Creative Cribs with Paul Thomson

a few years ago I came up with the concept of creative I say I came up with a concept for creative Chris this is a blatant steal of MTV Cribs and we used to do them guerilla style so I remember Stanley did one with John Powell I did one with Daniel Pemberton did one with my brother we made some Pasha ones for the journal and still making really good stuff a composer but I thought it'd be fun to return to our slightly guerrilla roots to have a really special creative crib welcome to the bull pen welcome I really keen that you when you kind of introduce yourself on videos that you go live from the bull pen yeah this is in sane come on in come on in so how many square is it square feet we do things by oh yes meters I think it's 17 by 11 or something like that meters so yeah it's a it's a I've got a little bit more ground space because we've got a cat slide what they call a cat slide which is a you know a little kind of extension of the roof so the main building is about you know goes up to roughly where that wall comes in there and then this this little extra bit here is just gives you a bit more floor space it's absolutely and you have I mean links below is you actually make it because it's literally from the ground up from the ground up so what was here was a very ugly agricultural barn it was a breeze block construction but had an asbestos roof and all that kind of stuff and so we got permission to get rid of that and replace it with something which is a lot more it's certainly a lot nicer for our neighbors to look at yeah and and just is a bit more in keeping with the kind of Cotswolds vernacular of you know there's lovely kind of stones and yellow that kind of so yeah it's been and it's taken just over a year from start of control he floated and well that's interesting so it what the way that we did the construction was that there is so much concrete so there's the concrete that forms the basic basic floor here which has then been screed it over once we put the routing in for all the cables and everything what's above here is called block and beam so there again huge kind of concrete beams that are just kind of you know laid over the structure to kind of put the roof on and then the wall thickness is basically you have a breeze construction and then you have an insulation gap and then you have an outer wall which is what you see when you look at a Cotswolds own building okay and then we've actually got again inside where we've got another Cotswold stone wall on either side which we just built inside it was that was a funny thing because we we kind of said I looked at so many stone facings those kind of you know kind of fake synthetic things because I wanted I want to have a feel of the Cotswolds inside and we got to a point where they we just thought they all rubbish so the Builder said what I could actually just build an actual Cotswold stone wall inside so so that's an extra layer of insulation as well and then we've got tons and tons of sound absorbing various different membranes and and rock wall and all kinds of stuff behind the fabric here so there's it doesn't need to be floated because the building itself is so solid yeah the points of weakness are the obviously the windows and the door and those are kind of triple glazed got super thick solid doors so everything so when you actually sit in here with the door to the machine room closed as well it's just silent you can just hear the air conditioning sort of know breezing away amazing that's amazing and I love these beams so I kind of I thought it would be nice to have a couple of beams to make it look like an oak frame building I'm happily taking credit for a lot of these design things which is probably probably actually my wife Hannah who came up with that idea initially but I remember the conversation with the Builder and saying let's can we get something that you can kind of box you know then it'll look fantastic and you know but it but and then we forgot about it for a while and then the beams turned up and they weren't they were actual beams I mean enormous enormous heavy beams that have been air-dried so there are fantastically beautiful but a little bit overkill maybe I don't know I'm stunning should we start from your machine room so things are are still kind of in a slight stir these things that are wearing away yes noisy buggers aren't they they are yeah so these are the Blackmagic video recorders forces you and I have both the doctors yeah they're really great I mean they're solid bits of kit but they very we adopted those for mental health reasons yeah it's so many times of having one camera go down in the middle of a you know when you're shooting a one hour long video or something and particularly screen the screen is that is that is the yes so trying to run ScreenFlow at the same time as may be running Pro Tools and logic as well whereas with these you take a you know a feed out from the screen and it's recorded on a separate unit so none of that processing goes you know takes up processing power of the of the main machine and the most important thing is if then if your main machine goes down you haven't lost yes that's what would happen is yeah yeah you know when you were really starting to add on the the plugins that you just get its awesomely crashing yeah yeah absolutely so so anything that's kind of noisy goes in here so the brain from the m7 the brain from the TC 6000 and and those black magics that's kind of it really those are the noisy bits of gear in the studio and then around here are kind of got after I'm starting to find a way of sorting stuff so that I can find things really easily this this is fantastic love this you know built-in shell living that the guys did for me so it's kind of off the area yep Tim coffee area so it's a got a little fridge behind here blue so that's quite cool Lou in here which has got this alright it's all the little things like that like you walk in and it turns the light on and off for you energy-saving tips so yeah so that so Mike's and all that kind of stuff so once I've got this out the way it should be fairly economic amazing you've had this purposely built and you yes I mean as detailed again video down below you've had many kind of different iterations of studios and stuff so I imagine this has been a kind of Kaizen development it has yeah I've gone from yeah I've done all kinds of different things I remember one studio that I had in