Ableton Live
“Ableton is almost as fine an invention as the wheel! It has clawed its way to the top for me. When I first discovered it, it was potentially incredible but didn’t really work - it was a little bit clunky and slow.
“Now, Ableton rocks my world. I love the ease of pitching audio up and down - it’s almost like a visual sample editor mixed with a sequencer. The accuracy of the Elastic Audio engine is wicked as well.”
Avid Pro Tools
“I write with Ableton as my primary tool, but for mixing it’s all about Pro Tools. It’s a solid program - I’ve been using it for 11 years!
When I open it, I enter a different mindset entirely - I get into the mixing zone. I tend to stop writing and actually listen to the sound; I go further into the arrangement and really concentrate on the actual balance.”
Read Avid Pro Tools 10 review
Native Instruments Reaktor
“I’m still loving Reaktor big-time - it sneaks into most of my tracks. I love downloading stuff from the User Library - it fascinates me. I haven’t really gone into the geek territory of programming patches from scratch, though.
“I think some people prefer to sound design, but you kind of end up going round and round and maybe you won’t actually make a track; you’ll just make a load of interesting noises that will scare people on the dancefloor.”
Sonic Charge MicroTonic/Synplant
“It’s quite old now, but I’m still really feeling MicroTonic. It’s really great for white noise-y, sizzly hats and odd clunky percussions. Plus the Synplant - that’s good for otherworldly, trippy, drunken-sounding things that seem to slot nicely into dance music. It’s good shit.”
Read Sonic Charge MicroTonic 3 review
SoundToys plug-ins
“This is so obvious, but it’s the truth! These are evolved versions of some of my favourite old Pro Tools plugs - it’s the same company but they were under a different name [WaveMechanics].
“EchoBoy is my go-to delay - it just does the job. FilterFreak is brilliant as well. I use them all, apart from PanMan - that actually makes me feel a bit sick!”
Read SoundToys Native Effects V4 review
Jody Wisternoff’s debut solo album Trails We Blaze is out now on Anjunadeep.
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