Mark Griffiths Music
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I've seen huge changes in the technology since I began.
Recording has become cheaper. I used tape recorders which were very
expensive and still very limited in the number of tracks and of course the
only "undo function" was to erase the tape. At the end of the 80s was I able
to start software sequencing (Cubeat on an Atari) so when I
returned to recording in 2003 things had moved on somewhat. I have
remained with Steinberg and now use Cubase. The story with instruments is similar but with a twist. Hardware synthesisers were I think relatively much more expensive than they are today. I started with a simple Roland SH2 monosynth, which I still have. I produced my first two tapes just using that plus a Roland CSQ100 sequencer. I added a second hand Yamaha DX9 so that I could play chords. I was given (yes given) a Roland SH101 and then got a Roland U20 rompler for "natural sounds", strings and choirs. Even though I feel hardware is much cheaper these days, it's still not cheap and a major enabler for my return to music was the advent of soft synths. I rapidly got a number of these to give me the kind of sonic arsenal that only existed in my dreams before. By 2006 things turned full circle as I started to feel frustrated with some of the software that emulated analogue hardware. Basically some of the more complex systems didn't work properly and I missed the physical presence of an instrument. I became interested in modular synthesis and have bought some modules that I now use together with the soft synths. I have long have an interest in speech, particularly processed speech and in 2008 started using vocoders in pieces.
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