It’s been a little while since I last posted on here. It’s not that I’ve forgotten about it. More that I’ve had a fair few other side projects I’ve been doing. Plus work has been pretty full on, the last couple of months.
For a start, I spent most of the winter building up a music studio; something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. To be fair, we did have a makeshift studio, when I was younger, just not quite as well polished as this. Plus computing power has come on so much, you can do loads, just inside a PC. Music has always been a major factor in my life. I was writing music on my Amiga with OctaMED, and we had Logic on the PC, when I was at school. I’ve also been DJing for a good 20 years. Given many of us have had very little social life lately, over the winter I took the opportunity to properly get back in to it, and splurged on a full copy of Ableton, with many plugins, a keyboard, audio monitors, and a few hardware synthesizers. It’s been fantastically rewarding, learning the intricacies of the process, and actually getting some (almost) finished tracks together. Whilst Covid has been a bit of a shit for us all, it has given me the time to really get in to it. I do plan to release something, in the not too distant future.
Studio kit in full
- PC with Ryzen 3800X, 32GB RAM Windows 10/Kubuntu 20.04
- Ableton 11 Suite and shedloads of VST collections.
- Arturia Keylab 49 Mk2 keyboard
- Akai LPK25 keyboard
- Akai LDP8 Control surface
- 2x Dell U2412M video monitors
- 2x Yamaha HS7 audio monitors
- Behringer X-Touch
- Behringer UMC1820 Audio interface
- Behringer UMC204HD Audio interface
- Behringer Deepmind12D synthesizer
- Behringer Neutron
- Behringer TD-3 (Roland TB-303) clone
- 2x Technics SL210 M3D turntables
- Pioneer CDJ-1000 Mk2
- Pioneer CDJ-1000 Mk3
- Allen and Heath Xone 62 mixer
- 2x Wharfedale Diamond 230 speakers
- Denon AVR-X2500H receiver
- Sennheiser HD25 MK2 headphones
Yes, there is a fair amount of Behringer gear in there. But they have really upped their game, in recent years. The Deepmind and Neutron are quality synths; the former has some amazing sounding presets. Whilst the TD-3 does a damn good impression of a TB-303. Also the sound quality on the UMC1820 and UMC204 is perfectly adequate. The 1820 has enough inputs for all the outboard hardware, without breaking the bank. I paid something like £170 for the thing. I dare you to find better, at that price, or even near it.
The X-Touch is also a fantastic control surface, for working with Ableton. With the icing on the cake being the motorised faders (drooool).
And I Do Other Stuff**
I’m also planning to migrate this site away from WordPress, at some point. Whilst WP is fine to use, it’s an absolute croc of shite to develop for (in my personal opinion), with an archaic framework. So I’m looking at other options, and will be trying those out.
Other than that, I do have another project I have in the planning phases. Well… I’ve bought the domain name. I’ve got some ideas for what I want it to become but I’m keeping that one close to my chest, for now. That will possibly be the test bed for the new CMS I’m planning to use, for this site.
** if you’ve never seen Patrick Stewart’s Extras appearance, do search it out, as it’s one of the funniest things ever.