Studio 2021

The latest version of the Studio - BC Canada 2021.

Still working on the acoustics of the space but it’s getting there.

I have been using the PSI Audio A21s for about 5 years now and I really like them. I recently started using Sonarworks software to eek the last few db of awesomeness out of them, which I’m still a little undecided about but time will tell.

Also here you can see the ASM Hydrasynth, my newest addition to the synth family, and the expanding Eurorack setups.

Based around a 2012 Trashcan mac pro and more recently a 2022 14” Macbook Pro M1. The transition to M1 will take some time…

Björk at the Royal Albert Hall

It was a pleasure to work on some scores for the Björk show at the Royal Albert Hall September 2016. Andrew Gourlay conducted the excellent Aurora Orchestra in a set including songs from Vulnicura and a great selection of back catalogue. A highlight for me was the song Pluto, which I transcribed for strings!

Studio 2016

This is from a photoshoot I did for Novation in my Brighton Studio in 2016. Going through an Auratone phase. Still loving the Dynaudios.

Monsoon Music Festival

It was amazing to be invited to play at the Monsoon Music Festival in Vietnam in 2015.

Minimoog Keys

I recently found a decent minimoog D and have been trying to bring the keyboard action back to life. It takes patience but is basically straight forward to sort out I think.

First I removed the base and then the mod wheel module, and then unscrewed the four screws holding the keyboard mechanism in place. Between the screws and the mech there are some wooden spacing blocks, and they are different on the front and back so you need to mark them up!

Then I took off the key tops so I could give them a good clean. 30 years of finger grime is grim. It’s pretty straight forward, you just need to unscrew the flat head screw at the top of each key and then carefully slide the key tops forward.

The next step was to remove the springs at the back of the keys. There are actually two different strengths of spring, one for the black notes and one for the white. If you put them back the wrong way round (which I did) the action just feels all wrong. I just made a small pile for the black note springs and one for the white. Also care needs to be taken to not over stretch the springs (which I did) when they are being removed as they will deform and loose their springiness.

After that, I lifted up the back of the metal key bar to get to the key bushings and give the whole thing a good clean.

The stem at the back of the keyboard is sort of bent out so that the metal key bar is held in place, so quite a bit of force is needed to lift the key bar up.  I took my time over this as the actual switching mechanism underneath looked very delicate, and I’m not sure those bits would be possible to replace!

Key bushings for this keyboard mech are pretty readily available. My keyboard was a bit clunky sounding and some of the keys were a little un-even in height. Theoretically you are meant to change all bushings at the same time so as to give an even feel across the keyboard, but I just changed a few at first as a practice run.

Once the metal key bar is removed it’s pretty easy to pull off the old key bushings, and then slide on new ones. However, once re-assembled the keys that I changed the bushings on were really sticky and sluggish. I think that sometimes when you get key bushings they are lubricated already, but mine weren’t, so I got some Dow Corning 7 Release Compound to lubricate both the new bushing and the old transparent plastic domes that are under each key. This is the lubricant recommended by a few sites I found, and seems to work well. I have read of other people using corn starch or vaseline as well . . .

The bushings do have a ‘right way up’, and it’s pretty easy to figure this out by looking at how the old ones are arranged. Take care when removing the metal key bar that the transparent little plastic domes don’t come off with them and disappear somewhere.

Next I took a look at the key contacts. I had a few notes that didn’t trigger properly and a few that didn’t hold pitch well when played. Both of these problems were sorted out by very carefully cleaning the contact bars. The contact springs look really delicate so I took some time over it. I just used cotton buds to wipe away some of the dirt and left it at that. I have read of people removing the whole bar for cleaning, but that seemed un-necessary to me given that it wasn’t that dirty. The ‘double’ contact bar is for gate triggering, and the single one is for pitch tracking.I’m happy to say that after about 4 hours of cleaning, the keyboard is in much better shape and the pitch tracking and gates are all working fine. Apart from the spring that I half broke… which is now living down on the little used F# at the bottom of the keyboard!

Live Synth rig for Björk’s Biophilia

This photo from 2012 is of my live keyboard setup for Björk’s Biophilia shows. The centre piece is the amazing Reactable. It’s a beautiful thing. But sometimes the scanning gets a bit confused in strong overhead light… It’s a ‘visual synthesizer’ which uses the position and orientation of the blocks to produce different sounds, play samples or run sequences. (There’s also an ipad version which is fun to check out)

On the left are a selection of midi controllers, the Novation Launchpad which I used for triggering samples, the Novation SL remote, and a Lemur, which I programmed to have different layouts depending what song we were playing.

