What’s on your hard drive?

Gregor Tresher He likes his kicks, but Frankfurt’s techno meister never forgets about the melody

STEINBERG CUBASE 8.5 “In the Atari days, I started on Cubase and stuck with it for many years. But everybody seemed to be using Logic, so about eight years ago I switched. It was the most unproductive period of my life! Great program, but the audio management wasn’t what I wanted. I swapped back and can’t see me ever changing again.” NATIVE INSTRUMENTS BATTERY 4 “I’ve got the full Native Instruments package and this is my main drum tool. It handles all the basic elements like kick, hats, clap and snare… I usually start a song with a basic rhythm track and like to work quickly. If the loop is getting seriously complex, I might give Battery a little bit of help from FXpansion’s Geist.” FIVE12 NUMEROLOGY 4 “I got my musical education from bands like Depeche Mode and New Order; bands with a love of melody. And I prefer to create my melodies on a sequencer… maybe the fact that it’s a little bit clunky makes it more interesting. I haven’t worked out why, but it occasionally skips a note and your tune feels wonky. I like that!” UNIVERSAL AUDIO PULTEC PRO EQ “For me, EQ has to be easy to work with, but also capable of crazy things. That often means a combination of Cubase’s onboard EQ – for killing those annoying frequencies – and the Pultec. It gives so much glorious colour to your music. If you want to give your hats some hiss, nothing beats it!”

“Will it replace the hardware synth? No, the two will work together”

KORG MONO/POLY “The hardware Mono/Poly has been one of my favourite synths for a long time. With the four oscillators, you can go from small, heavily filtered sounds to big, bright melodies. And now I’ve got a software version! I haven’t really had time to fully explore it, but I like what I’ve heard. Will it replace the hardware synth? No, the two will work together.”