Me in my studio: Drumsound & Bassline Smith
Intro
"Hi I'm Simon Bassline and these two are Andrew Wright, Benjamin Wiggett, together we are Drumsound & Bassline Smith. We would like to give you a quick tour of our studio and introduce you to some or favourite bits of kit which we have used to create our first album and also our upcoming album including our current single ' Through The Night'.
"Up until 2002 we had a much larger studio in the centre of our hometown of Derby, UK. After the building was demolished to build a new ring road we took the opportunity to down-size our outboard gear, save on expensive office rental, taxes etc and move back to our houses. During this time alot of people were going completely digital but we couldn't bring ourselves to get rid of some of our favourite pieces so we have kept them to this day."
Akai sampler
"Our first sampler that we learnt on was the Akai S-1000. At the time this was a revolutionary piece of kit for us and paved the way for our love of music technology.
"When the S-2000 came on the market it was the first piece of kit we saved up for and bought and although it had only a tiny 30 second sampling time as standard it was what we made the first tunes together as Drumsound & Bassline Smith on. As time went on we bought the S-5000 as pictured which, by this time, we had got some serious sample time - around 30mins - which meant we could experiment much more with our sounds and textures."
EMU E6400
"Moving on.. We heard, through the grapevine, that Ed rush & Optical had been using the Emu E-6400 so, when we could afford it, we got one.
"The Emu had a different kind of operating system compared to the akai which meant that it slowed our workflow down a bit at first but when once we got the hang of it we used it on most of the heavy twisted basses on our 1st album " Nature of the Beast " in 2003/2004. This became an integral part of "our sound" with tracks like "Tyrant" and "the Odyssey" and if you look carefully you can see we still haven't pulled the dust cover off the front screen."
Korg
"Besides the Wavestation, The Korg Prophecy was among one of the first synthesizers we had in the studio.
"Its sexy silver design and Ribbon controller soon made us put the Wavestation to one side and get serious with the programming of great new sounds and to develop our knowledge of synthesis in general. Its a bit battered now but it still holds a place in our hearts along with our JV-1080 ( pictured below ) Access Virus and the JP-8080."
Roland JV-1080
"Roland's JV-1080 was our first rack mounted synth and was pretty much a studionecessity at the time. Ranging from great pads, effects, leads and percussion it was a fabulous all rounder which definitely deserves a come back sometime soon."
Monitors
"We have had loads of monitors over the years but because we like it LOUD not many have survived.
"The Spirit Absolute ones & Absolute Twos were good as were the Yamahas and the Events but nothing has lasted as long as these KRK ROKIT 8s and the Dynaudio BM6As.They provide all the accurate and bass heavy monitoring we need in such a small space and, without doubt, have paid for themselves five times over."
Cubase
"We were one of the last artists in D'n'B to move over to digital as we were so fond of our sound and studio setup at the time. We never believed we could recreate the warmth in a completely digital world but as our environment changed and we needed to keep up musically we reluctantly moved on.
"Since then we have worked hard to maintain the warmth and depth created by these classics and grasped the greatness that the new technology has brought to our productions. We have used Steinberg’s Cubase since the Atari days and have used it religiously ever since. There are some great new DAWs on the market right now such as the new Presonus studio one which we may start using in the future but we know Cubase like the back of our hands and the speed of our workflow cant be beat. Alongside Cubase we use various different vsts to help get the sound we are looking for.
"Native instruments' Massive is one of the core products we use daily and is one of the greatest instruments we have ever used, particularly for basses."
D'n'B award
"In fact, we used Massive to create the bass for our award winning track, Close in 2011. Other products made by companies such as the Fabfilter, Voxengo and Sugarbytes to name but a few all play an integral role in creating our sound."
Drumsound & Bassline Smith will be appearing at Glade Electronic Artst Festival, nr King’s Lynn, Norfolk from 14-17 June.