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danling.com   studio

stu·di·o (st¡¹dê-o) noun 1. An artist's workroom. 2. A photographer's establishment. 3.An establishment where an art is taught or studied: a music studio. 4. A room or building where tapes and records are produced.  [Italian, from Latin studium, eagerness, application. See study.]

 

This was my studio at it's zenith in March, 2011.  The valuable minimoog rack mount, Moog modular expansion, and the Boss DR-880 were sold on eBay in May, 2011.  Now that I'm disabled and have no income I will be selling off more of my instruments.  Next to go will probably be the X-Station (the little gray synth).  I will probably sell the remaining rack units, such as the Lexicon MX-200 and two Rockman Distortion units, as well as classic analog stuff, including  MXR flangers and a highly sought-after Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, the finest phase shifter ever made (top middle of pic).  I bought it new around 1980 (sob).  I will always think back fondly on this studio as it was the best I ever assembled.  Well, it really was fun while it lasted.
Here are my two older keys.  On the bottom my venerable old Alesis QS8 that I got around 1998.  It has an 88-note, piano-like action and tons of quality sounds.  The little guy is a Novation X-Station, which is a "virtual analog," meaning it has the same kinds of capabilities and sounds (and knobs and sliders) of an old analog, but it's digital, which gives it more capabilities but lower sound quality.  Besides all the knobs to tweak in real-time, it has a wonderful quality keyboard and a terrific joystick controller so it's a lot of fun to play!
Here my main monitor shows my digital audio workstation - Cakewalk's SONAR X1 (with Pink Jam playing).  The old Dell 15" displays my software synthesizers so I can tweak the "knobs" while playing.
Here's what we looked like in March of 2008 - with a new Korg Triton Extreme and three 'boards.  To the right you can see the old laptop.  This has been replaced by a tower computer with a 24" monitor.  
Here's the Triton, which also is used for controlling the Minimoog Voyager rackmount (the unit with all those red and blue switches on it). 
This a wallpaper I made with a Hubble image of a planetary nebula :)
This is the studio before I got the Triton and the new 'puter.
Multikeyboard bliss.  The Alesis QS8 on the left, and the Novation X-Station on the right.
 

 
Here's a circa 1981 shot of my studio in San Rafael, CA.  A custom Dyno-My-Piano Rhodes (where I worked as a tech in 'Frisco), and a Roland SH-1000 synth (the first Japanese synth).  The dino poster is in my classroom at the High School.  The series of pics that follow are all scans of Polaroid instants.
Here you can see my old Oberheim FVS-1.  This was one of the first, and best, polyphonic synths ever made.  The stuff of legends.  I have some regrets over having sold it :(  In the right center you can make out the blue Mu-tron Bi-Phase.  Also legendary, and I still have it in perfect condition(see if you can find it in the top pics).  This largely made George Duke's sound.  The keyboard beneath the Oberheim is an RMI Electra-Piano.  Now that was a dinosaur - I bought it used back around 1975.  
I modded my Roland around this time.  It was fairly light and a lot of fun to play!  I ran a medusa of maybe 25 wires (!) out of it, which created hum, but nobody noticed.  I'm wearing a shell necklace too ;)  I planted that deodar cedar at right, which is now visible above the roof of the house.  

I used a rotary knob for pitch bend, not unusual at that time.  I mounted it on a separate, smaller box which could pivot.  Above that from left are the filter cutoff, portamento toggle, portamento speed, and resonance pots.  At the top right is a tuning pot (and a hole for a stretch tuning adjustment pot).  Barely visible just to the left of the bender knob is the silver transpose toggle.  I still have this 'board, but don't use it anymore, because the sound just doesn't cut it compared to my newer gear, and since there's no midi (it hadn't been invented yet), I can't use it as a controller for my other synths.  Shame!

 

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