LEE LUCAS
Tools & Devices.
Keyboards.
Yamaha PSR-E303 61 Key Digital Keyboard.
Studiologic VMK-188 Plus 88 Full Size Weighted Key Midi Controller Keyboard.
My favourite of instruments is the Piano and for me it's very much vital for me to have 88 Full Size Weighted Keys to play such a thing with. Though both of these keyboards are not perhaps what I would call top flight keyboards (and the Yamaha here I would very much call a toy in relation to such a thing) and they do not look as impressive as such a thing. With the use of today's VST's Patches I can assure you they can do exactly the same job, and even better in reality when you weigh up the price.
Today's VST's are a lot higher in sound quality than any patch you are going to find in any top flight keyboard. Including the likes of Korg. Roland and Yamaha. The best top flight keyboard I would consider today is the Korg Kronos. Simply because they put an hard drive into it to be able to cater for the large sampled piano's you could never fit into the 256mb's they allocate these days for each keyboard patch.
Don't get me wrong. I would of course love to have top flight keyboards, and if I was out there playing live instead of just doing studio work these days, I would very much have to get such things. You can of coarse also use VST's with them, and in reality they would be greater to have and make the picture of my keyboards look sick in comparison. But for my use I would consider buying such things having more money than sense, when these keyboards will do the same thing in a studio at a fraction of the price.
.
VST Soft Synths.
VST's play a major part in my music process and I have a lot more than what I could fit in this display of my favourite ones here. VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology and in reality they are virtual instruments or commonly known as soft synths.
Many companies who develop them do spend a lot of time on them to get everything in them that was in the original Keyboard in the first place. Though many would beg to differ they was as good as the original instrument. For me it's personally a preference of taste. Obviously the original keyboard is going to look a damn site better, than a picture of it on your computer desktop sitting in your DAW even if it is operational like the real thing actually is.
I would also state that not everything these so called companies have done are nowhere near the real thing, but there are some really good ones out there that are well worthy of paying the money for, and when you weigh up the price of the real thing you are getting a genuine bargain for your money.
In the world of reality any keyboard sound or patch is made up of frequency noise we are dealing with Hertz so it's not really that hard for such companies such as Arturia to get all the right frequencies to emulate a patch from the Roland Jupiter 8 for example.
Though Arturia's Jupiter 8 or 8V is never gonna look the part of the real thing, or even gonna be worth as much money as the real thing, one has to consider is getting hold of the real thing really worth it, when you consider you could be paying up to anywhere from 4 to 8 Grand for one which is second hand, in relation to paying say £80 for the virtual thing.
A close friend of mine has owned a Roland Jupiter 8 for years, and I have played it many times around his house. He still as it today. I can tell you now that the difference between the sounds in a real Jupiter 8 and Arturia's Jupiter 8V is very minor and that small in reality that no way on earth does it measure up to its price tag as value for money. There is actually more things thrown in the Arturia Jupiter 8V that not even the real thing could ever do.
One could argue the point of Analog versus Digital prevents Arturia's version not having the balls so to speak, but in all honesty they are so wrong, and when you weigh up the price tag between the two of them here, I could honestly say that even if I was a millionaire I would not buy the real thing, because I would consider it as throwing money away on such a thing. But if you wanted to look good, then by all means get the real thing, and spend the dough.
But then again I am not a fan of Roland's Jupiter 8 and it's not really my sort of keyboard to be honest, but as it was cheap enough to get a VST version of it, I felt it a worthy thing to have and play about with.
The ultimate synth I have in my collection of this lot of VST's is without doubt Omnisphere by Spectrasonics. For me this thing makes even the Jupiter 8 sound like a joke and a toy in comparison. Most people get the impression that Omnisphere is all about ambient sounds atmospheres and noise scapes, but they would be dead wrong.
There is more in this thing than meets the eye, and it's really endless what you can create with it as a synthesizer. It not only farts like a real synth but in all honesty will blow anyone of them out of the water with its sound quality, and if peeps want to argue Analog versus Digital here, they honestly need their heads and ears examining, because this thing is FAT.
I have tons of VST Sampled Piano's and perhaps more in reality than all the VST's I have on display in this picture. Like I have said the piano is my favourite instrument it's also an instrument that can have many tones to its sound quality, and over the years I have heard many old uprights sound so fantastic with their authentic sound.
