Eventually I moved to a bigger apartment. With one additional room at my disposal, I thought I could invest in a modular system. Or maybe a sound module? I don’t think I could tell the difference in those days.
That little barely visible Roland SC-88 in the right-hand side lower corner, next to the JX-1, is what I bought in late 1995. Both Rolands had practically zero learning curve, so I was quite lucky in that aspect. The SC mostly used cc’s for controlling various things (mostly reverb and chorus), but the real news came in the shape of NRPNs, which it used for envelope and filter settings. I thought it was pretty hardcore.
The keyboard was situated behind me, as I couldn’t comfortably place it on my desk. The newly acquired SC didn’t really change the appearance of my still-not-referred-to-as-a-studio. This is not true for the Emax II and the Akai S2000, which I bought just a few days apart, in early 1997. This was also the first time when getting something new necessitated getting something else: now I had to buy a MIDI interface to get all the machines connected to my PC. I got a MIDIMan 4×4, and I had it for 7 years and it worked like a dream.
Getting the samplers made me rethink my furniture arrangement, and I ended up getting a two-tier X-stand for the Emax and the JX-1, and placing the Akai underneath my monitor. I also ditched the small plastic speakers, and got bigger plastic speakers instead. The gear still only occupied one corner of my living room. The actual corner varied somewhat during the years, but the idea remained the same. The setup started to become noticably different from standard living room equipment, and I almost felt like calling it a home studio. During this period, I also got an external 135 MB SyQuest drive for storing samples for the Akai. I learned a lot about sampling. I also got introduced to filters and LFO’s, which was way more hardcore than anything else previously.
Sadly, no pictures exist of that setup.
