About Myself

I'm an electronic design engineer by profession and have been writing electronic music since 1990.  Primarily I write my own compositions but from time to time I put together remixes for this site just for fun.  I'm a huge fan of computer generated music and have been collecting Amiga Tracker tunes since 1989. I'm especially fond of the early modules such as Karsten Obarski's classics eg. Rallyemaster & Amegas (which is usually considered to be the first module ever written) onwards to around 1993.  Romeo Knight, Karsten Obarski, Bjorn Llynne & Chris Huelsbeck are my heros....

The Amiga, ST and Archimedes were the music & graphics machines of the time (remember that PCs of the era could only emit beeps!).  I was one of very few who wrote native Tracker modules for the Archimedes demo scene.  Hugo Fiennes aka Alt-Man wrote the first shareware Tracker player for the Arc as well as producing several early demos in the late 80's / early 90s.  Much of the early classic 4 channel Tracker modules were ported to the Arc which had a more similar sound architecture to the Amiga than the ST.  I wrote under the guise "BrokenARM Music" and "The Chip Duo" including the sound track to a couple of games in the early 90's.  I was even given a serious offer of becoming an in-house musician at Psygnosis having submitted a couple of DATs in '93.

I've been collecting studio gear since 1990 amd now own a substantial amount of equipment and have written a fair bit of music over the past 10 years.  Funnily enough I had the idea of setting up a site for amiga .mod studio remakes & remixes years before amiga-remix came about - a bit of a dream come true really

Dan.

HIDEAWAY STUDIO KIT LIST:  - Very much an "Old School" studio - no soft synths to be seen here :)

My current studio kit list is as follows (Nov.08):

Synths:

ARP Omni-2 (The original lush paraphonic vintage analog Cosmos String synth)
Roland MKS-70 Super JX (Superb warm analog rackmount - two JX8Ps in a rack),

Roland MKS-50 (Lovely blippy analog Alpha-Juno rackmount),
Roland Juno 106 (-The- tweekable analog keyboard of the 80s - all studios should have one by law!),

Waldorf MicroWave I rack (Similar to PPG Wave 2.3 wavetable hybrid with lovely 8 bit crunch & Curtis analog filters)

Roland D-550 & PG1000 (LA Synth full of character with programmer - the very heart and soul of Amiga ST-01!),

Roland U220 (I only have one "ROMpler" in the studio - it's  full of Rolands nice PCM library later used in the JD & JV series synths),
KORG M1REX (The rare expanded PCM rackmount M1 featuring the most overused piano and organ sounds in pop ever!),

KORG Wavestation A/D (Classic wave sequencing synth used in just about every SciFi film ever),
Yamaha SY77 (Many argue it's one of the most underrated synths of all time - 8 DX7s in a box warmed with with resonant filters and layered with samples)

Yamaha TG77 (Rackmount SY77 - as above - a 1000 parameter per voice hybrid monster),

Yamaha TX802 (Essentially a DX7II in a rack - great for bells, electric pianos and weird noises)

Yamaha TX81Z (4OP FM... Superb for bass & bells - famous for "lately bass", used in hundreds of dance tracks),

Yamaha DX21 - Cheap, but the source of "ST-01: MonoBass" and responsible for a chunk of the imfamous ST-01 library!!!

Novation SuperNova Rack (The Infamous and very brilliant Virtual Analog rack),

Novation A-Station (The SuperNova's excellent VA baby brother...),

Novation BassStation Rack (Analog bass and also nice for screaming leads),

Novation DrumStation (superb 808/909 VA emulation with distortion),
Alesis D4 drum module (bread and butter percussion... and yes I know - I use it far too much!)

Samplers:

E-mu Emulator EIIIXP - truely lovely sounding sampler with digital I/O, SCSI & brilliant resonant filters,

E-mu EMAX II Turbo SCSI Keyboard - has that super smooth E-mu sound and great resonance & transposition filters,
E-mu EMAX II SCSI Rack,

AKAI S1000 SCSI & Digital I/O options - still great for sampling loops and perc,
Roland S330 with Mouse and Monitor - poor man's Fairlight.. on paper its pants but great 12bit crunch with brilliant UI!

Outboard:

TL Audio 2011 4 Band Stereo Valve EQ - yummy & warm!
Roland SRX-330 Space Reverb - classy sounding & sought after FX processor,
Lexicon Reflex -  baby Lexicon FX processor,

Aphex Type C - the classic enhancer,

Digitech Studio Quad - versatile FX processor,

Alesis 3630 - classic compressor, noise gate & limiter,

Alesis Microverb IV - FX processor - good for delays, 

Behringer UltraCurve Pro - impressive 24bit mastering DSP EQ for the money.

Recording:

Studiomaster 24:16:16:2 Series II Mixer with MIDI mute - huge & great EQ!,

Roland VM-3100 Digital Mixer - great for AUX return routing, 
ROLAND UA-30 SPDIF sample front end,

AKAI DR4d & AKAI DR4vr - superb bomb proof rackmount raw digital multi-tracks with MIDI Sync - synced as 8 track 
Studiomaster IMP-1 midi mute,

DMC MX-8 MIDI Patch Bay Processor

Sony DTC-77ES Quad head DAT,

Sony MDS-JE510 Minidisk. 

Sequencing:

Mac running MacOS X & Logic Express / PC running Cubase

The studio/museum is now air conditioned - much needed as the above kit produces SO MUCH HEAT!

SOME COMMENTS ON THE ORIGINAL AMIGA ST-01 SAMPLE SET:

One of the things that is hardly ever mentioned is why early modules sounded the way they did. This was mainly due to the samples being derived from what are now practically collectors items but at the time were current pieces of studio gear (some of which I have in the studio):

Roland D-50 - The source of many classic ST-01 samples eg: "Shamus", "Tinewave","Call", "Heaven","DigiHarp" and many others 
Yamaha DX21 - Cheap but the source of many classic samples eg: "Monobass" "DXbass" "MetalKeys"  "PopBass"  "Heifer"
Roland JUNO-106 - Various strings and "Pingbells" - this synth is still loved by the dance fraternity 
Casio CZ101 eg: "SineCZ" and "FaeryTale"

The synth techniques used in the above pieces of kit were far more diverse than today's current batch of VA synths. We have LA, FM, Analog, Phase Distortion, Wavetable and S+S synthesis here