Obie was my only keyboard since I sold the Emax. I had planned to trade the K2600R for a 88-key version, but no-one seemed interested. So I got this one second-hand and pretty cheap. It has rather nice controller abilities, and I have configured the sliders to send the most relevant cc’s to my both my Virus and Pulse for added convenience. I planned to do this for all my synths, but the K2600, which really needs a more immediate interface, is a slight problem, as it does not have a standard set of cc’s for specific parameters, meaning I would have to go through my programs and do a lot of assigning, but I just can’t be bothered. Likewise, I was thinking of standardizing my Modular patches, but that also takes a lot of time. When the NM G2 comes out, it will most likely have a standard way of using cc’s on its factory patches, so I’ll just wait for that one and see what I can and will do. Meanwhile, this is a great keyboard with a good piano touch, and I see no reason to not keep it forever. It weighs a lot, but I don’t gig, so it’s of no concern. It even inspired me to take piano lessons. 30 years too late, but hey…I’ve attended regularly, twice now, one year apart. I’m a bit late from my third lesson…
I always wanted a drum machine. Took me 10 years to get one. I bought this during a period of newly found interest in pure analog sounding music (new John Foxx & Louis Gordon material, mostly), and boy was it worth the money! Extremely easy to use, wide range of possible sounds, and it’s just quite simply very inspiring and a load of fun to use.
Still, I ended up selling this (and other digital gear) to finance an analogue modular synthesizer. I have missed it already, and I will most likely buy another drum machine at some point. Not necessarily an MD, though.
I traded my Obie for this one, and the sample based layered architecture with the more-complex-than-average envelopes give me a first impression that this one excels as a pad machine for those long evolving Vangel-ish background pads. The factory sounds are so digital it almost makes me smile. Some sounds are very similar to the ones I had in my JX-1, so I almost feel like we’re old pals. Time will tell how much use it will see. The user interface is excellent, it almost feels analog in spirit. Every relevant parameter has a dedicated slider or button.
By this time, 10 years have passed since I got my first Korg. During 2003, several items both entered and exited my studio. Buying and selling was almost getting to be a habit.
My gf and I bought a house (or part of one), and moved in february 2003. Before moving, I sold my Jerker to my brother, as I had decided I didn’t want a desk in the traditional sense, but I would instead try to build a studio which by its design would keep my focus on making music, as comfortably as possible (without spending additional money, though).
I placed the two racks on top of each other for maximum reachability from my chair. By not having a desk, I was able to rectifiy another inconvenience from most previous studio configurations: I could place the monitors on each side of the keyboard. No more turning my head to hear the stereo sound of what I was playing. It was always about having either the PC monitor or the musical keyboard in front of me, and the PC monitor always won, until now. The PC monitor I now placed on the Spirit monitor, to my left, which was suboptimal but I could live with it. I learned something about sitting in a forward-leaning position while surfing the net.
It quite quickly became apparent that the Obie wasn’t going to cut it as a master keyboard. It was an excellent MIDI controller, but four octaves felt somewhat constrained. I found a second-hand 88 key controller, the Kurzweil PC-88, which really made up for not having been able to upgrade the rack version a year earlier. My first QuikLok rack functioned as a surrogate keyboard stand for a while, but very quickly I got a two-tier QuikLok stand for both my keyboards. I mounted a board in front of the Kurz for my computer keyboard and mouse, and things worked pretty smoothly. I soon reinstated my other keyboard stand and mounted another board on the upper QuikLok tier, onto which I placed the screen. Sitting straight again.
The summer of 2003 brought with it one notable acquisition: my first drum machine, the Elektron Machinedrum. I also got an additional audio patch bay (I had one previously, but didn’t really use it), and did some recabling to get a more flexible signal path. By the end of summer, I traded my Obie for a Roland JD-800.
Now I had “too much” stuff, and I had to buy an additional mixer. I got a cheap Behringer RX 16/02, even though I’ve read mostly bad reviews about the Behringer brand in general. Then my PC broke down, so I had to get a new one. New ones don’t have ISA slots anymore, so my 4×4 MIDI internal interface was useless, and I had to get a MIDI interface as well. I got the MidiSport 8×8, and I’m pretty happy with it. Now, hopefully, I don’t have to get anything else just to keep things working.
https://kimjohnsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Studio_2003b.jpg375500adminhttps://kimjohnsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/KimsDotcom.pngadmin2003-06-14 01:31:032021-08-31 19:12:13A House of Our Own: 2003
Nothing much to say here. My trusty MIDI interface until it broke down. Usually worked like a charm, but occasionally it would lock up. But nothing a reboot wouldn’t fix.
The original virtual analog Virus became my wet dream having used the Modular for a few years and wanting analog sounds and multitimbrality in the same box. This is a seriously capable machine, and the guys at Access keep making it better all the time. Getting this one pretty much set me up in the VA department; several other VA’s I had considered just don’t interest me anymore. This is also a synth for which you find excellent patches on the net, which is both a blessing and a curse. Much of my time was spent auditioning and playing around with others patches, instead of creating my own. This is something I must consciously try to avoid.
I ended up selling this (and other digital gear) to finance an analogue modular synthesizer.
I needed a small mixer to combine synths and computer outputs for normal non-music making use, and this one fit the bill perfectly. Quite noisy, but that doesn’t really matter, as I don’t record through it.
