Welcome
A regular fixture in the Beatport charts, Dutch house/techno DJ and producer Joris Voorn has a couple of albums and a slew of remixes to his name, and has also set up Rejected, his own record label. Future Music recently headed over to Amsterdam and climbed the steps to his loft-based studio.
Studio overview
When asked to explain his studio philosophy, Voorn replies: “I do love the real instrument part of having hardware, even just the aura of having these bits of equipment around me just makes me feel like I’m in a real studio. Having the opportunity to put signals from Ableton [Live] through nice bits of hardware and generating new sounds this way is really nice.”
Roland TR-909
“When I started, techno was still pretty big, so I decided that I needed to have a 909,” says Joris. “I bought the 808 as well, but the 909 has a much tougher sound on the floor. I don’t use it much now - apart from the odd sample here and there.” You’ll also note that sitting on top of the drum machine is another classic Roland box - a TB-303.
Outboard
Joris has a small but significant stack of outboard gear - he describes the Zoom 9150 delay (third from top) as being “really simple, but very nice to use”. Then there’s the Lexicon MPX1 reverb: “I bought this a while ago; again it was used on the track MPX309 - hence the reason it’s called MPX309. I haven’t used it at all really after that but it being on that record meant that it paid for itself.”
Finally, Joris has TL Audio’s C-1 (bottom): “I used to use this as a master bus compressor, but I try to keep the mixes much more open now and don’t really need this sort of compression on the master channel.”
Computer and monitors
Unsurprisingly, there’s a computer at the heart of Joris’s setup - a Mac running Logic (favourite plug-ins include Omnisphere, Sylenth1 and Battery) - while monitoring is taken care of by a pair of Genelec 1031a speakers. “They’re really crisp and clear but with enough of a clubby sound for me to hear what the tracks will sound like on the floor.”
What's next?
“I’m trying to work on a new album, but there’s too many people asking me for remixes at the moment,” admits Joris. “I’ve stopped remixing for small labels to cut back on the amount, but there are always remixes that are worth doing.”
