Starfield Studios

The studio is the hub of my creative activity. Above left the set-up for recording audio, and on the right the video editing facility. There’s more about the technical stuff later below. I still live love writing and recording music, and have become increasingly fascinated by the visual worlds made possible by photos and video, and sometimes enjoy exploring ways to integrate the two media. With musical and visual ideas I try to make the process from having an idea to capturing it as simple and intuitive as possible.

Musically there are many areas and styles that I enjoy - from drummy and energetic through to spacey and atmospheric. Acoustic elements are great for bringing in extra life to recording, and at their best bring a much stronger sense of intimacy that personalises the sound. The programming approach also has tremendous strengths, and develops as the sound quality of keyboards and virtual instruments improves continuously, and there seem to be an endless stream of fresh ingenious ways of handling and triggering sound that of themselves suggest intriguing possibilities.

The house here contains a variety of spaces that offer good options for recording. The landing outside the studio is large, and has a live sound quality. In this photo you can see Arthur Hull jamming with Simon Webster on Simon’s congas. Arthur visits every year on his European Tour, and we have much fun exploring unusual and ingenious ways of interpreting rhythms that lead also into musical journeys, and occasionally albums (e.g. Sounding the Stones). Simon is a versatile and talented percussionist and musician, plays especially good darabuka, teaches drumming and music, and luckily lives locally.

We are also enjoying co-writing and there is a track from each of these two collaborations on the Download Area (ACWDA). This upright piano is Chinese! It’s called a Bechendorfer (The name combines the prestigious Bechstein and Bosendorfer brand names a bit cheekily), and has a warm tone and is enjoyable to play. Unlike electronic keyboards pianos require no patching or routing, and are therefore pleasingly immediate and fun to play. The dining room where it is housed has a high ceiling, and a characterful small hall kind of sound.

Since being in Eastbourne for the last three years, I have played a lot of live gigs on my Yamaha kit and really enjoyed them. The original kit has been enhanced with a lot of custom additions, new cymbals etc and sounds excellent. Over time my collection of world percussion and drums has grown and these are useful for recording, even sometimes in contexts where you wouldn’t expect such a kind of sound. These are normally in my garage, which having a stone floor has a very reflective quality of sound.

Keyboards & Virtual Instruments

I have always enjoyed having at hand a broad range of high quality melodic sounds. It is often the quality of these that can trigger a musical idea for a track, often driven by the groove of a rhythm. It’s probably this factor that makes a new instrument like the Korg M3 so appealing to me, which can be seen above on the left. The actually sound quality of this wonderful instrument is especially transparent and clear, and with some clever playing options like chord pads, a real source of inspiration. It also has onboard a very powerful sequencer, so it can additionally be very useful as a mobile writing tool. The studio keys shot on the right shows three other favourite keyboards from top downwards - Korg Triton Extreme, Roland Fantom 'S' and Yamaha MO6. These all have great characteristic sounds of their own, and their libraries are imbued with the manufacturer’s styles - all of which differ from each other.

Not visible in the photos but very useful also are the Korg Radias, Korg Micro-X, Korg Triton Studio, Roland XV-5080, Access Virus TI, Novation Supernova, EMU Proteus 2500, Quaismidi Rave-Olution 309, Boss SP-505 and a Zoom Streetboxx.

Virtual Instruments include Stylus RMX (brilliant - and lots of extra REX libraries), East West Stormdrum, Motu Ethno, Motu Symphonic, Real Guitar, East West Ra Ethnic, East West Orchestral Gold, Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Trilogy, Ethnnoworld 3, Garritan Jazz, Stringstudio, Ivory Pianos and Percussive Adventures 2.

Other key studio tools are the Akai MPC-3000 - my main sequencer and clock source, two Soundscape Red 32 track recorders and two Behringer DDX 3216 mixers. These latter have a warm analogue quality of sound, though digital, have great effects and are very simple to operate. The more direct the process, the less distraction and hence more of the sparks of ideas are retained. Much of these equipment choices have come into being through the great support of my longstanding mix maestro and techno guru advisor Grahame Gerrard, whose sense of humour keeps me smiling, and whose practical advice has helped me make me some great additions and changes. I recommend the ebay shop he runs which has some great gear.

Recording on the Move

For capturing ideas in rehearsal and even for more serious consideration as a good recording device I love the Zoom H4. It has good inbuilt mikes, but can also accept line-in jack leads or even XLR connectors, and can offer them phantom powering if required.