it was broken...  Luckily enough, they had another one out the back.
You can hear the XL-1 in the track Against The Clock.

Novation Nova 31 December 2001 £499 Dawsons I had read a bit about these things in the past, so when I saw it in Dawson's I just had to get it for that price! You can hear the Nova in tracks including Listen To Me (2002 mix) and Against The Clock.

Behringer Composer Pro MDX 2200
13 July 2001 £99 Dawsons
I read that a compressor/limiter is a must so I bought this.  It does make a difference, it adds an overall cleanness to the music.  While  working on a new track I could hear it didn't sound quite as full as it did the previous day... I had forgot to switch the Composer Pro on!

Soundcraft Spirit Folio F1 14/2 Mixer 3 February 2001 £239 Dawsons With the soundcard only having one audio-in connection,  I needed to buy a mixer to get the sounds from the audio devices back into my PC to record them all.  This mixer has served me well so far.

Alesis AirFX 3 February 2001 £199 Dawsons After reading about this I just had to have one.  It's difficult to describe what is it, basically you select one of the 40 effects and wave your hand over the dome, the lower you hand the more the effect is added to the music.  Totally unique!  You can hear the AirFX used in the track Life at the beginning to warp my voice and half way through to 'bend' the music. Also in the track Signals used to warp the vocals at the beginning and to add some signal distortion type effects.

Roland Super JV-1080
4 August 2000 £599 Dawsons
It was all very well spending money on a good soundcard, but I still wanted more sounds to play around with.  After another trip to Dawsons I decided to spend my money on something I could see - something that would not be hidden away inside my PC, so I took the hardware route and bought a sound module.
Tracks made with this include SuperJ and Maelstrom.

Yamaha SW1000XG
29 November 1999 £399 Dawsons
I decided to take a gamble and spend quite a bit of money on a better soundcard.  It was a gamble as I didn't know how it would sound, but once I had it installed I was happy with its performance and the on-board effect processing capabilities meant the PC's CPU was untouched.  I could now play and record to disk at the same time without the music jittering.
Tracks made with this include the original version of Listen To Me, Module 8, Sub Zero, Computer Music and the original Sick Of It All Remix.

Previous to November 1999 I was using a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard attached to a Soundblaster AWE32 card.  The DB50XG was useful and at the time it had a far better range of sounds than what I had been used to.  I used the AWE32 only to play drum loop samples.
Beyond Infinity was created with these two cards in October '99.  In November '99 the track was featured on the coverdisk of a magazine called Computer Music in the U.K.  I've still got both of these cards collecting dust somewhere.