a in a spare bedroom in Watford I had a desk with just the computers and stuff I had racks on this side and I had my keyboard on that side so for quite a long time I worked like that where I would set a track recording turn round and play and then go back to it like that and I'd I'd experimented with with trying to have the keyboard this the eternal dilemma is how do you have the keyboard in front of you and your computer in front of you and have it work without kind of getting terrible back strain and for me the way that it works is that I I have the keyboard set a kind of a piano level so a little bit low actually like that so you know I've got this angle on my arms so that you said that that's good for your back as well so I can be playing like that it's not too far to reach to to do things and sometimes I just pull the mouse a little bit closest I'm not reaching too far once I finished with that I push that in and then I can get right under here and rest my forearms on the desk or just depending on how you know whether I'm kind of feeling more upright I can be like this you know it's nice and easy to kind of get get a perfect position so that you feel like there isn't too much strain on your shoulders everything is kind of within reason easy reach so I'm in this kind of sweet spot for the speakers here so I can hear what I'm doing when I'm mixing and I've got my mic set up for doing you know tutorial tutorial iMac pro iMac pro-japanese yeah absolutely it's just you know anything you throw at it is it doesn't ever kind of fall out fall over in it so these creative cribs always cost me money you've got a bigger stream deck than me Excel yeah I haven't I haven't actually program table yeah so I really do use mine like massively yeah I've got little things like having we transfer just those little yes quality of my stuff so this is your this is my monitor controller so I can do I've got a variety of inputs here so I'm running digital input from the Apollo's got the UA Apollo's down here and that those go digital into here and then that goes to the Barefoot's but I can plug in you know I've got a pair of Gen X as well that I can plug in if I want to get a difference how do you be in a barefoot user probably about three years now just over three words I really do they were not the easiest speakers to switch to because I was using Dynaudio spur for and I've come from that kind of dawn Dynaudio and Jen elects the 10:30 ones are used for a long long time they've got that kind of smiley face thing going on which makes everything sound kind of great and you turn them up and it's you know it all sounds brilliant these are much less forgiving they're much much cleaner and so you have to work slightly harder to make it sound good but I've found that the stuff that I do on here translates you know to other colors other speakers much much better than than the stuff that I was doing on the other and both the TC 6000 and overcast II do you feel they have different applications I'd love the large wormhole on the TC 6000 and I also like some of the plates on here so the ones I've got up at the moment the silky gold plates is really great it's got a great Cathedral as well I've not been using this long enough to know where it's going to replace it but I do like the Boston Hall on this so I think it's just a case of kind of switching them in and out and just seeing you know where thing where things shine through it really I feel like I know this one so well yeah that at the moment this is kind of struggling to you know the TC 6000 is the the one that you just here on movie yes soundtrack so it's just as a familiarity whether it's better or not exactly yeah so the two obviously the two big sounds are the lexicon sand and the TC sound but it's interesting because it you know you can you can kind of wrap them up I think Allen myosins got six of them or something like that so you can make you can kind of modularize this into the equivalent of a TC success and quite easily well obviously the main difference with the TC 6,000 6,000 is 5.1 words this is stereo yes which leads me on to my next question which is I don't see a 5.1 surround I mean III used to write in 5.1 but it's just not simply unless I'm doing computer games it's not being asked of me at all no no and you know it's really interesting because I I love you know so when we obviously have run stuff in front but one at Spitfire at the studio at Spitfire and putting stuff up and sticking the ambience at the back or you know just kind of hearing things in surround is really exciting and it does sound it does it make you excited it's fun but the but for me the thing is that kind of you have to concentrate so hard to get things sounding good at the front right and I think that you can be tricked into thinking that it's all good because you are hearing this lovely enveloping sound it's not really the problem comes when you have to switch it off to deliver stuff so if you're delivering a TV score that they don't want surround then it's a problem because if you write in surround and then you and then you try and collapse it down the stereo doesn't always go easily one of the problems I found with having a 5.1 setup setup all the time is it tend to get in the way of things so having a center speaker got in the way of your your your screen and you're making kind of compromises there yeah you're kind of working arrangement because you needed six speakers yes exactly exactly and you know I think I think if there was a specific project I could quite easily just set up a couple of speakers here and you know get a middle you know the other thing is that you don't it's not absolutely necessary to have the same speakers all around because that these were eye watering lis expensive I wouldn't want to have to buy another three but it that way so I think also you don't you don't really put much in the center speakers so you could quite easily have a pair of be in five days yes exactly and then yeah and it would still be fine so I'm just I'm gonna wait and see with that but I think I didn't want to I didn't want to default to that because I felt that economically it would be taking space and you know away from kind of what I really wanted what I feel is more important to my kind of writing process so and so you've got that board here here and here obviously yeah I built this from scratch so is it safe to say that this is stuff that you need to get your hands on or keep