A selection of live improvisations and experimental test recordings...

All Compositions & Recordings Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

Relaxing With Electrons..

I found a couple of lovely old 1960s Gibbs spring reverb tanks I'd rescued years ago in the workshop and had a go wiring them up as a stereo pair - the setup grew on the bench adding an old TEAC RA-41 tape preamp as the recovery amp and my experimental tube vox-box oscillator along with the workshop's trusty Alesis Micron (supposedly only in here for test purposes but somehow ending up on so many recordings!) feeding my old prototype tube BPF box.. high voltage and cables aplenty - it was really quite inspiring... :)

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2021.

A Spring Thing: Having Fun With 1960s Gibbs Spring Reverbs..

To this day the Roland D-50 remains one of the closest to my heart of all the affordable vintage digital synths out there.  There is something utterly unique and timeless about this characterful instrument that I just don't hear in others.  In many ways its weaknesses are its strengths, and time and time again it has proven to me its ability to reinvent itself over the decades with comtemporary patches by some very talented sound designers showing it in a new light,  Its sheer ability to shine through as a genuine synthesizer never fails me and even more amazing considering its now nearly 35 years old.

Patch Used: "Reluctant Rev" (from Soundtracks 2014 Bank by Mark Rushbury)

This live improv was recorded in one take through a Roland SRV-330 reverb and stereo delay.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2021.

1987 Roland D-50: The Fantasia Machine...

Trying out a glittery new patch I made on my trusty 1989 Waldorf microWave Rev.B in the studio.  The Microwave is sounding great through the stereo twin-Gibbs spring reverb I recently made using a old TEAC RA-41 1/4" tape preamp modified to run as a standalone recovery amplifier - the result is delightfully smooth and dark.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2021

1989 Waldorf microWave I: All That Glitters...

Made with several overdubs of various signal sources fed through a gorgeous 1968 Brüel & Kjær type 2107 all-tube regenerative swept band pass filter during final testing following the resurrection/restoration of yet another of these unique and wonderful units with modifications for creative use in the studio. 

The 2107 pass frequency is hand cranked to reveal harmonic content at up to a 50dB per octave crest.  At this sort of resonance little that comes out of the beast sounds even remotely similar to what goes in so its to fun to catch the harmonics on way whilst cranking the huge tuning dial.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2022.

1968 Brüel & Kjaer type 2107: Down to Band Pass Creek

Made with several overdubs of white noise and a lab pulse generator fed through a gorgeous 1968 Brüel & Kjær type 2107 all-tube regenerative swept band pass filter during final testing following the resurrection/restoration of yet another of these unique and wonderful units with modifications for creative use in the studio.

The 2107 pass frequency is hand cranked to reveal harmonic content at up to a 50dB per octave crest. At this sort of resonance little that comes out of the beast sounds even remotely similar to what goes in so its to fun to catch the harmonics on way whilst cranking that huge tuning dial.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2022.

1968 Brüel & Kjaer type 2107: Grasslands of Kjær

Made with several overdubs from a 1964 Servomex LF141 laboratory signal generator with the aux. oscillator sync'ing the main oscillator causing it to lock on to various harmonics.

Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2022.

1964 Servomex LF141: Six Sync'd Sines..

Blending a few layers of samples taken from 1938 Hammond Novachord No.346 with some previous live recordings I'd captured from the beast suddenly had me daydreaming of Lulworth Cove and the Jurassic Coast which is one of my favourite places on planet earth.

Obviously the Novachord doesn't sound like this out of the box but it often amazes me how easily just a few carefully chosen layers of material from the beast can quickly end up producing huge ensembles and washes especially when some are played at half speed.  I think this is in part due to the Novachord's six free-running vibratos which produce a very organic sea of wobbly goodness.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2023.

Jurassic Daydreams (Layered 1938 Novachord)

A live recording of two alternating crunchy 8-bit cluster chords playing out of a Jarkko AVR Hardware Amiga Module Player into a pair of lovely Bruel & Kjaer type 1621 band pass filters running at around 60dB/octave whilst hand cranking both centre frequencies...

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2023.

