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Published 2025.09.07
I recently added to, moved, and rearranged my home studio, which I use to compose and record electronic music. There were two main reasons for this update:
Since I was tired of using my Hydrasynth Explorer as a master keyboard (not to knock it, but it has only 37 mini keys which is limiting), I started looking for a larger keyboard that would give me more room to spread out. Initially, I was contemplating the idea of getting an actual vintage Rhodes to serve as a large keyboard. While that wouldn't have worked as a MIDI controller for my synths, I've always loved the Rhodes sound and would still provide a full-sized keybed for me to use to hone my piano skills and compose new melodies on (before playing them on my smaller synth keyboards). I ultimately decided it would be better for now to get something that can cover a more versatile range of piano sounds as well as control my instruments, so I started looking at stage pianos instead. I eventually settled on this lightly-used Yamaha CP88, which has excellent master MIDI controller functionality, excellent sounding acoustic and electric piano samples, and the best hammer action I've ever felt on a digital instrument. As an additional benefit (despite still being quite a hefty article) the Yamaha CP88 weighs a fraction of what a vintage electric piano does, has a full 88 keys, and should hopefully never need maintenance of any kind or to be tuned. It was also somewhat more economical than buying a real electric piano despite being a decidedly upscale and fancy keyboard. I almost feel guilty about owning a piano of this professional caliber, given I am no virtuoso; but I decided it was better to start with something I can grow into, rather than needing to upgrade down the line.
The next challenge in rearranging my setup was finding space for everything in its new home. Previously, my studio equipment and instruments were spread out over a couple desks by my computer in my home office. There was no room to add a large, heavy piano. I determined I was going to need to add a second level, rather than continuing to use a single surface. To that end, I found a robust Z-style keyboard stand and used bed risers to lift my desk to act as a second tier. I was originally envisioning the desk would cover the piano somewhat to allow me to reach everything more easily, but as it happens, the desk legs get in the way. On the upside, I found that the CP88 has some room on top of it for a few small items, allowing me to free up desk space and have those things closer to reach. In the end, my arrangement now fits on a single desk, with the compromise of some items being unreachable from a seated position.
For my audio inputs, all my sound sources feed into the Tascam Model 12, which is a combination mixer/recorder. The recorder functionality is critical: one major change from my previous setup is that this location lacks any computer at all. Previously, I had everything connected via USB to my PC, which enabled me to work in a Digital Audio Workstation to record and use software instruments and effects; however, I found that I rarely did that, since the hassle of setting up the software and configuring everything was just too time consuming, and splitting my time between instruments and a computer really took me out of the experience of making music.
My typical workflow involves sound design, composition, and recording in a single session. Usually, I'll arrange a piece first then record it in a single take, instead of track by track. That does somewhat limit the complexity of my music, but for me it works well to allow me to "get things done", instead of sitting on a mostly-completed track for months while I try to get it just right. The nice thing about the Model 12 and the other Tascam recorders are that they allow you to record the tracks individually and adjust the levels, EQ, panning, effects, and compression after the fact before exporting the final stereo mixdown; that means I can typically go through and make adjustments as needed after I've recorded a piece. The downside of the Model 12 is that despite its name, it really only has 8 discrete input channels, limiting the number of instruments I can record at once. That just means I need to plug in or unplug various things to suit my current track: I've never really needed more than 8 different sound sources at a time anyway.
The main audio output of the mixer goes to my speakers and headphones. True audio engineers will balk at both the quality and the placement of my "monitors." Truthfully, these are not very good speakers, and they are indeed not positioned correctly. I use them only for the odd occasion where I want to play out loud; generally, I'm a headphones type of person. The mixer also features a "sub" bus, which I use to selectively send audio to the 1010 Music Nanobox Tangerine, a general-purpose sample recorder and playback device. If that sounds vague, that's because the Tangerine is a weird little device that does many different things, which I will talk about later.
The Model 12 also has two mono auxiliary outputs which can be used as effects sends. I have the first aux output sending things to the delay effect of the Dreadbox Dysphonia (a limited-run DIY kit I assembled a few years ago). The second aux channel can be used for the Tascam's internal effects, which I use for a little bit of reverb; the reverb on the Model 12 is OK by my standards, and it saves me from using up another one of my precious inputs for the return.