an eye on more yeah it's some it's things that's well there's a there's a certain amount of that so my master chain is over here and this is these are the things that I will generally be using on on the master Channel it'll be either the API or the Manley I love this compressor I had a very mu manly very me for quite a while and that was great as well but I just suddenly at some point I started using this it's a it's the G Series comparative master buss compressor from the from the G Series desk and I became part of my work flow more easily than the very me I found that I was able to make things better with this more consistently so I really love that and then the overstay er mas is something that I kind of picked up from Greg Wells and it's one of those mysterious boxes where it you're not kind of a hundred it's it's kind of about harmonic distortion and all that kind of stuff you're not entirely sure what's going on there's some kind of Voodoo going on behind the scenes but it just you know just kind of tweaking it a little bit and and adding a little bit of coloring from this just makes stuff sound a little bit more lively so it's a great little one to pop pop on the end and then usually when I go back in I'm just that kind of caveman who still loves the l2 the waves l2 yeah so I always have a sausage ERISA yeah well I never slam stuffed right I don't know I just have a little tickle and what's your not a keyboard ah so this is physis k4 I've had this probably for about a year I think is it something like that and I was always dirt fir but I had two problems in the dirt for the I was constantly having problems with the MIDI the USB which would just come and go all the time I don't know well I was just unlucky and I had because I've had two of them and they've both kind of had similar problems the other thing was with the dirt firs that there there is a thing about the Black Keys where to get the the feel even across the keyboard velocity wise there's a thing where you limit the upper reach of the of the Black Keys and so there's a weird effect that if you want to hammer let's say there's this particular sound that only happens on like one to six or whatever one to seven when you hammer it really hard nothing happens so for some reason I don't know I don't know what it is but I found that I don't have that problem here that's fine this could really work with Spitfire yeah absolutely I want to know that that you know for whatever my kind of technique I know what the level of my technique and so I want to know that what I'm feeling at a kind of even response across the keyboard and for me this has just worked better it's it gives me a more even response and this is just fantastic I mean these these things are great and you basically you program them and you can name everything so expression mod will live tightness speed CTA oh and you can just you know there's so many programmable functions in there it's absolutely brilliant Santa's list is getting bigger for me black magic Docs we like them yep the big wibbly-wobbly though aren't they the first one I got one I really wanted it to feel a lot more it's not my solid ya know it's a bit weird yeah you can slide it in and think that you've you've kind of the drive is is docked and it actually isn't it's kind of wedged underneath so yeah and se 1x is that's your under bass yes although well that's always been more one of choice it was the first one that I had should we explain to someone who might not know I mean I'm under base is like sound we've coined but yeah just it just to put just a lay in at the bottom you know kind of with the bases or knocked it below the bases bases yeah to give them that kind of and it's kind of a sign II wave sine wave available sine wave isn't it that's there yeah with it's it doesn't completely disappear yeah exactly so this has got that's got two great sounds it does that it does the base it's got really big fat base end and then it also does that great kind of mono synth high you know kind of funk thing that's really good as well so I it's it's kind of a copy of one of these over here this is great that's a newer new ish Moog which is actually even that's been superseded now by something I think it's sub 37 or something yeah that is a kind of newer version of that but again that's like it's just fat it's got its I love the fact that the filter knob is so big because you can and actually you can control I've done passes where I've been doing stuff and moving all of these knobs at the same time and you know you just get some interesting sounds out of it Model D is a new one no it's it's about the same age as me and that I bought I'd have wanted one for many many many years and got the opportunity to buy that from a guy who was actually servicing one of my other sins this one so that has not been on any jobs yet but I've been playing with it a lot and it's you know it's a mini very giving it sounds incredible you like in G fam D fam again I've kind of it's there it's there waiting to be waiting to be you know put into service and I've played with it a little bit but I don't really feel you can see I don't really feel that I've got they got the measure of it yet so so yeah this is the Odyssey they're kind of new behringer version of the odyssey linked below these fellows a little film on that little film and again I've only just got that it only just came out you know month ago or something so I haven't used that anything yet but I love the fact that I can make interesting sounds on it and I can I can unde understand how how it works nice and easy this one I don't really understand how it works but if you turn enough knobs and make you know and push enough switches you get mad mad sounds out of it so that's I love that but it's a little bit more of an acquired taste this is to remind me that I do own a JX 3p it's very jealous that you have there but it's in hospital at the moment so yeah I'm very sad it's it's got one of its voices is damaged and they've they've been trying for months to work out what's wrong with them they can so I'm hoping to get that back eventually this lovely machine is like a kind of modern Jupiter it was anything it's in yeah it's new ish I think there's been a version of it out for a while this is the version to Jupiter 80 is the one that has an 808 inside it oh well that's a good question I'm not a hundred percent sure about that it's designed to be like the next like the modern ad like