Dual Bruel & Kjaer type 1621: Jarkko Kluster 01

A single loop fed into a pair of late 1960s Brüel & Kjær type 2112 all tube band pass filters following restoration and modification for creative studio use at Hideaway Studio each manually tuned in 1/3rd octave steps to produce a shifting harmonic effect...  the content of the loop is never changed - the perceived note changes are only due to their harmonic content being shaped by the highly selective nature of the filters.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

Two 1968 Brüel & Kjaer type 2112: Natural Resonance

A quick test recording made from a series of samples taken from a gorgeous late 1960s Brüel & Kjær type 1024 "Sine-Random Generator" - an all tube based design that found its way into some of the most prestigious acoustics labs around the world and turns out to be a wonderful source of really quite haunting wobbly and warbly sine tones.

Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

1960s Brüel & Kjaer type 1024: Random Sines

I made this test recording today trying out my new MIDI Joystick I built to remotely control various vector synths in the studio and decided to dedicate it to my fellow vintage synth guru John Leimseider who tragically and unexpectedly passed away on Saturday 16th September 2018 at 66 years old.  

John was the one I aspired to as my golden standard for many years now - a talented and kind engineer driven by sheer passion and what must have been the patience of a saint!  I miss shuttling emails between us exchanging our unique experiences working on some pretty rare and exotic vintage studio gear over the years.  We had helped each other out on a number of occasions when we'd got stuck.

Our community has lost one of the best..  Rest in Peace John...

This piece was made with a Korg Wavestation A/D and an AKAI S612 kitted out with a Hideaway Studio Front Panel Animator both modulated from the MIDI joystick.. the sample start and filter cutoff in the case of the 612.

Original Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2018.

The Maritime Continuum: RIP John Leimseider

Made by feeding a single sustained chord played from a Studio Electronics Omega 8 into a classic Brüel & Kjaer type 2113 L/C band-pass resonator bank, sampled through 21 different filter settings, and then randomly sequenced live into a 1969 Dolby A301 for some multi-band compressed magic!...

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio

Brüel & Kjaer type 2113: Random Resonations...

An experimental recording by D.A.Wilson made by feeding a single sustained chord from a Roland D-110 into a Hideaway Studio Triple Tube Hybrid Phaser in turn feeding both Watkins Copicat and Ace-Tone EC-10 tape delays and a Fender "oil-can" Echo-Reverb as well as a hand cranked Bruel & Kjaer type 1621 swept band-pass filter and a type 1615 Band Pass Resonator Set via a tube mixer, all mixed/layered in parallel and recorded onto 1/4" tape on a Sony TC-399 1/4" tape machine...

Probably one of the most complex and exotic analog phasers ever devised, the Triple Tube Hybrid Phaser was originally designed for Jean-Michel Jarre by D.A.Wilson at Hideaway Studio and is one of only a very small handful ever built.

On a huge custom pcb it comprises of three 4-stage phaser blocks similar to the Small Stone with tube (ECC83) pre-amp and post amps and tube buffers between each phaser. The OTA based phasers are combined in an unusual series/parallel arrangement with their own regen paths each modulated by one phase of a triple phase LFO generator thus allowing the phase spread to be set between each phaser block from all three on top of one another for a huge plunging effect to being 120 degrees out for a swirly effect. There are variable controls for the LFO offset, depth, rate and spread as well as a variable regeneration level.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2019.

Triple Tube Hybrid Phaser: Gaussian Shorelines

Warping time using FM encoded tape... here two intertwining arpeggiated patches from my Blue Zone Kontakt library were recorded at 240bpm using only keys from the top two octaves onto two (out of 7) tracks of a TEAC MR-30 Laboratory Analog Data Recorder at 38cm/sec.  The FM encoded audio was then played back at 9.5cm/sec thus restoring the pitch but time stretching everything around it including reverb, delays and modulation effects.  The result is quite magical – not least because the tape machine itself adds a load of mojo in terms of smearing/limiting/filtering/noise resulting in a sort of crusty sonic Sepia effect.

No additional reverb has been added - its mearly the original reverb and delay tails ending up 4 times longer due to the tape speed reduction.

The MR-30 was originally intended as an Instrumentation Recorder to capture mainly slow DC signals (yes, it will record CV in parallel with audio!) and vibrations from transducers in laboratory experiments but it turns out the unit is capable of recording 7 tracks of audio concurrently well into the audio range (about 10KHz)and can playback and record at 6 different speeds from 1.2 to 38cm/sec.  In max speed a C90 lasts less than 10 minutes!

Here is the recording... warts and all.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2020.

1983 TEAC MR-30 Slo-Mo: Molécules d'eau (Lo-Fi FM Encoded Tape Experiment)

Recorded in just two takes, Alto Volo is a live improvised duet conceived and performed by D.A.Wilson on string ensemble (Hollow Sun/Hideaway Studio Novachord) and Thomas Grillo on Theremin in 2010.

