In the last couple of months it has been a bit quiet with new music releases, I know, I am aware of that. Let me tell you what happened.
In the last couple of years I tried to create a very tidy studio, and decided to reduce the amount of equipment I needed to create my music with. I mixed everything “in the box” and sold all my external effects. Also the mixing of the tracks was done all digital, and although the sound was good I missed that analog feel. So I decided that I wanted to be able to mix all my synths and other gear in an analog way. But to be able to do that I needed a big mixing panel.
So I bought a Soundcraft Series Two 32 channel mixing desk. But of course it was way to big to fit my room so I needed to change some things to find a place for it… This resulted in a total rebuild of my studio room. Because my studio is very small I couldn’t fit the standard 19 inch racks and keyboard stands, so I build my own closets. Due to the Coronacrisis the stores are closed and I had to order the materials that I needed online. Turns out I wasn’t the only person ordering online… so I had to wait a month for my order to be delivered.
After I finally received my building materials I started to build the new studio. All this time my equipment was laying around everywhere and I wasn’t able to make music. After building the basic setup I needed to reconnected everything of course; all power cables, audio cables and midi cables and put in all equipment again. A nice job to do, but takes a while.
New equipment
In the time that I wasn’t able to make any music I sold some equipment that I wasn’t using anymore and also bought some new equipment. I decided that I “needed” a cool sampler and came across an Ensoniq EPS 16+ for a decent price and bought it. Shortly after that I saw an E-MU Emax II sampler for sale, it was ‘assumed to be broken’ and so I bought it, repaired it and retrofitted it with a cool OLED display and a Gotek USB Floppy emulator to bring it into the 21st century. The cool thing about samplers is that there are libraries of samples available for it, and that they can give you lots of inspiration. Last week I came across an Akai CD3000XL sampler and bought that as well. Now I have literally tons of samples to browse through, so I’m sure that will keep me busy for a couple of weeks 😉
New album
I am working on a new album as well; I have about 5 new tracks that are more or less finished. I hope you can hear the more analog approach that I use now for recording. I expect the new album to be finished around June 2021.
I will keep you posted!