No VST in the world is really ever going to capture the sound of an acoustic piano. A piano is very much an instrument that can mature and change its tone over the years, just as a guitar can, because they are housed in wood. Wood is a very important soundboard for such instruments and it's the aging of the stuff that actually breaths and contains resin that will resonate its fine sound and quality as it ages with maturity.
Though to be fair to the many sampled piano's in the form of VST's you can get these days you can certainly afford to buy a stack of these things and get a lot more than just one sound than what you are ever going to get from having just one piano in your house, and just how many people can accommodate the room for a real one and actually afford an acoustic one? I know I could not in answer to both of those questions.
Most of my favourite sampled piano's are done by the company Native Instruments, and I have many by them, from uprights to Steinway Grand's. But my ultimate fave of them all for some reason is Alicia Keys.
What the company did here was a favour for Alicia herself. She very much owns a Yamaha C3 Grand Piano to which there are only 3 in the world, and having to cart that around with her on tour with the many shows she plays, was very much putting the thing at risk of getting damaged. So she approached NI to see if they can make a VST version of it for her to stick into a keyboard to save her precious piano.
Now I have never heard, never mind played on a Yamaha C3 Grand Piano in real life, or even seen one for that matter. But I have to say the tone of this piano they have captured by sampling her piano, somehow seems to work for every piece of music I have ever done myself, and I use this VST more than anything I have actually got.
I am 100% sure it's never gonna be as good as Alicia's actual piano, but if what NI have done here for her, is good enough for her to use on stage, and even in the studio's to do her albums with. It's certainly good enough for me, and is a damn site more better than anyone of the Steinway's this company as come up with for my ears.
Some people may suggest going out and buying East West in comparison to Native Instruments. For Orchestral sounds I would agree 100% but not one of East West's piano's have ever enticed me to buy them, and I certainly do not think they have something as good as Alicia Keys or even PianoTeq by Modartt for that matter, which is another great VST piano, but that is really down to what sound people want from a piano.
Guitar.
Yamaha F310 Acoustic Guitar.
This is my one and only guitar I have these days and I have had many over the years, but only ever one that I would call expensive which was a Washburn Festival Cutaway Semi Acoustic Guitar. Which cost 6 times the price of this Yamaha Guitar I own now, which was only £100 to buy brand new.
Although I like to pick up the guitar now and then and sing along with it. I would never really class myself as a guitarist. It's an instrument I do enjoy playing and I have wrote many songs on it, more than what I have wrote on the piano in reality, but my ability to play the instrument is never gonna cut the mustard to what I can play on the keyboard. But it's still very much a useful tool to have, and in reality I create different styles of songs on the guitar to what I create on the keyboard. So it does broaden my horizon so to speak.
Regarding playing any instrument and as much pleasure I get from doing so, I have always regarded them as tools for composing my own music more than anything else, and composition is very much a part and side of me I enjoy the most.
Nobody as to be a great player of any instrument to write a song in reality, and some of the best songs and massive hits in this world come from basic chord structures and are quite simple to play. Simple things that speak in leaps and bounds and grab your immediate attention is the art of composition. I am no master at it, but I enjoy it's process the most.
My own ability on the guitar is a far cry and many miles away from what my brother Martin can do on the instrument. For Martin he may feel the need to have expensive guitars to play with, this is because he as more of a fine way of approaching the instrument with his fingers.
For me the most important thing about any guitar regardless of its price, is to have one you're comfortable with and it feels right for you.
For example I have played on Martin's guitars of which some cost a couple of grand, and I could tell you right now, I am not comfortable with his guitars, they do not feel right for me.
At the end of the day everyone of us have a different feel and grip for such an instrument with our own hands, and what may feel comfortable for one person will not for the next.
I even made a mistake when I got that £700 Washburn Festival Guitar. Because in reality though I never paid that for it, and got it second hand off a friend and really good guitarist for £250 as he was hard up at the time and needed the cash. So I seen it as a bargain.
I only had the thing a month and sold it for the same price I paid for it, cause I could not get not grips with it, and went back to playing my £20 guitar which was overall really dreadful, and not much more comfortable for me than the Washburn, and put up with that for years, and hardily touched the damn thing.