For more on the 1938 Novachord see www.novachord.co.uk

2016 Digitally Remastered Version Copyright D.A.Wilson & Thomas Grillo.

D.A.Wilson & Thomas Grillo - Alto Volo (Theremin)

One of two new additions to The Blue Zone Series for Kontakt 4.2.4 and above....

Tri-Phased Intervals was made by capturing several long samples of a late 60's Philicorda GM751 fed into the Triple Tube Hybrid Phaser and analog chorus and then transposed down and resampled as bailed intervals.  

For more information please visit: www.hideawaystudio.net

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio

The Blue Zone Series - Tri-Phased Intervals

The latest release in The Blue Zone Series for Kontakt 4.2.4 and above.  Made with help from the Dual Tube Hybrid Filter where both the tube BPF and multimode filter stages were in near resonance with both cutoff CV channels modulated by an LFO.

For more information and downloads please visit:  www.hideawaystudio.net

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio

The Blue Zone Series - Cyclic Resonance Demo

Heavenly One is the latest addition to The Blue Zone Series by Hideaway Studio for Kontakt 4.2.4 and above.  The synth harp was made with a recently revamped 1985 Crumar Bit One and the pad is a blend of 8 instruments to form an evolving cyclic phaser effect.

To download this instrument and more please see my blog:  www.hideawaystudio.net

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio

The Blue Zone Series - Heavenly One Demo

A celebration of my life-long love of all things glass... 

A mood piece consisting of a composite of excerpts from a large collection of test recordings made during the highly experimental Thermionix sound design project with a whole array of various discrete sound generation and processing methods. The project eventually laid the foundations for the extremely popular Blue Zone Series for Kontakt. 

Believe it or not, the main rhythm is a humble Korg Minipops 45 sent through a tube ring modulator and into a Watkins Copicat tape delay...

Some of the equipment used: Hideaway Studio Triple Tube Hybrid Phaser & Dual Tube Hybrid Filter. Hideaway Dual Tube VCA and Transformer Ring Mod, Korg Minipops 45, Watkins Copicat, Bruel & Kjaer 1615 and 1621, Derritron TF-1 (Evolving swept harmonics effect), Hideaway Studio S612 Front Panel Animator (Hole Saw Bells with animated sample offsets & Sustained Halo), Custom Bogen Tube Mixer, SONY DAL-1000 Digital Audio Limiter.

Recording, Composition & Photograph Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2020.

Thermionix: Red Tiffany

Having fun layering an assortment of patches I dialled into my 2004 Studio Electronics Omega 8..  

I have always liked the array of multi-mode filters this synth has to offer - it adds a great deal more sonic potential to an often overlooked and very capable analog beast.

NB:  Although it might sound like it, no phasers were used in this recording.. what you are hearing is copious use of the superb band-pass and high-pass filters in the Omega 8 being modulated by the LFOs.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2021.

2004 Studio Electronics Omega 8: Spring Cycles...

D.A.Wilson is an Electronic Engineer, Sound Designer & Vintage Synth Specialist with a particular interest in combining vintage tube, classic analog and modern digital technologies working as a synth engineer looking after a very considerable amount of vintage studio equipment for Will Gregory (Goldfrapp / Moog Ensemble) and a number of other internationally celebrated electronic musicians and producers.  Having undertaken several major restorations and produced custom electronic designs for a number of major artists including Jean-Michel Jarre, Dani is also known for fully restoring two out of the world's four remaining 1979 Crumar GDS and partially restoring 1938 Novachord 346 (the only known operational Novachord in the UK) to playable order along with developing and producing the new Elfin family of 8-bit polysynths and the popular MIDI Front Panel Animator (FPA), Filter Defeat Module (FDM) and XD-280 Drive Emulator upgrades for the AKAI S612 sampler.

Demos of the S612 Upgrades in Action: 

https://soundcloud.com/hideaway-studio/sets/hideaway-studios-s612-front


Hideaway Studio Kontakt Sound libraries may be purchased directly from: 
https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/hideaway-studios
 

..and a nice introduction by Cory Pelizzari to the Hideaway Studio Kontakt Libraries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-C7a3ChC9U&feature=emb_title


For more on releases from Hideaway Studio for Kontakt please visit the blog at:  www.hideawaystudio.net