Alex Adair's favourite music software

"I studied music and production at college, and Logic was the DAW they used, so I sort of got stuck with it. I dabble with Ableton - certainly better for sound design - but Logic is the one I make songs on. I use the EXS24 sampler a lot! The main marimba sound in Make Me Feel Better is heavily modulated EXS."

“For a while, I went a bit crazy with production plugins, trying anything and everything, looking for that perfect preset. But, after a while, you realise that you tend to gravitate towards certain tools. The Glue never overpowers a sound, but you just know that it’s doing its job.”

“People say that you can’t beat the sound of a real piano; I think it depends on the kind of music you’re making. If you find a piano that fits your sound, stick with it. It’s unlikely that anyone’s going to email you saying, ‘Hey, that’s not a real piano!’”

“Because I don’t actually play guitar, I use this for all my acoustic guitars, played from a keyboard. It’s hard to write guitar lines on a keyboard, but you sometimes come up with better hooks. You think in a way that’s different to a guitar player.”

“In the early days, I was heading towards a more progressive house sound, and Sylenth1 fitted that perfectly. As my sound changed, the way I used Sylenth1 changed; great synths can adapt with you. In terms of synths, I like to keep it simple. This is where most of my sounds come from.”