The guitar I have now I got a couple of years ago back in 2011, because I felt the need to get a decent guitar I could be comfortable with. At first I was looking for something I could afford at the time and my budget was around £160 to £250 at a push.
I started to look at Fender acoustic guitars because I remember picking one up in a music shop in Birmingham many moons ago, and it was the bees knees and I really liked it and it was well comfortable for me.
The problem was it was £500 so I very much had to put it down and walked out of the shop with nothing. But If I had the money I would of brought it there and then.
A friend of mine I used to pop around his house from time to time and play on his guitars, had recently brought a Fender acoustic, and has he played his electric the most we had a jam for a couple of hours, and I played on his acoustic. I asked him how much he paid for it as he had not long purchased it, and he told me £160 brand new from a music shop. I also told him the action was terrible to which it was and my fingers were nearly bleeding and had blisters on a couple of them, and I could not even play my piano for over a week afterwards.
Honestly that guitar was naff, so I went to a music shop and tired a few others, one was a £240 Fender acoustic and for me it was not much better than the thing my mate had got for £160. Dreadful, well for my hands anyway.
It was at this stage I began to feel my budget had no chance of me getting anything suitable at all for me, and I was either gonna have to save up twice as much or try ebay for a second hand one. Only thing that put me off that idea though, was the fact that I could not try before I buy, so I chucked that idea out of the window.
About a week after this I dropped by on my old mate and former member of the band I was in at his shop in Redditch. Conrad has many guitars at home and is a very good guitarist. He is by trade a Cobbler and has his own shop in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre where he repairs shoes, cuts keys, does engraving and so on.
At the back of his shop there is little room where he makes his tea and stores his stock, and I have been there on several occasions and have even gave him an hand at times. But on this particular occasion I noticed an acoustic guitar hanging on the wall in his tea room so to speak.
At first I thought it was one from his house, and he had took it there to relieve the boredom whilst his shop was less busy. I also told him your risking that a bit, as his work was not really a clean job.
Then he told me it's only a cheap one, and he got it from Argos which was across the way in the shopping precinct. So I picked it up to give it a tinkle and soon found I could not put it down.
I was amazed at the action on it and how comfortable this thing felt in my hands. The other thing I noticed was the name Yamaha on it, and seeing that I asked him. When you said it was cheap how cheap? He told me £100, and I was gobsmacked and went and brought one.
My £100 Yamaha F310 Acoustic Guitar I can honestly say is the best guitar I have ever had, and because I love it's feel and how comfortable it is to me, I spend more time on it these days, than what I ever spent on a guitar before in my life. Over the last 2 years I have also learned to play better on the instrument because of the comfort ability factor.
It has even inspired me to consider getting an electric guitar, but that will be another story and another hard task finding one.
My instruments are very much what I call my tools and devices to be able to create music and songs with, everything I do regarding my own music is played on these instruments.I simply refuse to use anything else in my music such as loops, samples, backing tracks and I play everything in real time.
I only use midi for the sounds for my keyboards and not to play it for me, or even adjust mistakes and rectify them. If I make a mistake I would rather play it again than edit it. I also refuse to use quantisation and all these elements I regard in reality as cheating.
I do however use drum machine software such as Stylus RMX to do drum programming with now and then, but in reality I even hate doing such a thing and would prefer a real drummer any day of the week to do such a thing for me.
I also do not class the use of drum machines cheating, they are useful tools to make songs with, and I will even knock out some drums with my own hands on the keyboard from time to time.
My music may suffer for the way I go about in relation to many others who use such things, but the one thing I can honestly say is that I played it myself, and that to me is everything what a musician should be and the pleasure I get out of it knowing I played it myself.
I am far from a great musician and great player of any of the instruments I play, and what I cannot play myself I will always bring in other musicians who can do that job for me, rather than use any of the already samples available in many DAWS.
I only use my own DAW as a mixing desk and a multitrack recorder to record with. I do not even use its own VST Plugins to mix any of the sounds with either, as I do not consider them good enough, and only use Waves Pluggins for my production mixing and mastering side.
At the end of the day I am what I am, and nobody special or great by any means. I simply make music around my own ability of what I can do and nothing else, and enjoy doing so as an hobby.
Guitar.
Encore E4SB Bass Guitar.