For MIDI routing, I currently have the CP88 outputting MIDI to control the Korg SQ-64, which is my main sequencer, then my SQ-64 outputting to a MIDI splitter that handles sending MIDI to the Hydrasynth Explorer, Dreadbox Nymphes, Roland TR-6S, and 1010 Music Nanobox Tangerine. The other output of the SQ-64 sends MIDI to the Arturia Microfreak (both of which use 3.5mm MIDI connectors, so it saves me using an adapter; on the downside, they use different standards, meaning I have to use a custom adapter cable; the adapter is really just a standard 3.5mm TRS cable with two of the wires crossed to convert from "Type A" to "Type B"). The SQ-64 can also send CV signals to the modular rack, which I currently have disconnected.
The CP88 saves MIDI output settings per "scene" (preset) which allows it to work very elegantly as a master controller for multiple instruments: you can simply change which instrument you control at the press of a button, and you can even control multiple instruments or internal sound sources with different keyboard zones. It also works well as a master keyboard for me, because it has no internal sequencer and doesn't use an incoming clock signal, which means it has no need to have any MIDI input from the sequencer. I don't currently have any use for the MIDI output of the Model 12; it only sends MIDI clock/transport signals out, it cannot sync to an external clock, so I would need a MIDI merge box or something to get the SQ-64 to sync with it. For now, I'm content to let the SQ-64 drive the clock signal and leave the recorder unaware of the tempo, but letting the Model 12 control the tempo/transport would provide some benefits in terms of recording multiple tracks and re-recording sections.
Currently, I'm not using this, but since it appears in the picture I figured I could say a little bit about it. The SQ-1 is a step sequencer in the vein of the original analog sequencers for 1970s monosynths like the Moog modular or the Korg MS line which included the SQ-10, the "grandfather" of this modern device. Each of the small knobs controls the pitch of a note. This kind of rudimentary sequencing is a great way to develop new ideas, since it's a different way of thinking about the notes. The SQ-1 has MIDI and will "quantize" the pitch to a scale which makes it much faster and easier to use than my other knob-per-note step sequencer, the Behringer 182 module you can see in my rack below which adjusts the pitch of the notes completely freely, rather than snapping to semitones; that's interesting, but makes it a real pain to get in tune, especially with the teeny tiny knobs on both sequencers. The SQ-1 can do that too, but you don't have to use it that way.
The Roland TR-6S is a nice little drum machine, if a bit limited: it can only play 6 different drum sounds in a given "kit". On the plus side, it is quite compact and easy to use, and can run on AA batteries (if you want it to). I got it in a trade for a Korg Microkorg several years ago, and it has served me dutifully in the percussion department ever since. It has a classic drum sequencer which I never use because I sequence my drums with the SQ-64. It can make all the classic Roland drum machine sounds, plus play back a variety of preloaded and user samples, and has an FM drum engine. I somewhat underutilize this machine, as I use it 90% of the time just to give me 808 sounds so I can get some kind of beat going; I'd like to be more deliberate and creative with my drum sounds, but that's definitely an area I could improve in. I actually was recently considering selling it, because my Nanobox Tangerine can also make drum sounds and is a lot easier to load/record samples on, but I'm glad I didn't because this box only does drum sounds and I often need the Tangerine for other things.
I built this modular rack several years ago as an upgrade to a smaller rack. It features two rows of 120 HP each (that stands for Horizontal Pitch, not Hit Points). It is, unfortunately, way too big. I built it to the original Eurorack specification in terms of depth, meaning it has a lot of empty space inside, because no modern modules are really that deep. To be honest, I'm not crazy about modular anymore (too much of a mess of cables!) and I don't use it as much as I used to, but some of the modules it contains sound great. It largely contains Behringer System 100 modules, which are my only equipment from that polarizing manufacturer. They're clones of Roland modules from the 1970s. It also includes a handful of Dreadbox Chromatic modules and the Dreadbox Dysphonia which was a limited-run DIY kit.
Dysphonia is a module, but it can be used as a standalone synth. It's "fully modular" in that it features no default routing between the different sections, so you need to patch it like a true modular synth. It sounds great but nowadays I largely use it for its delay effect, which I believe is the same as the one on their Erebus synth. I really enjoyed putting together that kit so much that when they announced their subsequent kit, Dysmetria (a quirky drum synth), I immediately ordered it and was excited to put it together. Unfortunately, my Dysmetria didn't work (it may have been my fault) and needed to be sent back to Greece for Dreadbox to take a look at (they don't normally provide any support for DIY kits but after troubleshooting, they acknowledged it may have been an issue with the components provided), and subsequently got lost forever in shipping. I love Dreadbox's products and support them as a small business putting out creative new projects for relatively affordable prices, but I'll admit I'm still a bit sad about that incident, and will probably never try another DIY kit from them again. That tangent aside, Dysphonia is a great little self-contained synth and is has a very nice delay effect that I employ as a send effect for all my instruments.
