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CLAVIA NORD MODULAR G2 [2010 – ]

Wow. I can’t say Wow enough. The original NM’s younger as well as bigger brother, having everything the original one lacked (MIDI modules, decent keyboard). This simply is an incredible piece of machinery. Functionally it builds on the original, only makes it better. I can’t understand why they abandoned this concept, nothing out there comes even close to the flexibility it provides. OK, I actually kind of do understand: Modular synths are not for everybody, but this is such a wonderful concept that even if it is inherently modular, as a user you don’t actually even need to know that. The brilliance of this piece is so out there in its own category I just can’t find the words, so I’ll just shut up now.

I kind of stalked this machine. I found it in a music store in Helsinki, high up on a shelf as close to the ceiling as possible, and I came to check it out every week or so when I was in town. Bit by bit it had been moved downwards, and once it had been on subshoulder level for a couple of weeks I just had to buy it, because of course I had to. Turned out it was pretty much the last one in Europe, if not the entire world. The shop guys had found it in a box in the basement, in a pile of empty boxes, and brought it up from the dead, so to speak. I was quite lucky there…

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IBANEZ PF60SCE-NT-20-02 [2010 – ]

A decent steel string electro-acoustic guitar. Just don’t ever ask me what guitar I have, as there’s no way I can remember.

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MOOG VX-351 [2010 – 2015]

An expander module for the Voyager, making it more modular that without it. I put this up for sale after Judgment Day and ended up selling it. The Voyager was also up for grabs, but nobody bought it. Had I known that, I would have kept this one as well. Oh well…

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KORG WAVEDRUM [2010 – 2019]

A machine drum, I guess you could call it. A responsive drum skin, and the plastic body also acts as user interface. The drum brain inside it generates the sounds depending on how you interact with its surface, and it’s actually quite impressive. I thought I would sit in the sofa drumming away and getting better beats because of it, but no. Out the door it went.

Come to think of it, maybe I should have been the one getting out the door, as it definitely isn’t this one’s fault I suck at making beats.

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JOMOX XBASE 888 [2009 – 2015]

I may have mentioned that I love drum machines. I got this to lay down some serious beats. But I just don’t work that way. This ended up becoming just a sound module, so in the end I sold it as it really didn’t give me anything unique. Solid piece of gear, though.

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NOVATION REMOTE SL 25 [2008 – 2013]

While in the basement with all my keyboards tucked away too far from the DAW, I needed something to control them with. I was also interested in trying out how a generic MIDI controller would work for me, both for controlling external synths as well as . I mean, it should be handy to have 

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LINE 6 VARIAX 500 [2008 – ]

This thing is something quite extraordinary. Looks like an electric guitar, but contains a bunch of modeled guitars that you can select with a switch. When you play the string, the quitar samples the sound in real time and runs it through the converter, as it were, and the sound that actually comes out of it is that of the selected guitar model. That is quite phenomenal, when you think about it. With the accompanying software you can tweak the sound and the tunings to your liking. You can select from a bunch of classic electric guitars, or say, a banjo or a 12-string guitar. That is so incredibly convenient!

I can’t play this thing, though.

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BEHRINGER ADA-8000 [2008 – ]

This one provides more physical input/output ports to the RME over an optical connection. I have three of these, but one is slightly defective: there’s a persistent clicking sound which is quite annoying, meaning i can’t use it for recording. Other than that, it has been a solid device.

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RME FIREFACE-800 [2008 – ]

I set out to get a decent audio interface, and this is it. Plenty of ins and outs, and solid as a rock. 

The way this works, as opposed to an analog mixer, is this: when the analog mixer sums all, say, 12 inputs to a stereo pair (= two outputs), these are then sent to the computer’s left and right input channels (seen by the DAW as left and right, respectively), this one sends each input as a different output to the DAW software. So with a standard analog mixer I can only record one instrument at a time onto one stereo track, as mixing several synths in the mixer together wold result in several synths ending up on one and the same track, which is undesirable. The FireFace publishes all channels as individual audio ports to the DAW, meaning I can simultaneously record all my synths so that they end up on different tracks in the DAW. Moreover, I can have realtime effects on these tracks and monitor each synth live on its own track.

Wow.

Insanely flexible routing with hte accompanying mixer software. I stopped using the Yamaha when I got this. Highly recommended.

Got another one later as well…

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ROLAND SPD-S [2006 – 2013]

Yeah! Drumming again! This is just what the Octapad should have been. The mechanical noise is about the same as the DTXPress pads, so this is quite drummable even late in the evening, and it’s really compact. 9 pads, plus two trigger inputs. It turned out I could patch my modular synth in such a way that an ordinary switch pedal can function as a (non-dynamic) kick drum pedal. I can also send triggers to it using an analog sequencer, or just about any method to generate analog gate signals, to trigger the drum module. And every time it triggers, it also sends a MIDI note, so I have a nice gate-to-midi converter 🙂

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