next one on from the Jupiter eight I think however that's the kind of theory it does those giant you know fat thick pads but you can also kind of go into it and it's got a lot of the really lovely very roland like sounds warm thick you know strings and pads and things like that so that's lovely that's a little bit more of a kind of you know kind of thumb through the presets and find something that's kind of close and then mess around with it a bit to make it more interesting so so that's that's really lovely this I have not had working for a while because I lost in one of my noobs I lost the power lead knowingly but I've ordered one on eBay and it's I think it turned up it's somewhere around so but I haven't got around to it's complicated by the fact that it's it takes a weird kind of non-standard to see plug on the end and also it's us voltage so I have to be very careful I don't break it when I plug it in so I've got my voltage converter there waiting ready to go but that's got some great sounds in as well I remember that back in the day yeah and these pedal boards yes so this is great I really love the sound of this it's it has the also that benefit that you can load cabinet emulations into it so there's a whole aftermarket of people who make mic and cabinets kind of you know what they called impulse responses so that's really great it's got some amazing recreations of old stompboxes and stuff like that in and it's very very easy to program your own patches as well so these both of my pedal boards I've got on looms so I can easily drag it out to the middle and you know kind of sit at the workstation and play while I'm messing around with it so that's the kind of that's and kind of all in one thing that does a certain thing really well and then here I've got my my actual pedal collection so a few of the muga figures the fantastic stuff from Strymon yeah and then the Eventide h9 it's got some really really great sounds and fantastic harmonized stuff oh and there and then actually this is quite interesting so this is something that I'm that I'm just in the process of getting my head around it was designed by Justin at year creations and that is the there is an effect switching system so I can between the two of these I can patch effects in and out but also I can take any synth and run it through any combination of the guitar effects oh and yeah and so stuff is malted on the patch Bay so basically I can just go I can just go straight into my Apollo's if I want to just record the output the synth but I can also get creative and mess around with you know with some knobs and stuff and make a weird sound as well very very easily but as I say I'm so that's it I'm still learning it at the moment till not a hundred percent there with exactly how how I'm going to use that in my workflow very nice and you know how involved did you get in the design of the patch babe because for anyone who does hasn't owned a patch Bay it's incredibly involved isn't it yeah so I this is my third patch Bay so I've made a few mistakes before and also realize that there are some kind of standard ways of laying out a patch they that don't work for me so this was a very much a kind of collaboration as a backwards and forwards you know I had a rough idea for the first thing which I just drew on a piece of a4 send that over to Justin he started planning it and he would send me back things saying right I've I've put this in here and what about doing it like this and at one stage we were going to there was gonna be another unit under here with big those big like the multitrack you know things are coming over what they're called I think they're called ease yeah they're not the edex though the other one they look very much like he Dax but they're slightly different but but whether you could patch all of the inputs across to the inputs of the tape deck or all of the outputs from the tape deck into the and it got too complicated mm-hmm and I thought what am I trying to do here I'm trying to save myself from putting in let's say uh you know I mean how many things am I going to be running onto tape at the same time maximum of 16 because they're because I'm using the 16 track head so it's 16 patch cords worst case scenarios so I thought right I'm going to lay it out so that the tape gets patched in and out of the system as opposed to trying to make it so that the system is constantly kind of wired through okay by default so that did the other thing was this was the 88 16 which I bought secondhand from the lovely guys Essex Pro and they had they had this in stock and it's not been massively heavily used and I just wanted to try I've always had an idea about how I would use a summing mixer and I bought a kind of a DIY summing mixer that been made by a guy friend of a friend out of Nev components supposedly and I quite liked that it worked it was a little bit scratchy it was kind of you know like a like the scratchiest desk you've ever used but actually you know once you got rid of the crackles it did add a certain something just doing stuff through it so I thought I'm gonna start using this and as you can see I've been experimenting with it already and see how it works for me and I'm not using the width thingy or anything like that I'm just basically putting stuff through it to see what it adds and it and it does I'm a huge believer in in putting stuff out of the computer through analog gear even if it's not doing much it's adding something that we're we're used to the sound of that kind of harmonic distortion or whatever the the kind of components bring to the sound sounds how it makes you feel yeah there's a huge amount that yeah I mean certainly when I bought my first you have one but when I first bought my first Neve mic pre yeah I just I just I couldn't hear the difference but I just remarked how I didn't need to mix it wasn't as hard to mix you know I was doing some vocals and suddenly I wasn't like having to ride it and have to put stack loads of plugins on it just it felt like it's SAS better it sounded more like music yeah it's a funny thing the first thing I bought was was a focus rights red mic pray and it just had four mic praise on it and didn't really do anything else but and I remember I used it for about six months just putting everything through it and I knew that I wanted to get something else because I wanted something which had a compressor in an EQ in and I really struggled parting with that because I couldn't