I must admit I have always wanted a bass guitar, but still have never brought one, and this one was given to me by my good friend Conrad. It's only a cheap bass guitar but is still capable of doing a good job and plays very well. Though eventually I will get myself another one. I do have my eye out for a Yamaha and am waiting for one to come in Cash Converters second hand, and as soon as one does I will get it. But for now this will have to do.
Michrophone.
Audio Technica AT-2020 (USB) Condensor Michrophone.
Singing as always played a major part of my songs, though when you look at the vast amount of instrumental pieces I have on the cloud in relation to the tracks I have with me singing on, you would not think so at all.
But in reality singing was the very first thing I ever done as a child, and as a child I made some pretty hefty money knocking on peoples doors at Christmas carol singing. If I remember rightly my pocket money back in those days was only 2 shilling (10P) and I could come home some nights with as much as a five pounds weighing down my pockets.
In reality I am really shy and find it hard to talk to people at times, but for me singing to anybody has never been a problem. It's the most confident side of me, and always has been. I would not even have any nerves at all walking out on stage even with a packed Yankee or Wembley Stadium I would embrace the opportunity to do so, and will always give it my best.
I cannot say the same thing about playing my instruments live on stage, and will often make major mistakes if I am performing on stage on my own, and even walk off the stage and jack it in there and then as a bad joke. These mistakes have never happened whilst I just sang on my own without an instrument.
The most important side of singing any song is to make sure you have all the lyrics planted firmly in your head, rather than try and read them off a piece of paper and sing them at the same time. You will never get the right feel or expression for any song by reading them from a piece of paper, and you certainly will not give a great performance by doing so either.
For me to be able to sing any song it is vitally important to learn the lyrics first, and learn them that well that I do not need them in front of me on a piece of paper. They have to be stuck inside my head before I will do such a thing.
You could perhaps get away doing a studio recording by reading the words as you go along, because you can always record it again if you felt you never expressed it well enough. But for a live performance forget it. You will never give your all without knowing them off by art.
It's always good to have a good Microphone though in reality if you just need a Microphone for singing live on stage you do not really need to spend a lot of money on one. Having an expensive Mic is certainly not gonna make you a better singer, and the most common stage Mic used even for the big guys in the mainstream world live on stage is a Shure SM-58 Dynamic Microphone and can be had for around £80 brand new these days.
Not saying I am a great singer but in all honesty any good singer could get just as good a result singing at a Karaoke on a £20 Dynamic Mic. At the end of the day it's how the Mic is set up that really plays the greater importance for live performances, and not the Microphone itself. Though decent quality Mic's are better grounded and shielded to help reduce a lot of feedback. So for the chap on the mixing desk, a decent Mic will save him a lot more trouble and time setting one up.
For studio work you really need a Condenser Microphone, but once again you could still use a Dynamic Mic if your just gonna be using it for singing. But the Condenser Mic does have a bigger advantage in the way that it can pick up far greater things than a Dynamic one is capable of.
Condenser Mic's are not just great for singing, but they are also very good for recording acoustic instruments such as an acoustic guitar as an example. Once again if you just want one for singing you certainly do not need to spend a fortune on one, and in reality you could get a decent enough one to do that for as little as £30 to £80.
In reality a Condenser Mic can record an acoustic guitar or any acoustic instrument for that matter, a lot better than you will ever get from one with a pickup in and plugging it in direct to your desk to record with.
You could also be laying out thousands of pounds for a pristine high quality Condenser Microphone to be able to do such a thing as well, and if you are going to be using a Mic to record more than just your vocal, it is worth spending the extra cash on one to do so.
Though cost is really down to how serious you want to be, and at the end of the day all can made just as good in the mixing process in the production. So again one really has to think hard before throwing bags of cash away.
I myself play and make music really more of an hobby than anything else, so at the end of the day I just need something that is good enough to do the job, and fits my pocket in relation to how much I want to spend on such an item.
It's not as if I am going to be making money with what I do, so I certainly do not want to be spending money I have not got on such things, and in reality I will spend a hundred times more money on my HiFi because listening to music is my greatest pleasure, more so than doing my own. For me my HiFi is my car, and as I do not drive I will spend the price of a Brand New car on such a thing.
For my condenser microphone I gave myself a budget of £200, but this budget also had to include a stand and pop mask. It also had to be a USB Mic too, simply because I already have a £200 Soundcard in my PC, so there was no way I going to buy another one by getting a USB Audio Interface which has inputs and outputs to plug such things in such as a M-Audio Fastrax Pro as an example.
