Trevor Horn

"I had this Oberheim rig, which was a DMX,aDSX and a keyboard."

The "Pro Tools Rig" at Trevor Horn's Sarm West Coast LA studio includes: Mac Pro, Digidesign 192, Apogee Symphony, Apogee AD8000 SE, Digidesign Sync I/O, Pro Tools 10 HD2, Logic Pro X

It was in 1983, while producing at a small studio named the Producer's Workshop on London's Fulham Road, that Steve Lipson received a call asking him to spend a couple of days engineering for Trevor Horn. This would be at Sarm West, where an SSL E-Series console was supplemented by a couple of Studer A80 tape machines.

Horn states in this interview with Roland that his first experience with Roland gear was a TR-808.

This article includes a photo of Trevor Horn at an SSL 4000E console.

"We produced the Bass drum sound on 'Relax' by combining a Linn 2 base drum together with a sampled E-note, played on a bass guitar. There's nothing like this. Most speakers have problems with notes lower than the 'E' on a bass guitar. Nowadays we go up to five notes below the 'E', using synth basses, but you need large speakers for that. The 'E' however has power, even when played on the radio. 'D' isn't bad, too, but the 'E' is better. We combined this sound with a Fairlight, which played a sampled piano sound in quavers. This combination of Linn and Fairlight was also used when the Frankies played the song live." "The 'Relax'-groove was in my Linn 2 long before. It was my favorite pattern and I tinkered on it all the time. I always thought of it as some kind of 'English Square Dance', but when I saw it's impact on the band, I realized that you could make a good dance record out of it."

"It's been astonishing," says Horn. "We've been going through multitracks for this show, and 'Living In The Pastic Age' and 'Video Killed The Radio Star' were both played. We played them from one end to the other because there was no way that you could drop in on the machine that we had. It was a 24-track machine that you could drop in on but it was very hard to get out. You had to do the backing track in its entirety, so both songs — 'Living In The Pastic Age' and 'Video Killed The Radio Star' — were started with just piano, bass, drums and a [Korg MP7] Mini Pops Junior rhythm box, which we played to."

The preamps at Trevor Horn's Sarm West Coast LA studio include: "SSL AWS 924 (24 Channel) Console, Avalon 737sp, Focusrite Red (4 Channel)"

"When I worked with Trevor, our main format was pretty much the Sony 3348 [48-track digital tape recorder]. We also had Digidesign's Sound Designer, which was the beginning of Pro Tools, and which could only be used for two-track digital editing. There was no way you could use it as a stand-alone recorder. Pro Tools crashed all the time, it was a nightmare. I saw it going from twotrack to eight-track, to 24-track. I've worked with Pro Tools from the beginning, so it's not an alien format for me. I love what I can do with it."

"During the recording of 'Relax', having become more familiar with Trevor and his wife Jill, I had suggested that they buy this digital tape machine called a Sony F1. It was a Betamax two-track recorder and it wasn't that expensive, so they went for it, and that was a revelation because we could now record loads of stuff and it was pristine quality."

Trevor Horn's Sarm West Coast LA studio uses a Mac Pro, according to the Sarm website.

Trevor Horn's Sarm West Coast LA studio uses a Digidesign 192, according to the Sarm website.

From the gear list on the website of Trevor Horn's SARM Studio:

BACKLINE & INSTRUMENTS Yamaha Upright Piano Akai MPK 88 Controller Keyboard [Floating] Nord 88 Key Stage Keyboard [Floating] Fender Precision Bass [Floating] Gibson Les Paul [Floating] Takamine Acoustic Guitar [Floating] Gibson J-45 Acoustic Guitar [Floating] Native Instruments Maschine Studio [Floating] Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol 61 Keyboard [Floating] 2 x Avid S3 Pro Tools 16 Fader Control Surface [Floating]

From the gear page on the website of Trevor Horn's SARM Studio:

BACKLINE & INSTRUMENTS Yamaha Upright Piano Akai MPK 88 Controller Keyboard [Floating] Nord 88 Key Stage Keyboard [Floating] Fender Precision Bass [Floating] Gibson Les Paul [Floating] Takamine Acoustic Guitar [Floating] Gibson J-45 Acoustic Guitar [Floating] Native Instruments Maschine Studio [Floating] Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol 61 Keyboard [Floating] 2 x Avid S3 Pro Tools 16 Fader Control Surface [Floating]

From the equipment list of the website of Trevor Horn's SARM studio:

PRO TOOLS RIG 6 core Intel Xeon Mac Pro Pro Tools HDX 1 System running 10.3.9 + 11.2.1 + 12.3.1 Logic Pro X 512SSD System Drive + OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks Avid 16 I/O Interface

“We were always trying to get things to sound different – especially drums. Don’t forget the album was written in 1979 and the only drum machine available was the Korg MiniPops Junior, which did sound rhythms for hotels. The track ‘Living in the Plastic Age’ was the MiniPops Junior put through a flanger."