Studio Desktop Changes

While I was working on finished the last album I was annoyed about some ergonomics in my studio, so I decided to start changing some stuff. The first thing I did was buying a new keyboard. I'm working a lot in the dark and even though I can type blind, you have to start on the right key ;) This new Logitec keyboard is illuminated, so the letters on the keys light up in the dark. And it is a much higher quality keyboard than the two I had previously on my desk. I use a tool called Input Director now to use this single keyboard and mouse on 3 separate computers. Basically this tool makes it feel like they are one computers with 6 screens attached to it :) I also got a new wireless trackball after that in stead of a mouse. That saved a lot of space on the desktop to start with.

Then I moved a lot of stuff around on the desk to see what was most convenient. I ended up moving the Jazzmutant Dexter to the right of my keyboard. It used to be on the left, but since it is possible to control both my Audio and Video PC with it, it was more logical to put it on that side. I had to move the Symbolic Sounds Paca away from the desk to make room for the remote of the Kurzweil KSP8. That had to go more to the back. And the Paca is now right in front of my on the upper layer of my main desk, just under the screens. A much better place actually than it was in before. Maybe I'm going to use it more often now. Who knows. I haven't done much with it yet to be honest. I had to move the Arturia Origin a little bit to the right as well. It is a bit out of line now with the rack mounts behind it, but who cares? ;)

And then suddenly I had space left on the left of my keyboard. I decided to hook up my old Kore 1 controller again. I'm using some Kore 2 SFX plugins lately and Kore 2 still supports this old controller as well. It is nice to have more hand on control over the parameters. And when I was thinking about how nice knobs are I though well maybe in the space that is left I should find another midi controller of some sort. And I decided to go for a Novation Zero SL MK2. I initially looked for the Old MK1 because it has two displays, but several people told me that I'd better go for the MK2 because of drivers support with Windows 7 64 bits etc. Also the new Automap software will be developed for the MK2. I'm not even sure if I'm going to use the Automap feature since Sonar has its own ACT for this purpose, so probably it will stick in Midi mode.

And here is a little overview picture. I already did some work today again in the studio. And I must say it it quite an improvement :) Just a bit more ergonomic and also some extra knobs to tweak around with. It looks like a very small change, but actually this took me two days ;) Of course this was the fifth variation I tried and every thing is attached to cables as well that I had to redo from the back. And that means crawling behind the desk etc. Ah well I'm not complaining actually I like doing stuff like that. I still have some more stuff on my todo list for the coming week. So probably I'll post another update in the near future about the rest of the work I did. Oh and it all looks better in the dark of course so I'll try to post some pictures later on as well how it looks with the lights off. Well enough for today.