The main synth I used was a Moog Voyager, which took care of the majority of the bass sounds for the shows, and a Novation Remote SL midi controller to play synths and samples that I had setup in Ableton Live.

In the rack there is a Motu audio interface, Emagic Midi interface and UPS.

Fun times indeed!

Björk at the Hollywood Bowl

On June 11th 2013 I played a show with Björk at the Hollywood Bowl. Strangely the only association I have with this venue is Monty Pythons 1982 gig there. A classic which I owned on VHS for many years. Björk’s show had more pyro though.

Studio 2012

Here’s the studio setup in 2012. Brighton UK. I’m getting more into the Eurorack synths at this time, and also picked up a Minimoog D, which is a synth I had wanted since I was a kid. (When I was a kid you could still pick them up in used ads for about £200!)

I put a lot of time into the acoustics of this small space and was really happy with how it sounded.

Reactable

In 2011 I was honoured to be asked to be musical director for Björks Biophilia tour. One of the instruments I had the privilege of using was the Reactable . This is a visually driven digital modular synth and certainly one of the most interesting electronic instruments I have used. It can be configured to do all sorts of clever things, but I was using it to trigger samples and process them, and also to send signals to Björks fabulous musical Tesla coil! The Tesla coil has an audio input, and so if you send it an audio wave, it converts that wave into a pitched electrical discharge – well…. a lightning bolt that plays a tune. It’s incredibly loud, and looks amazing.

Gunter at Reactable was a HUGE help in setting up the instrument for the tour, and made lots of tweaks in the software so that we could use it in different ways in the show. There is a mobile app version of the software available which is a lot of fun!

The Eurorack case

So when I started my Eurorack modular adventure, I was intending to make it ‘keyboardless’. As Brian Eno apparently said, it takes a week to learn to play a synth and years to learn not to play it. Or something.

However, I’m a synth player at heart and so felt that it was about time I made a proper synth like case for my main set of modules. In reality, I end up triggering them from sequencers most of the time, but I find having a permanently attached keyboard makes getting sounds initially much quicker and more fun for me.

The case is very much modelled on the now un-available Analogue Systems Sorcerer case. This seemed like a good basic design to me. The power supply is from Analogue Systems as it provides plenty of power on all 3 rails. Following my ‘synth’ mentality, I have hard wired some of the patching. The 2 Doepfer mixers to the left of the keyboard are normalled to the input of the main osc CVs and the filters respectively. Then, the 2 LFOs are nomalled to the first two mixer inputs, so I can easily send LFOs to the oscs or filters in varying amounts with no patching. I know this totally goes against the concept of the patchable synth to an extent, but on the other hand, I really like the semi- modular nature of things like the MS-20, so it made sense to follow that idea in this project.

Also, a DC offset goes to an input on the pitch CV mixer, giving me an ‘overall’ tuning pot for all 4 oscs, and the pitch CV also goes to the filter mixer so I can send varying amounts of keyboard tracking to the filters.

The Keyboard is a standard Fatar 4 octave, no after touch or touch sense, but that suits me fine as I prefer the faster action (well…. higher key contacts effectively) of the non touch sense actions for this style of synth. Then there’s an Analogue Systems Midi-CV converter hidden in the case, and a little patch wired to the CV and Gate outputs, so it ‘feels’ like a ‘proper’ CV keyboard!

The case is made from 18mm Oak, which is WAY over the top, but is what was available to me at the time and feels very substantial!

The Doepfer ribbon controller was sort of an after thought. It would have been nice to incorporate it into the case, but it’s also nice to be able to remove it.

The Modules are:

Expert Sleepers ES1 / Analogue Solutions CV Buffer / Macbeth Dual VCO / Doepfer dual attenuator / Analogue Solutions VCO / Analogue Solutions VCO-SUB / Analogue Solutions mixer / Analogue Solutions LFO x2 / Analogue Solutions Sample and Hold / Analogue Solutions EG x2 / Borg 2 Filter / Analogue Systems RS100 / Doepfer Dual VCA / Analogue Solutions Headphone OP / Doepfer Ribbon controller / Doepfer CV mixers x2

Studio 2009

Here’s a photo of my 2009 studio setup. Based around a G5 mac tower with Logic, and Dynaudio Bm6 monitors. I was going through an NS-10 phase at this time - although in truth I never really ‘got’ them. The Space Echo got used a lot, but sadly that is now lost to time.

I printed most of my mixes to tape in 2009. In that time, I think it added something that was not really possible to get in software. But as time went on and software got more interesting, I stopped using the tape machine as it was time consuming and expensive. I do miss it though. Those Studer machines are built to last for ever I think.