What’s on your hard drive?

What So Not

Aussie producer and DJ Chris Emerson unveils his favourite tools for adding a little chaos in the studio

ABLETON LIVE 10 “I actually started out as a DJ and moved into ‘making songs’ via mash-ups, bootlegs and remixes. Ableton provided the perfect platform for that and I’ve been with it ever since. It isn’t perfect, but what Live does offer is an insane amount of audio manipulation. It lets you do to things that make no sense, but it’s those crazy ideas that make songs stand out.” SONIC CHARGE SYNPLANT “A tool that offers you the chance to experiment. All you need to do is grab a chord progression, set up an arpeggiator on Synplant and get tweaking. Start with the basic stuff, but then you can go right into the DNA of the sound; all sorts of random stuff. Pitch it up, down, flip it all around… even the humble mod wheel seems to add a hint of chaos!” LENNARDIGITAL SYLENTH1 “Although I mess around with a lot of different synths, I only really use two main ones in the studio: Synplant and Sylenth1. If Synplant is the peculiar one, Sylenth1 is the easy-to-handle all-rounder. When struggling for a sound, I always go to Sylenth1.” MAX FOR LIVE “I’ve only really scratched the surface of Max For Live, but what I’ve found – especially the LFO tools – sounds very cool and interesting. There’s so much possibility with Max, but I don’t want to spend all my time with sound design, not making any music. I’ve met people who are brilliant technicians, but when it comes to putting down a bassline, they can’t make a decision.”

“I don’t want to spend all my time with sound design, not making any music”

SOUNDTOYS ECHOBOY “Yeah, it’s a delay, but so much more. It’s that whole thing of modulating sound over time. You’ve got your basic chord progression, but you can send it into EchoBoy and that chord progression becomes ear candy. It’s constantly growing and shifting, and it keeps people interested in your song.”