Michael Brook

ALTHOUGH BEST NOTED FOR HIS GUITAR WORK, Michael Brook also makes use of synthesised sound in the form of a Yamaha DX7, TX7 and a pair of TF1 modules in a TX816 rack. They don't play a particularly prominent part in his music, but they retain a strong individual identity courtesy of some sympathetic and effective programming — a rare feat in these days of FM preset mania

Recording: Allen & Heath Sabre 24:16:2 Mixing Desk Atari 1040ST Computer running C-Lab Notator software Digital Music MX8 MIDI Patchbay Fostex E16 Multitrack Panasonic 3700 DAT Machine Rauch Amp Sony DTC1000 DAT Machine Yamaha MCS2 MIDI Control Station Yamaha NS1000 Monitors

When Michael Brook gets going, this deliciously trance inducing music is produced. Repeating guitar phrases, ethnic percussion, and scintillating chordings all combine to produce a sound of intuitive brilliance. Just like Hybrid, Distant Village, and Midday from his debut, he knows how to mix interesting noises. Funnily enough a Casio 202 was used on that album, and the murky swamp percussion sound was produced by feeding real percussion into a compressor, then an AMS pitch-shifter, then into speakers which fed back the results an octave higher.

"Well I remember using the Electro-Harmonix 16-second digital delay, which was pretty radical for that time. You could have 16 seconds of delay and play whole phrases on top of each other. We also did a lot of improvising at the editing stage - sort of chopping pieces up, playing new parts, and editing them together again. We also used a Yamaha CS80 synth on Hybrid, and of course there was the buzz bass - a modified instrument which sounds like a bass sitar. It produces a beautiful sound. The idea was really taken from a tambura - it's like a cross between a bass guitar and a tambura. I also used this little Hawaiian guitar quite a lot actually."

"The monitors are Yamaha NS 1000s - they've got a big, beautiful sound. Then there's the 16-track Fostex, the Atari C-Lab, the patch panel... Here's a fantastic Eventide H3000 harmonizer. This is a thing I made called a VEWA - a vocal effects waveform animator. It adds vocal-like formants to a signal. It's sort of like a random vocoder. I used it quite a bit on Hybrid. This here is a Lexicon LXP1 digital reverb, which has an incredible quality to it. The Yamaha TX802 is the synthesizer I use. This Bel digital delay line I use live a lot. It produces 13-second loops in sync with MIDI, so it's like having a rhythm guitarist who can play for 13 seconds - that's very important for my live work. Here's the Yamaha SPX90 and Roland reverb I use sometimes."

"This piece here is a Drawmer M500, which does everything: compression, noise gating, limiting... it does nice tremolo, also, and in time with the music. I don't think anything else does that. Then there's a DAT machine, the infinite guitar box, a DX7, pedal boards, the buzz bass, and the Hawaiian guitar. How's that?"