My Studio

This is a list of the synths, modules and other musical bits and bobs I use, or have used over the years.  Included is a bit of blurb, mostly first impressions typed at the time of each purchase.

Have a listen to my music to find out how some of these things sound together.

If you are looking for a 'How To' or 'How Do I Connect midi devices' guide take a look at the midi connections page or ask on the dancefix forum. Chances are I've come across the same problems you may be looking for an answer to so just ask and I will answer.

28 April 2011 £279 Dawsons

I could have eventually got this on ebay, but as usual I wanted it now so was prepared to pay the full price, it was selling for just under £200 second hand so the difference wasn't really that much. This may have been another impulse buy, but this time I think I made the right choice. Last week I really wanted the Roland Gaia until I saw a video of this thing in action on YouTube.

This cool effects unit is playable right out the box and after unpacking I set it up and plugged in an old microphone just to see what it could do. Not only can it add excitement and warp the sound of an incoming sound, it also lets you record up to 4 separate samples from an incoming sound source including from the microphone. The samples can be either one shots or loops. Loop samples can be sliced up into 8 equal length parts, good for remixing your tracks on the fly! If four sample slots are not enough for you, you can resample the samples! This can be acheived by arming one of the four sample slots for recording while simultaniously playing back an existing sample and incoming sound source together. Any effect you create on the pad will also be recorded. Samples can be stored on an SD card and you can copy samples from the card to your computer or vice versa via the USB connection.

The Kaoss Pad 3 is programmable by midi messages and is capable of sending them so you won't have to remember all those finger movements or program changes.

Initial thoughts: A fun little box of tricks well worth the cash.

Buy Korg Kaoss Pad 3 Here

21 August 2010 £749 Dawsons

After failed bids on ebay my impatience got the better of me so I went out and bought one brand new.

I carefully removed it from the box, as you do, and spent the night flicking through the manual and scrolling through the demos and factory sounds.
It looks nice and appealing and comes with an 80's stylee headset microphone for use with the built in vocoder, but it's not as inspirational as I had hoped. To be fair I haven't really given it the time and effort it deserves, which can also be said for some of the other bits of kit I use.
At first glance - yes. Value for money - maybe not. These things go on ebay for half the price.

20 July 2009 £850 Dolphin Music

Spent 5 minutes playing with this in a shop and two days later I bought one! Some of the preset combinations are amazing allowing you to play drums, bass and a keyboard line all at the same time on differet zones of the keyboard. It may not look like it has enough buttons and sliders, but the touch screen allows you to access every parameter you need. It even has a built in sequencer allowing you to create patterns and songs over 16 tracks. You can use your patterns in songs or trigger them by assigning them to individual keys.

28 February 2009 £285 classified ad

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I gave up trying to get this for a decent price on ebay so I turned to performing-musician.com, Sound on Sound's sister site.  It took about a week to find one within driving distance.  Good old cash on collection.  It had OS 4.07 installed so I did what anyone would do and spent most of a night upgrading it to OS 4.9.  Now it's got 1024 sounds instead of the standard 512.  Tip - don't try upgrading it through a midibox like a midisport, it kept failing when I tried it that way.  It looks good in the rack, lots of knobs and flashy leds, suppose I should read the manual and find out how to get the best out of it.

12 December 2008 £299 rubadub.co.uk

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I can't remember where I first spotted one of these things, though come to think of it,  it was probably on Ebay.  By the time curiosity finally won me over,  I found the price had increased by £30 on all the usual sites.  It became a real mission to find it at the original price... ...until I stumbled upon rubadub.co.uk  :o)

This unit produces some really useful sounds as well as the weird and wonderful.  It would have no problem recreating some of those classic trance and ambient masterpieces and as you can probably see from the picture, it's fully tweakable.

At just over three quarters the size of a Novation Nova desktop synth, you can't use lack of space as a reason not to get one!

17 July 2008 £250 Ebay

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I've been after this module for years so it was a nice surprise to see it on ebay again.  This time I couldn't resist.

19 April 2008 £106 Ebay

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Just how many keyboards do I need?

9 February 2008 £489 Dawsons

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A groovebox capable of sampling. It can house 512MB of sample RAM and a 1 GB Compact Flash card.

 It uses a USB connection to transfer samples to/from a computer. The USB also works as a midi port.

20 June 2007 £358

Promenade Music
 

This groovebox is easy to pick up and you will soon be creating some complex sounding tracks thanks to the arpeggiator ribbon and the knobs that instantly tweak the sound of the music.
 

This will change the way I create music.

 

 

 

Behringer C1 Microphone

9 June 2007 £33 Dolphin Music

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 a bad price considering these things cost £100 new.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behringer XENYX 2222FX

13 April 2007 £186

Dolphin Music

Of the 22 inputs, this mixer has 8 mono/4 stereo inputs I know I'll use up straight away. It has built-in FX holding 100 different presets and comes with a USB connector to plug into your PC or MAC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Korg Microkorg

25 December 2006 £244

Dolphin Music

 cakewalk instrument definition file

Nice playable synth with some wonderful sounds. Bit fiddly to edit, but I'm happy enough to keep the presets the way they are anyway. Comes with a microphone that slots into the top middle of the synth for use with the vocoder.
 

 

Buy the Korg Microkorg Here

 

 

 

 

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 control 4 midi devices from my PC. The picture on the right shows just one midi in and one midi out port, but there's 3 more midi outs on the reverse side plus a USB socket to connect to a 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 was the first time I'd bought anything 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 made a bid for it.  It was very easy to fit, just a case of unscrewing the expansion port cover on the top of the JV-1080 before 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
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I had set out to buy an expansion card for my JV-1080, but spending £150 on such a small card 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 wait and think about it more, rather than impulse buying - again! ;-)

As I browsed the E-MU website 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 in stock - I never noticed while I was there. Next day I went back and yes, they had one, trouble was it was broken... Lucky for me they had another one out the back in perfect condition.
You can hear the XL-1 in the track Against The Clock.

 

 

 

 

 

Novation Nova

31 December 2001 £499 Dawsons

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I had read a bit about these things in the past so when I saw it in Dawson's I couldn't resist and just had to have it.
You can hear the Nova in the tracks  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 track I could tell it didn't sound 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 closer you move your 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
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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

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The on-board effect processing capabilities of this card meant the PC's CPU was untouched. I could now play and record at the same time without the music jittering on playback.
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 had a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard attached to a Soundblaster AWE32 card. The DB50XG did the job and had a far better range of sounds than a bog standard computer soundcard. The AWE32 was useful for playing drum loop samples.
I created my first ever track 'Beyond Infinity' using only these cards in October '99.  In November '99 the track featured on the coverdisk of a well known UK magazine called 'Computer Music'. I've still got both these cards collecting dust.