music gear

Here, pictured in my university room at York, is [most of] my electronic music equipment.

Click on the appropriate gizmo in the photo and you'll be furnished with more information on each piece.

NOTE: this page is now hideously out of date, for
a more current rundown
of my studio, see here.

After 2 years of barely touching my A3000 sampler, I decided to get something more intuitive. Not only does the EX5r do almost everything the A3000 does, but compounds those features with VL physical modelling algorithms (makes instruments sound SO real!), AN analogue modelling algorithms (for truly 'phat' bass, warm pads and crisp leads) and FDSP pickup modelling (for guitar modelling). When my final year is over, I can't wait to see how far this baby will go!

The quality of instruments on this rack has made a BIG difference in my music. It has twice the number has its sister-products - the Trinity keyboards, but looses out on the interface. After composing with it for 2 years, I found it that it had FX onboard (disabled by default) - and even then I was chuffed with it. Now, I'm looking forward to hooking the module up to my laptop (see pic) and using Trinitro (the PC Trinity Sound Editor) to get even more out of it!

Before you dismiss these as a good choice for monitors... listen to them. I bought them after being advised that they knock the socks off any budget active monitors - and the sound is amazing. The fact that they had 65% off also helped. They can whack out a fair volume, but perform equally as well at lower volumes too.

The program I write music in runs from DOS, necessitating an ISA soundcard - so that explains the presence of the AWE64. That card handles all the mixing... yes, my 'advanced recording solution' involves a number of stereo-jack joiners. Mastering and the like is then done with the Live!. The Live! can only be described as a semi-pro soundcard at best - it's targetted at the home market (and it shows). At the moment, I have my eyes on that Yamaha AW4416...

When space is at a premium, or dual keyboards are required, this tidy little number lends a hand. It's velocity sensitive... but that concludes its feature list. The limited number of keys (37, as it happens) do sport a very nice touch for a non-weighted keyboard, however - much better than the CS1x. Great for bass lines or leads.