afford that to keep that and get something else at the same time and when I when I had lost it I really really missed it really because everything that you put through it just sounded so good it sounds ridiculous and people I'm sure that you know until you've been until you've you've kind of used it and not used it and used it and not used it probably I would have also thought at the beginning that's just ridiculous it's nonsense it's you know you think it sounds better because you've paid you know two grand for a box that doesn't do anything but it actually but it actually really does and the these are absolutely fantastic as well these new Nev kind of recreations but they're the you know the lunchbox version yeah and these are things I'm not seen before the UTA the TG and the Shelford right so yes so these are these are things actually these three are things that are new to this studio so they've not been used on a lot of stuff yet but this is under tone audio make some amazing bits of kit and I've been looking at their stuff for a while it's really interesting because you lose you download examples that people put online and listen to the differences between the different Mike praise and I think it I think basically it's a little bit like being a chef and having just a different kind of spices that you can put on things yeah and they all do they're all really really beautifully designed and built pieces of kit and they all do things slightly differently and so you know one of the things that once I start start recording stuff in here that I'm going to be experimenting with is because it's so easy now for me to just patch between different things you know and and just try them out and see what what for me what works best not someone brought my attention to is is matching the mic to the mic pre as well yes I've never thought of yeah that's a whole thing as well yeah I've I've started reading about that as well that is interesting I mean the thing is there are so many different variables that that you can change and to see what kind of sound you get out but it's good it's kind of a it's gonna be a bit of an experimentation these are the things that I know the least in the studio they're the stuff that I've used the least so does that I mean I think for me that's what's quite fun about having a channel because it actually I think it's a motivator to do these experiments yeah yeah otherwise you just feel you're kind of not being around but actually creating some kind of useful content that's yeah yeah exactly exactly my approach to recording stuff on actual music when I'm recording apart into Pro Tools or into logic usual into Pro Tools for me Pro Tools is more my tape deck I'm really not an a person who says oh you have to record it in completely clean I like to record it in with something on it so just EQ it a little bit compress it a little bit and to make it sound good so that when I'm actually playing it I'm excited by what I'm hearing but also you know I mean a touch of compression to tape say on a piano means that you you will adjust your performance you know yes lightly as opposed to just going oh my god the way the compressor is dealing with order played it differently yeah exactly yeah that's great yeah and then over here Jessie I'm so hang on a minute this this is this is great so this is really important this is a big design feature for me because I wanted to be able to do more this right and so this was basically I can get rid of the computer I can sit here and I can I have somewhere that I can turn away from the door so get out of that headspace and into a different headspace of actually writing stuff down on score paper and you know listening to the idea that I've got in my head and putting it down on a piece of paper separately and then when I finished that process I can turn back round again go back to the computer and start playing stuff in so for me this you know the guys who designed the this credenza couldn't quite understand why I wanted to sacrifice you know a whole rack of gear for some way to put my legs but actually I've used it already to write in and I it's it's worked as well as I hope to it's very interesting as sir Eric Whitacre was telling me that he couldn't write at the piano because he always found his fingers found the same shapes and were limited to his keyboard skills yeah and therefore where he really discovers stuff is buyer she writing it down this is not a skill that I I possess but why do you think this is advantageous to your workflow or a new adoption I mean your workflow wait it's kind of for that reason it's I find it for it liberates me from my ability at the keyboard it's exactly the same and as their ability of the samples and the ability of the samples yeah so then instead of there's a real temptation always to kind of write to the samples and there's this whole thing that everyone talks about oh you know well you can only write to the samples but do you know what we used to write stuff with a Proteus to and we didn't write to the Proteus because no it always sounded crap so so but the thing is if you write stuff idiomatically even if you're playing it with the Proteus - I some of those some of the demos on these things I remember the call go warren had a bunch of demos programmed into it by japanese composers I can't remember who wrote the main one but it was insanely good and it was just because it was that thing about you know following an idea right right the way through to completion it's it's not kind of getting to a certain point going oh I can't really make it sound good you have to finish it you have to get to the end and then you'll know whether it sounds good but if you've only half done it then and surely also that something that has happened since we've become you know composers arrangers orchestrators producers engineers is that you can skip a step and whereas actually the app the the act and art of composing is very different to that of putting stuff to picture arranging all of that kind of stuff yeah so that one is is praised and then this one is kind of EQs and compressors and these are vintage so these five 50s which are you know the API 550 kind of familiar sound to anyone who's used even the plugins of these this is actually an AP si 5:59 it looks like an api 560 and that's because for some reason they license out the guy who was making them for them they let him make his own version I think or somehow there's some