One last thing to mention about my modular system. You can see in this picture (roughly center, above the orange panel) my homemade cable with a knob in it. I had some unused potentiometers and 3.5mm cables laying around one day, and decided to design this attenuator cable. It's really nothing fancy, but it's an easy way to attenuate a signal while patching it somewhere. It uses a 3D printed housing to hold the potentiometer and wiring. It's really nice and I meant to make more of them but never got around to it; I may post the files and write up an instruction guide for making them sometime.
The Arturia Microfreak is a weird little synth that gives you an expanded version of the venerable open-source Mutable Instruments Plaits digital multi-engine oscillator, with an analog SEM-style filter, and some nice modulation options. It also has an interesting touch keyboard made of a PCB. These are very popular instruments due to the amount of features you get for a modest price (especially used!) and are easy to recommend. Its multi-engine approach boils down a lot of different forms of synthesis into three parameters, but can get pretty deep with a mod matrix and powerful sequencer. Unfortunately due to space constraints, I had to hide my Microfreak in the back where it is unreachable, which is a shame since I really like the keyboard on it. But I still like to play it from time to time as a standalone instrument, and it's nice that it can continue contributing its weirdness to my new setup.
The Korg SQ-64 is a great sequencer that unfortunately got off on the wrong foot with the synthesizer community. It can control up to 3 monophonic or polyphonic melodic tracks (via MIDI or CV) and up to 16 different drum triggers (across any number of drum machines or modules via MIDI or CV). This lets me record sequences for 3 different synths, as well as trigger drums and samples on both the TR-6S and the Nanobox Tangerine. The initial firmware for this unit was plagued with issues that hinderd the most basic functionality and gave it a bad reputation leading to it eventually becoming discontinued and heavily price-reduced. I was (unfortunately) an early adopter and after experiencing the issues, it sat unused for about a year, when I discovered they had updated it, fixing nearly every issue and making it completely usable. What's odd is that these still haven't caught on, despite being readily available for very cheap and absolutely outperforming anything else in its price range in terms of capability and connectivity. The build quality is excellent as well. The only real downside is that the workflow is a bit odd: it separates note pitch and gate into separate lanes which can make editing sequences a bit of a chore (mitigated by some shortcuts they added in the latest firmware). It also doesn't have the ability to "jump" to a specific step as far as I can tell, which does make it a bit tedious to work on longer sequences. That said, these drawbacks don't bother me that much, and it's hard to think of an alternative that can suit my needs in this price range and with this small footprint. Korg is an odd company with a proclivity for releasing half-baked products and discontinuing them quickly, but I would definitely recommend this sequencer at this point, post-upgrades and at the going used price.
I talked at length about how I use the Model 12 in the overview section, so I will keep it brief here. The Tascam Model 12 is a versatile centerpiece for my studio. It works as a mixer, with 10 line inputs across 8 channel strips (two of the channels are stereo, it only has 8 mic pre-amps), 2 stereo output busses, and 2 aux sends. It also works as a recorder which is very handy for me, and it records each of the channels separately. It's an audio interface, and unlike most mixer-interfaces, it actually works with separate inputs for each channel. There's some other handy features to it which may or may not be useful depending on your situation, such as Bluetooth connectivity and onboard effects.
The Hydrasynth Explorer is a well-thought-out digital synth and it was my main MIDI controller before the CP88. It can do virtual analog and FM synthesis, but it really excels at wavetable sounds with complex modulation. The best feature about it is the interface, which is structured as a block diagram showing the signal flow, which makes it easy to find and modify all the parameters of the complex engine without much "menu diving". It also has polyphonic aftertouch capability in its little 37-key mini keyboard. It seems to be built really well, too, but I can't necessarily vouch for the longevity of the instrument: my first Hydrasynth Explorer's screen died just weeks before the cutoff for the warranty, and I had to have it replaced (which was thankfully covered in full). I've heard of this happening to other people as well, so hopefully my new one is a later revision with that issue fixed.
