My Continually Evolving Home Studio

Time to get creative again.

I've had some sort of home studio since probably around 1993. My girlfriend at the time bought me a Roland JV-35 for my birthday, which I immediately hooked up to my 386 computer via the midi port on my sound blaster and started making beats and crazy little songs.

My current equipment in a messy state

I have moved a lot over the years and I always end up with different stuff hooked up. As you can see in the above image, I have a lot of instruments that rely on plugins and virtual instruments - excepting the Model D there behind the keyboard which is fully analog. Of course, this was not even possible in the early days.

In order to reproduce the compositions the way that I originally made them back in the early 90s, I'd have to hook them back up to the actual keyboard. Well, unless I got a hold of some kind of emulator. These days it's much easier with wave-table software synths and samples that are easy to pass around.

Even my setup from 2012 had a lot more external equipment that produced its own sounds:

Anyone recognize the little black box just underneath the drum machine on the top of the stack between the KRK monitors? Yep, that is a Roland MT-32. That is by far my oldest piece of equipment. These things were absolutely fantastic when they came out in the late 80s.

Game developers such as sierra online wrote the music and often sound effects for their games to work especially well with this device. Before the MT-32, you were pretty much stuck with the crappy 8 bit sounds that came out of your computer.

Well, The Sound Blaster did get pretty advanced after a while, but in the early days it really sounded like crap.

Home Studio 2003 edition

So the following image was the only photo I could find of my studio during this era. I remember having some really big studio monitors at the time, but I don't know where they are at at this exact moment because I don't see them anywhere in the picture.

Sorry for the rude middle finger in the shot. My brother had just woken me up from a nap for some reason and I wasn't too happy. On my desk behind me, you can see that keyboard (Roland JV-35) that my ex bought for me years ago. I loved that keyboard! I still have it, but it's in storage.

Funnily enough, these images started with the most recent and went backward in time. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of the studio setups that I've had. I wish I could find more photos but I was having a bit of a hard time with my ridiculous unorganized photo library. I need to get on that!

A New Motivation

So why am I talking about all of this now? Well, I've been in a bit of a creative funk. I haven't made any music for more than a year and my studio has just been a big pile of mess. I've began the process of getting everything in order and I'm about to start trying to make music again. Well, technically I have made a few things but they are all work related. I do a bit of voice-over work and the odd jingle/background music for work projects, but nothing that inspires me much.

I was glad to see the posts by @swelker101 and @isaria about the new sonicgroove tribe for musicians. I was thinking that this is an opportunity to start making stuff and putting it out there for kicks.

So it's time to get at it! See you guys soon.