Me in my studio: Darude

Intro

"Hi I'm Darude, I currently live most of the year in America near Atlanta, and that's where I am at the time of writing this.

"These are not the freshest pictures from my main studio which is based in Finland, but not much has changed, I've just arranged stuff so it is a little less cramped and not all the outboard gear is hooked up all the time any more.

"The Finnish studio is in a basement bunker of an apartment building, fully acoustically treated, it's my own little nerd cave and I call it 'Serendipity Studio'. My US studio, 'Serendipity Remote' is a semi-temporary one, it's more like a regular office space acting as a studio at the moment, but it's still the calm hiding place I need get creative. The last 10 or so releases of mine have started and finished here in the US."

The studio

"In the Finnish studio I've got MOTU 2408mk3 and 24I/O audio interfaces for hooking up all the hardware and Emagic AMT8 midi interface to talk midi with them.

"For monitoring there I have a Genelec 5.1 system consisting of 1031As, 1029As and 7070A sub. There's also a now-aging Pioneer DJ setup with DJM-600 mixer and a pair of CDJ-1000mk2's there. And an awesome chair and a very comfy "thinker's" couch!"

Finland Studio

"I use a lot of Logic's own synths and effects, I love them for their tweakability and stableness. I often have multiple Channel EQs per channel and the Compressor is not a stranger in multiples on my tracks, either.

"I also use some 3rd party synths like Nexus, Omnisphere, Stylus, Sylenth, Korg Legacy synths and various free synths and Waves plugins for bus and master processing and limiting. I just got the Waves C6 multi-compressor and already love it because of the possibility to selectively duck only certain frequency ranges triggered by an external signal, like bass with the kick drum, or a synth with a vocal, for example."

The rack in Finland

"My "virtual analog" rack. The JP8k was a staple in every trance man's studio back in the day, and it still is an awesome synth and I love to just try stuff with it, tweaking away.

"The MS2000 has a pretty decent vocoder that has been used in some Darude productions and the Mod Sequence feature is very cool, you can set different filter values for each 16th step of a bar for example, you can get cool rhythms going by accenting certain notes, dimming others and so on.

"And then there's the almighty Virus... I've probably touched like 20% of its potential, it's got sounds for pretty much everything and the tweakability is endless. I use mostly software these days, but if I had to pick one virtual analog synth to work with, it'd have to be Virus."

Studio in the USA

"Due to the lack proper acoustic treatment here I use Sennheiser HD650 headphones (and 112dB's RedLine Monitor plugin) for critical mixing and the Genelecs for more for making music, "feeling it.

"I car-test a lot, and play my mixes in my DJ sets and soundchecks and if I don't seem to get a mix right in my room/headphones, then I'll hire a studio, go listen in my friend's studio or have my trusted buddy Randy Boyer, who I run our record company 'EnMass Music' with, take a listen and tell me what to fix."

US Software tools

"My setups are identical software-wise, in both the US and Finland. My main tool for music making is Logic Pro on a Mac Pro with a 30" Apple display.

"The US studio is purely software based, the only hardware I have are my Genelec 6010Amonitors+ 5040A sub, MOTU UltraLite audio interface, Røde K2 mic + pre-amp, SE Reflexion filterand Novation ReMOTE 49 SL Compact midi keyboard and my DJ gear, an EKS Otus controller, Pioneer CDJ-2000 cd-player and DJM400 mixer."

Novation ReMOTE SL

"This ReMOTE SL Compact keyboard feels good and the Novation Automap system is such an amazing technology takes away the hassle of assigning midi controllers and makes using software synths much more hardware like!

"Also, having actual buttons and knobs to do mixing with is very helpful. Love it!"

Awards and Korg

"The beast in the foreground is an analog synth one year older than I am - the MiniKorg 700s. It's gnarly, noisy, but oh so lovely, and an infinite loaner!

"The awards on the wall inspire me and remind me where I came from and how far I've come. Sandstorm hitting number 3 in UK in 2000 was the moment for me when I realized I'd actually gotten somewhere with my music.

"Still, little did I know that starting with some very happy accidents I'd be still doing this for living ten+ years later, which of course I'm very thankful for!"