Since I moved back to Sweden It’s taken quite a while to get all the gear back up, but now it’s finally in place and all plugged in. One of my goals was to improve my desk space to get better access to my rack units.
Buying a ready made studio desk is both expensive and boring so I decided to ‘build’ my own instead. This would also provide the most compact solution.
I started with an Ikea desk called Galant. You can go for either the corner or straight type. I choose the straight (160 x 80 cm) for space saving. On top of this I put two custom built 6U racks made in solid oak to match the surface of the desk.
I left just enough space between them to fit my 27″ iMac, which I suspended from a monitor arm. The idea was to fit a slanting shelf in front of it to hold my Maschine and some other handy gadgets. You may notice that the desk is 5-10cm too short to fit both racks and the mac, but that’s ok. Hopefully I can upgrade to a bigger space at some point, or get a Mac Pro and a 24″ monitor… :P
Check out the results below, and download the Sketchup file if you want to build your own rack.
Dropbox link to Sketchup file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/din4o7j6icwj88k/6USlantedRack.zip
(Disclaimer: I’m not a carpenter so use the Sketchup drawing at your own risk…)
The first one is a sort of tutorial for a Japanese software called Utau. It’s described as a “singing synthesizer”, and it’s essentially a freeware vocaloid software. It does have a few tricks that set it apart from more commercially established vocaloids, such as the ability for a user to record their own voice and then use that as the basis for synthesizing new words and melodies.
The second magazine is a monthly one called “DTM Magazine”. The reason it looked interesting was because it lists a catalog of software synthesizers and DAWs current for 2013, and I wanted to see what kind of apps / synths are popular in Japan at the moment.
Glitzerstrahl 