kind of story behind it but it's essentially the same thing these are Neve compressors diode bridge compressors and they're really great they've got a different flavor to this Shadow Hills mono up to graph which has which is just like a kind of squeeze box compress it's just like a super characterful it's mono it's not not a stereo it although it takes up two spaces and then this is a double-wide compressor so it's got a kind of like a you can link double compression into the sound again it's just a different character a different flavor of compression these bad boys I know you're very familiar with yes distress and how would you describe you can see he's the onset - nique always the lights blue yeah that's the kind of go faster stripe of the compressor world isn't it so they yeah they I mean they're just fantastic you can use them for just a tiny bit of warmth on stuff and then just use them to absolutely destroy and obliterate everything that's coming out of drums often yeah yeah so those are fab and this was a this was one of those funny gear accidents I actually ordered one and two arrived by accident and and once I've got them sat there I was like oh god how can I make this work how can I work out how I can pay for the other one because once I tried them in stereo I was like oh dear I should have just left the other box unopened I've been a sensible thing to do saturator I've had for a while now that's kind of a different flavor from the from the de-stresses but it's a it's a again it's a kind of saturation tool surprisingly good on orchestral instruments yeah really interesting little bit you can obviously go fairly aggressive on it but it's a little bit more it's a little bit of a warmer gentler thing than the de-stresses so then we come over to here so this is this is the danger zone here that's the that's the really worst part of the studio that really needs to stay away from but because they fit it because I may feel it but yeah but I'm lucky I'm resisting temptation at the moment this I've had for some banging decimal rankings like studio condoms okay yeah okay so here we go so this is classic 1176 I've had this for quite a long time so I when I had a programming room at Roundhouse studios in Farringdon and they were closing down the studio and I've got the opportunity to buy one of their they have thing they had four of them got the opportunity to buy one of these and it's just absolutely brilliant I really really love it I mean I use it a lot I don't know what to say it's it's just incredible it's got this function now you've got your four ratios which all sound great and then there's this mad function way if you push all the buttons in it goes absolutely thermonuclear so wow that's that's actually the kind of cut that is the classic sound that you associate with oh god what the two guys who wear helmets Daft Punk Daft Punk all right yeah that's the classic sound that you associate with that kind of Daft Punk you know really heavily compressed stuff it's just fabulous for that kind of thing really really great and then this is a kind of I'm gonna get this wrong I mean it's called in 176 and I guess it has a vague similarity yeah to the 176 but it does have it does kind of have a few extra functions and it just sounds a little bit different so right and on - I just have to show that that basically because I tend to be a bit of an 88 when you were setting up your cameras you said how does this your camera position is here yeah he said how does this position look and I said that back walls a bit blank and you filled it with a massive tape machine well yes they were saying that we actually do record pretty much all of the Spitfire libraries to take yes yeah it's something that's this is something that I just never thought I would be able to have and you know I kind of grew up I cut my teeth recording everything to tape every day I mean I would be filling tape every day and so it was just the recording medium when I started my career so but they've become so unbelievably expensive and also this getting this in here from the place that I bought it from was no mean feat and required four of us strong young lads well maybe the others all stronger than I but we we basically had our whole weight against it and and the stairs outside we had a kind of series of kind of wood panels on the stairs and we just we just rolled it very very carefully off the van damme the wood panels onto the ground and then again up a ramp and down around skate it son liftable I think it's it's something insane like 300 kilograms Wow right and did you have to have any kind of service and stuff so it's been very well maintained the studio that it was at before it was maintained by Tim Walker who as luck would have it Tim and Robin Leggett also came and worked you know on the and did an incredible job on all the wiring and cabling and testing of all the gear in here so Tim knows this machine and has been here and kind of got it set up and he's lined it up there's one I have one thing which we have to fix on it which is this curious piece of what looks like kind of rubber and once that is is fixed which hopefully will be quite soon then it will be up and running and I'll be recording stuff to tape in here amazing so and what I also love is that it was once owned by central TV which is the television station of the Midlands I grew up watching ITV fantastic you got some rerp stuff going on here yes so am p & r EMP so the idea over here is that you turn everything on with one quick and easy switch then guitar goes in here or if you're renting stuff you can take it from the patch Bay at the bottom there's actually a kind of direct feed down here so you wouldn't have to do that but I can plug my guitar in I can pick the amp I've only got one cabinet which is this beautiful Vox ac30 cab which sounds amazing and then the idea is that you've got the Vox and from the AC 30 amp head I've got the this Laney is a kind of cleaner more modern sound and kind of gets Hank are really heavy quite easily this lovely thing Wallis amplifier Co is a little company that was based in Soho and made a certain number of these this is a great bass amp head so that's my kind of main thing for bass stuff going through and then the Kemper here is again a kind of virtual but it's a it's it's it captures profiles it's a profiler so it captures a kind of I don't know how it does it's very very clever it captures a kind of impulse response of a