Before I buy anything I never rush and always spend a couple of weeks or even longer looking at reviews for such items before taking a leap so to speak. For my budget at the end of studying reviews I had 3 Mic's in mind. The cheapest being a Samson for £80, next up an AKG at £130 and the most expensive of the 3 the Audio-Technica AT-2020 (USB) at £150 to which in the end was my choice. I spent the remaining £50 on a Samson Pop Mask and a stand.
At the end of the day I am well happy with my choice, and not only is it a good Mic for recording my vocals, but it is also very good for my acoustic guitar too, and it's damn site better than the £4.99 PC Plug and Play Computer plastic Microphone from Argos I was using before (LOL)
But in saying that I had some great results with that Mic too, and many of my songs on the cloud a year ago where done on that Mic, and so to was a couple of videos I stuck on Youtube namely Oldtime Street and Wild Horses which for me where damn good live recordings.
Studio Production.
Steinberg Cubase 5 - Abelton Live 8
Waves Plugins.
Production work plays an important role in getting a quality sound to your music and end product, although I am far from any professional at this game, I do like to delve into this side of my work and try and improve from time to time.
Ever since I had an old Atari STE Computer I have always been interesting in using the computer to record my music with and try and get a better production and sound too it. Though back in those dark days I do not think I ever achieved it.
But the one important tool I used for recording my instruments back then was Steinberg's Pro 24. This for me was a lot cheaper option than going out and buying say a 4 or 8 track mixing desk to be able to do such a thing with, and is perhaps why I chose to go down this route.
In 1999 the PC started taking shape and along with Microsoft's Windows it was not long before it became the most popular computer on the market.
The fact that these things were far more powerful than my old Atari, very much persuaded me to go out and get one, and in January 2000 I went out and brought one for some 2 grand. Quite a lot of money especially when you consider how much powerful they are today to way back then.
Steinberg's Pro 24 had well gone and Cubase VST was now their main new DAW for Studio Production and I purchased Cubase 3.7 to continue on recording my music and trying to get a better sound quality for my songs, and although I had various plugins back then, I still really do not think I ever achieved to do so, even though I did produce 3 albums for my brother, and by 2006 I knocked music on the head completely and gave up.
It was not until 2011 some 5 years later that I got back into music, and to be honest it was mainly down to seeing reviews of how advanced VST Soft Synths were now coming on, and it was seeing this new development that persuaded me to go out and get another keyboard.
A couple of years before this I had given me Cubase 5 from an old friend who thought I was still doing music at the time. Though I was grateful for the gift I never actually installed it on my computer till August 2011 and experimented with the VST Synths that came with Cubase 5 on my Yamaha Keyboard.
The very first piece of music I done as an experiment to see how good these soft synths were in Cubase was a 1 minute piece of music using 3 tracks. The piece I entitled "Give Us A Minute" and I put it out later on, on my cloud, as I did not even join Soundcloud till October of the same year.
I also done a few other tracks at this time, and had also purchased Ableton Live 8 was using some of the VST Synths and piano's in that, and done most of the work for my intended 2nd album In Search of The Lost Souls to which the self titled instrumental piece of the same name was all done on that keyboard and with the use of VST Synths from Cubase 5.
Though these productions were sounding better, it still was not enough, and I knew I needed better VST Soft Synths to work with. I also needed a new 88 Key Weighted Keyboard as I was missing one so much to play on. So in September I got the new keyboard along with a bunch of great VST Soft Synths such as Omnispehere by Spectrasonics and Naive Instruments Komplete 7.
During the months of August and September I was totally hooked by the new toys I had to play with, and must of churned out over 3 albums worth or material. Some of which as still never seen the light of day on my cloud. Most of the material I did for my "In Search Of The Lost Souls" album I am still very much working on, even though most of it was done back then.
For the very first time I was now happy with the sound I was getting on my productions, and I actually felt they was really good. Then in the following month I joined Soundcloud and having heard peoples productions on there, I knew something was seriously wrong with my own, and what once sounded good to me, was now sounding naff.
