About

I will never forget the first time I heard The Prodigy. I was 14 years old, living in Cyprus, and my Norwegian classmate had his cousin visiting for the week. I think it was in 1995. He gave me a cassette tape with “The Prodigy – Experience” written on it. I listened to the first track ‘Jericho’ and I was immediately blown away. I had never heard such fantastic noise before. I became obsessed with the album and learned each song inside out. Fortunately their second album was also already out so I soon had it in my collection.

Over the years I discovered more and more electronic music like The Orb, Chemical Brothers, Future Sound of London, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Orbital and a lot of psychedelic trance music from Trust in Trance records. There was one main sound I loved from a lot of these artists/acts. I had no idea what it was but it made me happy, it sounded so squelchy and strange, in tune but sometimes not. I did not know what it was called but I knew I wanted to try and make my own music and I wanted to produce that sound.

It was the sound of the TB-303.

I discovered it through the Steinberg Rebirth program. I would sit and play around with it for hours upon hours, messing around with the TR-808 and TR-909 drum sounds and the effects you could add to them. I was in heaven. At some point I started recording all my songs on to cassette tapes (which unfortunately were lost a long time ago) and I thought I had made it. I was a musician! Even though thinking back they were dreadful songs, but I enjoyed every moment of it.

I really wanted this “TB-303 thing” I was reading about. I looked around all the music stores but none of them had it so I ended up with an MC-303. This was the beginning of my journey into hardware synths and drum machines. For years I had no idea what I was doing with them and I would buy whatever I could get my hands on for cheap prices. I have bought and sold a lot of instruments but now all I want to do is to make them.

Skipping to present day – I was a freelance graphic designer for 15 years before deciding to get into DIY electronics for music equipment and repairs. Now that I understand a lot more about how everything works, and have experience in design which helps with the aesthetic side of things, I am ready to start building everything I could ever dream of. These things take time and patience but I am ready to clone my favourite pieces of hardware and more importantly start designing and building my own.

So I thank you for reading a little bit about myself and hope that you join me in my documentation of building my ultimate workstation. I have no idea how long it will take but I know where I want to go!