I like this idea that the single instrument sessions add up. They really do. Not only in the material produced but also in the knowledge and comfort with the instrument.
My studio building was built from the ground up from an acoustic layout contributed by John L Sayers. Construction included a dead channel, resilient channel, U-boats, no perpendicular angles or parallel surfaces, all that… My ears are well tuned to the room and the speakers, now after 9 years. I have finally settled on an ergonomic configuration for 3x Elektrons and a few other small pieces. There couldn’t be a better place to create. However, I am most comfortable sitting inside my home, on the sofa with a single Elektron instrument. Sometimes I have headphones on, sometimes I’m patched into a 20 year old pair of Tannoy 6.5" speakers across the room. I consider it my Studio B. It gives me a casual place to stay productive when I don’t want to make the symbolic 75 foot journey to the studio building, and deal with the pressures I impose on myself in doing so. I’ve written many tracks in “Studio B”, some even recorded to 2 track into my laptop right there, only making it to the actual studio for some mastering touches.
Getting back to creating…
There is just so much power in focusing on pulling as much as you can from that one instrument. This has greatly influenced my live sets, as they are more of a multitrack mix of songs that live mostly on a single instrument, than they are a homogenization of everything. There are some songs I write with all 3, and they sound vastly different and their power lies more in the sonic sense than the compositional sense.
Ultimately, I think it’s a great benefit to have more than one place to be creative with your music. I’ve brought my A4 to work to organize patches and ended up starting a track there.
