Main View

We have a Victorian house and I renovated this room especially for use as a home studio. The original features give it a cozy feeling and I used red because it's supposed be the colour that engenders creativity and excitement. That's why theatre seats and furnishings are dark red apparently.

The Epiphone Flying 'V' is a knock-about guitar I use instead of my cherished real Gibsons and Strat. Having said that, I've just recorded an instrumental with it and it sounded first class through the Digitech Genesis 3 unit.

Above the fireplace is a very rare cinema lobby card from Kubrick's "Doctor Strangelove" showing Peter Sellers. This is on loan from my son James who has the set.

Mixing Desk and Synthesiser

This is a closer view of my mixing desk and Roland XP-50 synthesiser. On the right is the outboard rack. Also visible is one of my Alesis Monitor 1 speakers. These are mounted on spiked, sand filled stands.

That's a brand new Marshall JCM 2000 TSL601 60w combo amp you can see sitting under the desk in its black cover. I bought that as a more portable option to the Marshall JCM 800 50w head and 4x12 cabinet I've been lugging to gigs for 25 years. Actually, the JCM 800 head is probably too valuable as a collectors item now to take to gigs anymore.

PC and ADATs Rack

This shows my PC monitor, a Samsung 18" LCD, and two ADATs in the corner.

On the wall is a rare Italian cinema poster for "Blow-Up" the cult 60s film directed by Antonioni starring David Hemmings. It included a famous 'swinging London' club scene with the Yardbirds performing. Jeff Beck pretends to have a tantrum and smashes his (very cheap stand-in) guitar. They play "Stroll On", a thinly disguised (i.e. no royalties issues) self-penned version of "The Train Kept A-Rollin".

Roland Fantom X6

This is my new synth, the most excellent Roland Fantom X6. Besides being a beautifully-engineered instrument, it's versatility is amazing and I've got a long way to go learning all its possibilities. Besides studio use I also play it onstage with my band 'The Skyline Band' where it provides playback of MIDI backing tracks. See the 'My Band' page for more details.

Oh No, Not The Comfy Chair...

I could sit here and wait for inspiration, but I put the chair in here mainly to absorb sound reflections.

On the bookcase is my main vocal microphone, a RODE NT2 with its sponge cover in place.

On the wall is another treasured cinema poster, this one for Sergio Leone's wonderful "Once Upon A Time In America" starring Robert de Niro and James Woods. I recommend the sublime soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

Worm's Eye View

A low view from the fireplace. My PC is under the desk to the right. It's fitted with sound damping on the inside of the panels and the hard drive is in a sound proof enclosure. QuietPC.com is a good place for these sort of accessories.

Headphones are Beyer DT770s. I do most monitoring on headphones even though I know it's a bad habit to get into. When mixing and finalising songs I use the monitor speakers as well but I always find the only true guide is playing a version on CD in the car, then going back and doing mix and EQ corrections.

Sitting on top of the ADATs rack is a handy little box called SAM - which stands for SPDIF/ADAT Mixer. It used to be made by Midiman (now M-Audio) and it enables 8 tracks of ADAT to be transferred to and from SPDIF format. I use it to transfer ADAT tracks between the ADAT machines and Sonar 4.

PC Running Sonar 5 Producer

I've dabbled with the other sequencers but I reckon Sonar is by far the best. I've still to tap most of its depths.

Standing to the right of the screen is the external I/O module for my Soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX soundcard. They're heavily criticised by home recording aficionados but I like them, especially the onboard soundfont feature. I've bought a more 'pro' M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card and I'm hoping to install it next to the Audigy so I can have higher quality sound recordings whilst keeping the easy access to soundfonts.

I see my credit card on the desk; I think I just subscribed to 'Electronic Musician' over the net. My lottery ticket's also visible. A nice big win will mean a state of the art studio in Cornwall looking out over the sea.. Hasn't Tori Amos got one down there somewhere?

Tascam Desk

The desk is an analogue 16 track Tascam 2600 that I bought when I first dived into home recording back in 1997 or so. The yellow bits you can see above the faders are Dymo tapes that I use as channel strip markers. I don't use the masking tape trick (tear off, keep and stick on again if you go back to that song) and instead keep instruments on the same channels as much as possible.

You can't beat the feel of real faders and buttons although I do almost all my recording in the PC now. I've been reading up on how to integrate the best of both these worlds.

Outboard Rack

This is my outboard rack, although I haven't bought any outboard units in over two years. It's a Quik-Lok stand.

Outboard Rack - Detail

Not visible are a CD player, Sony cassette recorder, Philips CD recorder and Behringer patch bay. The items you can see here are: (Top to Bottom) Arcam Alpha 6plus monitor amplifier; Tascam DA-30 MkII DAT Recorder; Alesis Midiverb 4 effects unit; SPL Stereo Vitalizer Mk 2; Marshall JMP1 guitar pre-amp. Most of these are redundant if I'm honest - their functions can all be carried out in my PC, or DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) as it's called now. To think, I paid nearly £1,000 for the DAT recorder! Great fun to use though, even if it does chew tapes regularly. No wonder DAT never became a consumer product.

ADATs

Two Alesis ADAT XTs in a Studiospares wooden 8U wooden rack. Again, great fun to use but almost redundant nowadays due to rapidly moving DAW technology. (Note to self: work harder on getting over this thing about interfacing with tactile equipment like tapes, knobs, faders, etc...)

It took a long time to figure out, but I was so pleased a few months ago when I finally managed to understand how to synchronise the ADATs with Sonar 4 via the JL Cooper dataSYNC2, so that Play/Stop commands etc. in Sonar caused the ADATs to follow suit in perfect sync! That's the trouble these days, you can spend more time figuring out how to work your equipment properly than using it to make music..

Drum Machines and Other

(L to R) Alesis SR-16 drum machine; Midiman Midisport 4x4 midi interface (top); JL Cooper dataSYNC2 ADAT/midi/Sonar synchroniser (bottom); BOSS DR-770 drum machine. I have worked with drum loops in Sonar but much prefer programming my own drums using drum machines. The use of loops, in my opinion, is why you never hear drum fills on most records anymore. These two drum machines are really good fun, with the BOSS having the edge over the ageing SR-16.

Digitech Guitar Processor

Although the Marshall JMP-1 is still a fabulous and classic piece of kit, this Digitech Genesis 3 is more versatile in terms of being able to dial in different amp and speaker models and I've got some great sounds from it. It was criticised when it first came out for being a bit 'fizzy' like a lot of digital kit, and I do find this with single coil guitars like the Strat. Humbuckers can sound ok through it though.