This little box, with his verbose title, is a do-it-all sample thingy. It's sort of difficult to explain what it does, and frankly there are some aspects of it that I don't fully understand. It can record samples of audio and play them back in a variety of ways. Here are some things I've done with it:
It was that last use case I was particularly excited about, since I wanted to use it to record patches on my modular synth (which has no way of saving presets). That's a very nifty feature (though it takes a long time to sample every note), but I was also very pleased with its other abilities, and have gotten a lot of use out of the live looping feature. It can also "chop" samples, which is a technique used to take a clip (such as a drum loop) and break it into different sections and play them back in a different order, but I don't really do that; something to explore in the future.
In many ways, the Tangerine is quite simple to use and makes these somewhat esoteric tasks involving audio samples trivial and quick to do. In other ways, the physical reality of the device results in frustrating user experience: it is a small thing with a tiny touch screen, so managing files, naming samples, etc. is limited by its miniscule proportions. It is also (somewhat arbitrarily) limited to a total of 8 clips loaded in a scene or preset at a time. I say this is arbitrary, because you can have 8 multi-sampled instruments with many samples each, or 8 30-minute clips, or 8 2-second drum samples; there's no technical limitation that prevents there being multiple pages of clips within a preset, the only limitation is the total number of samples and total length of the samples currently loaded into the unit's memory, both of which would hypothetically allow many more clips to be operated simultaneously. My speculation is that this limitation is largely due to lack of screen real estate (not an issue for me, controlling it via MIDI) and to prevent it becoming redundant with the 1010 Music Black Box, which is essentially a larger, older, more expensive version of the same thing with slightly different features. Even so, what it can do is impressive, and it's a fun multitool to have in the studio.
This is my new stage piano and master MIDI controller. It's by far the priciest, heaviest, and nicest thing in my studio. It is not a synthesizer, and its sound design capabilities are limited, but its interface is optimal for quickly giving you access to everything you'd want to make keyboard sounds of all descriptions. It's split into 3 main sections any combination of which can be enabled at a given time: piano, electric piano, and the "sub" section which covers synth sounds, organs, chromatic percussion, and all other sounds. These sounds can be split or layered, and each section has a variety of appropriate effects that can be applied, as well as routing to the master reverb, delay, and EQ. The quality of the sounds, especially the piano and electric piano samples, is exceptional. The keyboard is also excellent, with a heavy grand piano-style hammer action. That may not be ideal for controlling synthesizers, but it doesn't bother me. It's a reasonable compromise to give me that action for playing the piano. As an alternative, I considered the smaller CP73 which has an unweighted action that may have been a better fit for controlling synths, but I decided I wanted to prioritize piano feel since I have other synth action keyboards and didn't have a proper piano in my home.
Despite being a "stage piano", I wouldn't call this instrument particularly portable and I don't intend for it to see any stages anytime soon. It arrived in a box approximately the size of a coffin, and weighs over 40 pounds. Its build quality is excellent and it has professional connectivity: balanced and unbalanced outputs, audio over USB, audio input, full size MIDI, etc. I was also impressed by the versatility and quality of the settings for MIDI routing and control, something you can't take for granted on this type of instrument. Overall, I'm very impressed with it and it's a joy to play.
The Dreadbox Nymphes is an affordable, compact polyphonic analog synthesizer in the tradition of the Roland Juno series. It is not a Juno clone, and has a sound and design of its own, but draws inspiration from it and invites the comparison. Its sound generation faculties are simplistic but produce a beautiful tone. Dreadbox makes great analog filters. This synth's interface is polarizing: some people hate it with its layers and lack of a screen, while others find that to be a reasonable compromise given the size, price, and features. I'm in the latter camp for the most part, though I will say the system for managing the presets is obtuse, and unlike the Juno 6 it draws inspiration from, it really needs presets because its layered UI won't remember how it was set after you turn it off. Equally polarizing is its built-in reverb, which is noisy and has a strange harsh quality which many will find offputting. I think it is supposed to sound something like a vintage spring reverb, and while it has potential applications, it's too bad Dreadbox didn't include more effects options, because the effects are digital anyway. I really appreciate the Nymphes for what it is and what it's able to fit in such a little box. Yes, it's limited, but if it were any bigger, it wouldn't fit on top of my piano.
Here's a quick song I recorded this morning in the new studio. It features Rhodes and grand piano sounds from the CP88, synth tones from the Nymphes, Hydrasynth Explorer, and Microfreak, drums from the TR-6S, and looping from the Nanobox Tangerine. I recorded it and mixed it on the Model 12. The title of the song is Looking Out Over the Trainyard in the Morning Light Before the Cataclysm.