set of gear and then where this comes into its own for me is that there are loads of really clever people uploading their profiles online and so you can put stuff in there and it really sounds incredible so between so for the for the real stuff I love to have stuff coming out of the the cabinet but for the kind of virtual stuff I don't use any plug-in stuff all of the virtual guitar stuff that I do is either going through the Kemper or going through the the helix the line6 helix over there so so you've got ties pretty much all around the room yes so everywhere where there's going to be something so there's there's basically the guitar stuff over there here is piano and other assorted instruments and that yeah that's that it's just to kind of make make it so that there are fewer cables going across the floor so that was all planned out everything comes up on the patch Bay so nice and easy but yeah love love love the piano it's it's it's a beautiful c3 so it's quite bright [Music] but you can always take that off and you'll recognize this yes so yeah so that's I'm just kind of again getting my head around this incredible invention the key sense which oh the fur sold to me drilling other nutters throws some other messes and so I'm going to be drilling tips out of you for that and maybe what we could come to rest on is is oh look that's nice yeah that's a new thing no no I've had that for seven years I've used it on one job which was LittleBigPlanet 3 where there's a section of the of the game where basically things are starting to disintegrate and everything's going mad and he's lost his mind and he's floating in chaos in space and this was able to reproduce that sound very well because I have no idea how to work it so I just push buttons until it started making uncontrollable burbling mad synth noises and then you've got you know a couple of weird controllers here that you can use it's so insanely complicated that you can see I haven't wrapped it up because I don't really know what to do I don't know whether to set it up and try and and try and but there's so many things to learn you know you have to pick your battles I suppose don't you so I don't know whether I'm I don't know whether I'm gonna get to that or whether this you know something that if something isn't getting used I will sell it and and I'll try and make sure that I don't you know because somebody will somebody would love and use this yeah and maybe that's me but maybe it isn't and if it isn't then aren't then I'll sell it and so stuff is earning its keep my kind of default I love chirps mites I'm kind of often so I've used a full one for for lots and lots of things forever and at the moment I don't have one because I tended up right so I've become more of a kind of small diaphragm than large diaphragm so I've got quite a selection of bits and bobs I've got these lovely four five twos which I'm going to stick on the piano and have a go with those I've got I've had this one for a long time four four five one but I've only got one of those this little bad boy is the km 84 wonderful vintage which is a which is an honor vintage one eight falls are great but the integer just yeah this fantastic bass drum mic it's one of those weird things where it just sounds incredible but it's just what it's just you know an old old design the capsules that I am using on my shirts are the MK 20 ones but I've had various different capsules kind of switched around I had a set of mics that we were using for Spitfires so I've those have ended up at Spitfire now and I are the things these are the ones I use the most the 21 so that's what I've gone for here then so those all stick up for anything I mean I'll put those up for those aboard a like yeah would you use form fours and exactly yeah guitar piano you know drum overheads whatever this is I've used one of these a lot uh but actually is it cereal no but this one I haven't actually used yet so this is a royal ribbon active ribbon one to two it's I haven't actually used this one yet because I haven't you know I've been in a small room while this place is being built so it just stayed in its case but again it's a mic that I've used loads were the one to one of yous loads on guitar cabinets it's an amazing sound and actually I think it was Leo Abraham's who who turned me on to using this on guitar and if one of his tips was always angle it slightly that the CalNet because if you have it flat on and you get a sudden low frequency it's like yeah it's tears the ribbon so that's fantastic love love that the legendary common unless have given us this beautiful piece of equipment 40:38 coals 4038 the original BBC presenter mike BBC patents number and the reason we we never go barefoot in our studios yeah you know about it as it's spectacularly heavy i think it's very very important to say though you don't need any of this no no so I've been working a lot of this gear has been in storage for I don't know certainly it a year and a half two years while I've been working in tiny little room and I want to correct myself it's not you don't need it it one does one doesn't need no they I think that there's you know you can there you can get stuff and stuff can inspire you to do things but it might be something as ridiculous as for example you know this is a this is a toy that was once rattled by one of my children when they were a baby and this as well and it can be something like that that costs you know 50 P or something or you know a very very expensive ribbon mic and the other thing to say is actually that there there are some great mics now that are nothing like as expensive as some of these but are you know in many ways video down below yeah yeah so it's definitely possible to get you know to without breaking the bank to get a couple of mics set up and start recording things but the things you know that I love in here that like my clarinet that I've had since I was a teenager know that I still play on stuff and just little fun bits of gear you know you can have as much fun with a couple of you know a couple of new kind of soft beaters for a cymbal and just stick a cymbal up and play that over your track and you know you don't need loads and loads of gear it's about I mean just this space of bodies somewhere that's just excellent to work that gives us I mean the thing I always say like you know people go you know why don't you mix on in there's tens it's like because it's got to be fun you know we spend many