I’ve been interested in music from an early age and have played various instruments such as the Recorder However one of my my elder brothers Michael, was more advanced and had a electronic drum kit Simmons SDS-1000, and Korg Mono/Poly and Roland SH-101 synths and a bass guitar. He was part of a local band called Choice. My cousin Joseph was part of a well respected reggae band in Ipswich called Jah Warriors also. I liked the drums but never really got into playing, synth and bass were, on the other hand instruments I really liked to play, and I have always played keyboard off an on over the years.
My earliest recordings were through the condenser mic inputs of analog tape recorders, very noisy!
My first keyboard was a Casio SK-200 sampling keyboard which I had alongside an Aria Pro bass and a electric guitar I bought of a school friend along with an old amp and headphone mixing box that doubled as a mixer because you could somehow reverse the outputs with the input. The SK-200 had a limited sequencer and a sampling option and was great fun.
I managed to get a work experience placement at a small recording studio, Toadstool Music, just outside Ipswich in Bramford with a friend of my brother who was in his band. They had a very impressive A&H mixing desk, with a Kawai K4, Alesis Midiverb II and some other bits of kit. I think this got me even more interested in the technical aspects of music and MIDI.
After a few years I was lucky enough to get a Korg M1 music workstation, and built a little studio around that with a Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas and Cheetah SX-16 sampler.
My recordings were a bit better as I recorded into the RCA phono inputs of my Technics tape deck, through a series of Y splitter cables that merged the outputs of all my equipment. Unconventional but it worked!
When I went to university 1993, I lost the drive to write music and gave up for a few years, but picked up again when I returned home in 1996.
I got a rather off the beaten track Generalmusic S3 Turbo, an Italian 88 note weighted keyboard with some interesting sounds and a 88 note weighted keyboard, 6 outputs and 2 sets of MIDI ports.
I built up quite an impressive home studio with a Mackie 1402 VLZ desk, Akai S1000 and later S3000XL sampler, Sony DT1000 ES DAT recorder, Alesis D5 drum machine, Alesis Midiverb 4 FX unit, Yamaha MU100R Sound Module.
It was with this set up that I really explored Drum ‘n’ Bass as a style of music, and wrote my first album, “Long Journey Home” under the artist name Future By Design. The music I did wasn’t really spiritual so I have it on my blog, separate from this site.
I’ve been a believer since birth, I’ve always felt a need to write songs which say something, but ironically most of my early music had no lyrics! That was until my fourth studio attempt, which was very minimal with just a EMU PK-6 and Steinberg Cubase SL3, this was my first foray into digital recording. You can listen to my efforts done under the artist name DCUL.
Currently under the artist name Burnished Bronze, I have a Korg Kronos 2 88 note synthesiser, Allen & Heath QU-32 mixing desk, Roland Integra-7 sound module, Akai Z8 sampler, Kawai K4 synth, Lexicon PCM92 & Kawai RV-4 multi effects, Alesis Midiverb II effects, a BBE 822a Sonic Maximiser, A MAM VSR-3 Spring Reverb, and a Tascam TA-1VP vocal processor. I run Cubase 12 and thank Yah that he has blessed me with the opportunity to explore praising him with music as I do.
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