For all those productions back then I used the plugins within both my DAWS Cubase and Abelton for EQ, Compression, Reverb and all the enhancing tools I used on some of the synths. But for some reason these so called production and mastering tools were not doing what they we're supposed to be doing, and you could be fiddling about with the things for hours on end.
Even the so called preset sounds they had in these things were a mile off from what it said it would do, and never spoke to me one bit, and it was at this point I decided to look elsewhere at other developers tools to get a better production to my work.
Having done various research on the internet I came across a company called Waves. This company had raving reviews, but there plugins did come at a price I will say that. But if you want quality then the only real way of getting it is to pay for it. So I started off by buying a few packs at a time, when I had the pennies to buy them.
Since using Waves Plugins I can honestly say I have never looked back, they are far more accurate than anything you are going to find in any DAW and a damn site easier to get by with. But that may also be down to the fact that I am very much an armature, and I just feel far more comfortable using Waves plugins.
Today I am still very much an armature in the field of production work, and I am still learning all the time. I still come across amazing productions on the cloud that leave my work in this field a mile behind.
But that is the real beauty about the cloud, is that it's these things that spur you on to want to improve and get better all the time, , and since joining Soundcloud my own work as improved vastly to my ears, and I no longer feel like jacking it all in, cause I cannot get at least a descent enough sound for my own music.
Headphones.
Sennheiser RS130 (Open Back) Wireless Headphones.
Having a good set of headphones is important for production work, just as much as having a good set of monitor speakers will be, though a decent set of monitor speakers will set you back a lot more than headphones when it comes to cost.
A decent set of headphones will cost you around the £80 mark that is wired ones, and if you're like myself who keeps forgetting they are on my head when gets up to say go to the toilet and rips out the chord from its socket and damages the things, then it's good to get a pair of good wireless ones.
Though please bear in mind no wireless set of headphones are ever going to be nowhere near the quality of a wired set for the same price, you are going to be spending twice as much money on them just to get that quality.
When buying headphones I always find it better to get a brand name that as strong reputation and many years experience in making them. Being in the world of HiFi for many moons and an Hifi enthusiast myself, the only headphones I will ever buy are made by the German company Sennheiser.
I am not stating they make the best Headphones in the world, and there are many other leading brands out there, but the one thing this company has never done is let me down with its superb quality. If they are good enough for Classical Musicians to wear on stage whilst performing live concerts, they are certainly good enough for me.
There are two types of cups or (backs) for headphones namely Closed and Open. Closed Back Headphones will give you a lot more privacy and you will find they also have a lot more bass response in relation to Open Back as they are closed cups and only run in one direction which is directly at your ears.
Open Back Headphones are two way directional (they are less private as other people can hear what your playing if you have them whacked up) this allows the speakers to breath and though they provide less bass response, a good set can still give you a great bass drive.
For my production work it is vital for me to have open cup or (open Back) headphones, this is cause they are going to give more consideration and detail to the other mid and high frequencies and not just the bass.
Though I do also test my final productions on other devices such as my phone as an example, because that is what most peeps play their music on the these days, and I also have a set of Closed Back Sennheiser Headphones for that, rather than use the cheap and nasty things that always come with such devices for free.
All my production work is done on my headphones, as there is no way on earth could I afford a decent set of Monitor Speakers, you would have to be spending anywhere from £600 into the many grand's for those things and they do not come housed in plastic either.
PC Computer Tower.
Self Built PC Desktop Computer.
My PC Desktop Computer is my pride and joy. Most people use a dedicated Desktop or Laptop computer just for their music production and nothing else. I only have one computer and it is used for everything I do on it, which includes watching football, the odd film, playing games (not so much these days) surfing the net, shopping, listening to music and for my music production.
The very first PC I ever brought back in January 2000 for some 2 grand was the last one I ever brought, and every other one since then i have very much built myself, and have built quite a few for many peeps around my local area. I also have repaired countless computers around my local area for peeps and though I do not advertise myself, I get plenty of work from self recommendation.
I have always been fascinated by the home computer and what it can do, and I spend a lot of time on my own.
My computer is not what I would call bang up to date regarding today's technology, but I am not one for keeping up to date by having the latest thing that comes out. You cn tell that by jusat looking at my DAWS here, and the speed that technology changes one would have to spend a fortune to be able to keep up with it. I do however keep up to date reading about technology, and it's another one of my hobbies and interests reading about such things.