many hours in here and I guess it's about it being fun there was a degree of affirmation if I don't mind I will certainly for me about you know I've achieved certain things and this is a dream for me and a fast track to being original and being inspired I think is is a great you know privilege of being able to yeah you know have this kind of surroundings but it's been built up over a decade yeah absolutely and you know and I've worked for a long long time with nothing like this stuff well what I've tried to do is obviously you know make sure you paying the rent make sure that your family the kids have food in their bellies and that you you know your family is safe but then when I've got a job you know instead of buying myself a Rolex or whatever or a fast car I've used a little bit of that money to invest in something whether it's just a guitar pedal you know or whether it was a one stage it was my drum kit and then just add little pieces on and over the years you know you will build up you know like I was saying when we were over at the Voyager if I've if I've got something that you know I've spent that means the Voyager was thousands of pounds and if I can't get my head around it then I will I will part exchange it or I'll sell it to somebody who who can understand it and then and that will give me some funds to you know it's it's an interesting point you bring up because I've been doing some gear reviews on on my channel and I've talked about resale value and people have been saying you you don't buy equipment for its resale value and I just for me what I find really worrying about that is is it's evidence of people not treating their business like a business yeah it's about the return that you're the person what I mean I know there's equipment that I've got that I haven't used for years but I know there was one job where I just absolutely caned it and it became the sound of a job yes oh that's a good return yeah but also just to buy something knowing that it'll be worthless the minute you get out of the box just strikes me as being yeah that's yeah Danny and it's difficult because you know I've bought stuff that was kind of you know a cheap copy of the thing that I really wanted and because that was all I could afford yeah and what I really should have done is just waited and maybe the following year I would have been able to buy the thing that I really wanted and it just you know this the stuff which has the name you know the EMI stuff the NIMH stuff the it's not just you're not paying for a name you're paying for a sound and a kind of design aesthetic that's gone I've been successfully used for many many years because this stuff sounds good and it's all what you're always gonna be able to resell it so you know I mean like I say it I've got a lot of second-hand gear in here you know I'm it's I'm perfectly happy to buy stuff and a lot of second hazard is find by I mean I what's amazing is the movie figures have appreciated in value so enormous yes that's so crazy since that since you can't buy them anymore so they're worth more right sometimes three times the amount than this yeah where which me yeah I have one last very impossible question for you you're we're close to Wales here in Wales is giant country yeah if you were to hear a Gemma is his name Odin or something a giant kind of tramping across the Brecon Beacons making a clear pathway to this studio the bull bond and you knew it was going to be crumpled within minutes what single piece of kids would you take the reason I did that and not like it's burning down because I just didn't want to tempt fate nothing that a giant yes Oh oh my god that's a really good question what would I take take order takeout your children are taking your key drives so that's fine yeah yeah Hannah's taking your awards and the picture of your family okay so take you can't take your scooter I don't think you know what it's gonna be and really it's gonna be a really boring answer I would take my clarinet that's great oh it's oh it's a Busey and Hulk Symphony 10/10 and I've been playing it since I was 13 or something like that and I did my grade eight on it and and it just I think that if the piano was portable there might be a bit of a scrap to be had between the clarinet and the piano but I think that I could sit in the smoking rubble of my poster crushed I'm sorry this not turned perfectly the crushed rubble of my heir of my destroyed studio and and actually play a mournful melody out on the clarinet and brilliant I still be making music but congratulations makes a wonderful space thank you David I switch is an excellent I'm not at all jealous anyway Paul's gonna be here tomorrow night 1700 hours GMT and I'm sure you have a lot of questions to ask him said to join the live stream tomorrow night to fire him off some questions about his choices he's made with this studio I think it's worth pointing out the pool created this amazing collection of instruments over the last 20 25 years and as he said you know a lot of being in storage and all of that kind of stuff very successful composer is pull and I look forward to watching his output from this place I think it's great for the community there's yes another kind of studio where he will be creating tutorials and all of that kinda stuff because I really value his very kind of theoretical approach to things so tomorrow night is gonna be the last livestream for Black Friday but weekend rather and so therefore we'll be kind of rounding up the year talking about the highs and there are a couple of lows that we want to talk about so join us for that and you know this is your last opportunity to grab these great deals of which I mentioned earlier in the black weekend collection that will also qualify you for aperture which has been enjoyed by thousands of people who are really kind of saying that you know whilst we thought it was kind of quite whimsical bit of fun it is actually a great way of working with string samples and all of that so I hope to see you tomorrow December the 3rd the black weekend ends at its 23:59 specifically GMT on the 3rd of December but let's see before then 1700 hours GMT back here on Spitfire channels tomorrow thanks for watching and see you then

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 39,709

Rating: 4.8596492 out of 5

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Id: NkYRgAVGadc

Length: 61min 36sec (3696 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019