Me in my studio: Jori Hulkkonen

Intro

"Hello, I'm Jori Hulkkonen and this is my studio. The AlppIVhouz studio, is the 4th in the series of my Alppihouz-studios. The original one I named after the part of the city where I recorded in Oulu at the time, Alppila, and the name kinda stuck from there, thru Helsinki to now Turku.

"I've had this place now for 5 years. It's a great location in the center of the city and a five minute walk from my home. It's soundproof, has a window, and it has enough space for my recordcollection and all the gear, plus there's a lounge with a pool table, football table and my old Atari 2600!

"The idea with this studio is to have the hardware on one wall, separated from the computer allowing me to have different methods of working, and also enabling me to do my radioshows here, record vocals and even accommodate the accidental studio guest."

Studer mixer

"The Studer mixing desk. This was used by the Finnish national broadcasting company and at some point they decided to go all digital and they got rid off all the vintage gear.

"Apparentlythis particular mixer had been in Barcelona to broadcast the olympics in '92 as it had stickers on it. It has a fantastic sound, I use it as mic preamp, and also run a lot of stuff from the computer through it to warm up the sound."

Roland TR-808

"What can I say, it's the 808. I still use it a lot in the studio, I have it controlling the sequencers on the modular gear. I just love the ease of programming it.

"Also, I use it a lot live, just last weekend I played a live set with just the 808 and small case of modular stuff, I didn't even use the separate outputs on the 808, just one line, and then distorted that on an old Boss mixer. Good times, they were."

Performer synth

"The Solton Programmer. A vintage Italian synth/workstation from the mid 80's. I got it very recently: and I think I'm in love. I think it was quite ahead of its time.

The PCM drums, analogue bass, one analogue lead synth and then polyphonic strings/organ section you record on 1-bar sequencer loops that you can then toggle between live, with separate outputs even for every drumsound. MIDI and Trig out. What's not to like? Check out Fotonovela by Ivan from 1985, that was done with this, sans the accordion and violins - yes, I know how that sounds..."

Cubase controllers

"The Steinberg controllers, CC121 and two fader pads for hands on controlling Cubase. I've been using Cubase since the late 80s with atari, and nowadays PC (the Mac Mini you see there is the 'office' computer).

"I really like dedicated controllers like this, where you can just work with your hands and not mouse. I spend so much just staring at the screen, I love it when you have the option to close your eyes, focus on music, but still keep adjusting EQ, FX or whatever."

Synth station

"Next to the computer, away from the 'analogue wall' where most of the hardware is, I have a small modular set up featuring the semimodular Dark Energy, some eurorack and Roland system 100m, with creamware minimax. This set up let's me throw ideas down pretty quickly."

Emulator II

"Floppytime! I can't say that I use the Emulator II that much, but when I do, it's always classy. It's the one gear I have that really makes me feel nostalgic - something I try to avoid.

"Music should be about new things, the future, not middle-aged vintage synth-drooling, but there's just something about the design and the user interface of this machine that is just beautiful."

Records

"Can I mention my record collection? 15'000+ vinyl 12", 80s new wave, pop, house, electro, techno and indie. In my life I've sold one record from the collection, in 1995, and even that I bought back a couple of years ago.

"That is, I've kept every record I ever got/bought. Not sure why. But it's a great thing to have a backcatalogue of dope music to dwell into for ideas or even samples, although I try not to sample that much."

Korg synth

"The Korg PS3100, probably my most beloved synth. 48-voice polyphonic semimodular. It gets very Jarre-ish easily, but is amazing for deep detroity pads, and patchbay makes it usable with my modular gear (although Korg uses different standards from euro/roland)

"Some wonderfully weird FX and bleeps courtesy of "modulation generators" and "voltage processors"

Genelec Monitors

"These Genelec speakers were some of the first models the Finnish company ever manufactured, also from Finnish broadcasting company.

"Housed inside a Yamaha box, they sound amazing and allow to test tracks at near club-volume levels, although not too many clubs sound that good."

The modular

"The main modular system, I like to call Marja-Liisa (named after a finnish skier), eurorack, mostly Doepfer but very cool modules also from analogue solutions, synthesis technology malekko and many others.

"I use it for everything. I make drumsounds with it, bass, arpeggios, leads, but also use it polyphonically for pads/strings/keys thanks to the Doepfer mcv24. I just like the way it eases you from the computer screen and let's you create sounds from scratch. I also use it for processing external audio, such as vocals. The spring reverb, BBD-delay, resonators phase shifters etc make a great tool for creating dope vocal FX."