My own Tower you see here cost me some £700 for all its components that I have inside it including the case. Every component I put inside it was brand new except for the processor which is an Intel Core 2 Quad Core Q9550 2.8 Ghz CPU. To which I got off ebay in a winning bid for half its price for £130.
The processor is the most expensive part of any computer build, and with all the other components I put inside it including a £200 ASUS XONAR HDAV HDMI 1.3 Soundcard which is used for both Blu Ray and my music, a £100 ATI Graphics Card. A £100 ASUS Motherboard. £80 for 4 Gig's of Kingston Memory and so on, I can honestly say it was damn site cheaper to build myself in relation to buying such a Tower with all these components inside.
It was a damn site even more cheaper for me to build as well, because I never actually spent a penny of my own money to build it, and the £700 I spent to build it came from selling computer parts on ebay to which I had given me over the years in the form of old towers that other peeps had given me when I fixed their computers. So I got rid of the clutter and got myself a bargain in the long run.
Working In The Living Space.
All the work on my music is done in my living room, and like many I do not have the luxury of having my own room to set up a personal home studio. There are a lot of disadvantages not having this option, and the biggest being when I have to record vocals or guitar for a track with the use of my Microphone.
Because of the amount of people I have in the house right now, I am only ever going to get that chance when everyone is out of the house, which may only happen once or twice a week if I am lucky, and even then I have as little time as one to two hours tops to be able to do so.
Doing instrumental tracks with the use of my keyboards only, does not present me with a problem has I can work on those with my headphones on whilst everyone is watching TV. Hence the reason why most of the material on my cloud are in fact more of my keyboard work and instrumental pieces.
The picture here was taken a couple of years back and although I have replaced the LG Monitor with a Samsung one, I very much like fact that it displays my old £4.99 Plastic PC Mic I used to record my vocals with around a year back.
I still have the Mic in a bag upstairs along with some other PC components, and only use my Audio Technica Mic these days. Though I do not have it as a desktop Mic on my desk, as it's pointless having such a thing as a desktop Mic for things such as Skype or for audio conversations with most of my family living back at home.
Guitar.
Yamaha ERG121 Electric Guitar.
I had been after an electric guitar for some time and seen this second hand in Cash Converters priced up at £60. It instantly caught my eye enough to pick it up and I loved how it felt in my hands and just knew it was right for me. At the time there was two other electric guitars in the shop both priced up at around the £120. The one was a Court and the other a Jackson. I picked up both guitars, but they never felt right in my hands like this Yamaha did at half the price.
The Yamaha ERG121 is not an expensive guitar and brand new can be had from anywhere from the £150 mark up to around £179 to which is the retail price. To get it at a third of the price was a right bargain, and it's a very useful tool for me, to not only be more creative with the amount of sounds I already have for such an instrument, with my 4 VST Guitar Racks with thousands of presets guitar sounds plus the ability to make your own of course.
Harmonicas.
Hohner Blues Harps (Many Keys)
Apart from actually singing the Harmonica was the very instrument I learned to play and I can tell you now I never learned to play it on a Blues harp. It was very much a Double Reed Harp. Over the years I have had no end of Harmonicas and I can honestly tell you to this day my fave of them all are in fact Double Reed Harps.
There is a big difference between the both harps and in reality it's down to the scale of having 2 octaves rather than one to which you are only ever gonna get on 8 and 10 hole Blues Harps.
Blues Harps and Folk Harps are only really meant to play the odd melody line to accompany whatever song your are singing. In reality there is no difference between the two harps, and they are in fact the same.
For that style they are great because you can quite easily bend the reeds on them for greater effect, and it's the art of bending those reeds which is the real technique behind those harps, though more so for the Blues Harp.
They are not really designed to play a full tune on such as a song, because they do not have the scale to be able to handle that side of playing, though I can still play such tunes as the theme music to the TV Series "Last Of The Summer Wine" on one. But it would not have the same tonality as it would sound on a Double Reed Harp.
These days I only have Blues Harps or Gob Irons I would refer them too, and the company Hohner make some superb Pro Harps. Though in all honesty I have even had 50p Tin Harps from Japan many moons back that have gave me loads of pleasure playing them, and some more expensive but still cheap Japanese Harps are really good and can even give you as much pleasure as any one made by Hohner.