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Harman Pro UK Helps Producer Bridge the Analogue/Digital Divide

Gareth Johnson’s star is on the rise. Since founding his own independent music production company 18 months ago (the aptly-named Stand Alone Productions), the talented young London-based multi-instrumentalist producer and programmer has enjoyed success in a number of areas, creating scores for films, PlayStation games and TV programmes for Channel 4, ITV and the BBC, as well as taking on remix and production work for a variety of big name artists, including Razorlight, Goldfrapp, Anthony and the Johnsons, and Natalie Imbruglia, and working with renowned producer Youth. Somehow, he still finds time to work for the Teenage Cancer Trust, and on a range of his own musical projects, including Skulpture, an album of what he calls “glitches, bleeps and crazy experimental sound design for film soundtracks and computer games”, experimental hard rock band Kill Stereo, and Elfinloves, an electronic folk duo.

Comfortable with recording on anything from a dictaphone to a step sequencer, and with anything from a guitar to a virtual analogue synth, Gareth is one of the new technology savvy breed of producers who might start a recording with a sung idea into a portable tape recorder or the memo function on his mobile phone, flesh it out as a live band recording to two inch tape in the studio, add beats concocted in Ableton Live, mash the whole thing together in Pro Tools and then finish off the production in Apple’s Logic. His latest project, an orchestral/electronic crossover which necessitated several months of heavy programming and preparation, and two days of recording at London’s Angel studios with 60 members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, reflects his ease with this level of stylistic diversity.

As befits his varied musical work, Gareth’s studio contains everything from a Studer A80 multitrack tape machine, Allen & Heath analogue desk and a spring reverb unit to a Mac–based computer workstation loaded with plug-ins. So when the time came recently to get a new reverb unit in preparation for recording the strings on his next orchestral/electronica crossover project, Gareth knew exactly what he wanted: a reverb that would be as at home in the hardware domain as it was running under Logic. It had to be Lexicon’s MX400. Keen to see if it would do everything it promised, he contacted Harman Pro UK, Lexicon’s UK distributor, who kindly agreed to provide one on a short term loan. Once he plumbed it into his studio, he found it confirmed everything he’d read about it.

Launched last year, the MX400 offers Lexicon’s market-leading, realistic and fully controllable digital reverb technology in a hardware package that can be placed completely under the control of a computer-based sequencer. When hooked up to the host computer via USB, the MX400 appears as a software plug-in to the sequencer, and can be controlled entirely from the computer. Settings saved in the sequencer are automatically transmitted to the MX400 when you start a session after a break, just as they are with plug-in instruments and effects. The big advantage, though, is that the host computer isn’t burdened with the DSP-heavy task of producing the reverb itself, as that continues to happen in the external MX400 hardware.

“The MX400 could have been made for me,” says Gareth enthusiastically from his studio. “I wanted a good reverb to use on orchestral strings, and Lexicon’s is the one name that everyone always recommends. It had to be the MX400, because it’s got the computer integration if I want that, but I can use it patched into my Allen & Heath desk with the Studer A80 16 track just as easily. It’s flexible, easy to program, and once you hear it in action… well, why would you ever want anyone else’s reverb? I’m really grateful to Harman Pro UK for letting me try it out — but I’m afraid they’re not getting this one back!”

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Harman Pro UK Helps Producer Bridge the Analogue/Digital Divide

23rd February 2007

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