Studio Essentials: Sailor & I

Sailor & I has for a long time, been a stand-out musical talent not just within his home country of Sweden, but for electronic music as a whole.

His past works have seen him release on labels like Black Butter Records and Life And Death, and his next outing will find him bring his new Diving For Lost Treasure LP to Get Physical’s sister imprint, METAPHYSICAL.

We welcome him to our Studio Essentials series ahead of the album’s release in January, where he highlights several bits of gear from his studio, including his favourite synths, effects units, drum machines and an upright piano.

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It was difficult to list my studio essentials as my studio is an ever changing project. I buy and sell gear on a regular basis, always trying to find inspiration by using new instruments and sound machines that makes me eager to explore new musical worlds.

However, there are some instruments that I probably won’t sell, that will be left for my kids the day I’m gone. And hopefully they or someone near will find it nice to be able to create sounds with them.

I also have this rule that if I don’t use an instrument within 6 months, I need to sell it and buy something new. This forces me to use instruments that I might not have used if I didn’t need to sell them because they would have just been laying around collecting dust.

The thing is, I don’t want to collect a museum of instruments, I just want toys and machines that inspire me, so this rule makes a lot of sense for my workflow.

I wouldn’t call my studio a real music studio. My studio is designed to be a space where I can be creative, which means that everything needs to be nearby, within arms reach. I have two shelves with instruments and a few stands where I keep drum machines and synths that are not qualified to take space on the shelves. Besides keeping instruments and fx units in the shelves, I also have a RME sound interface and a Revox 279 mixing console that most of my instruments are connected to.

This setup makes things easy for me, I don’t need to wire cables, I can just turn the power on and start recording. Below you’ll find some of my favourite instruments that I use at least once a week.

Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 Rev 3.2

The P5 is one of my favorite poly synthesizers. It sounds as good as it looks, just simply amazing. With the P5 you can work on really experimental sound design, creating lush pads, mega bass, organ sounds, harsh leads, you name it! The poly modulation section was unique at the time and makes this instrument really impressive in terms of sound variation capabilities.

Minimoog Model D

I bought this wonderful instrument from a German synth collector. It’s one of the late 70’s Minimoogs. It’s in incredible condition, both cosmetically and 100% functional. It keeps the pitch perfect and never gets detuned, which is normally common for the vintage Minimoogs.

This moog sounds so pure and raw, I can create the most powerful sounds with it, from deep, fat and noisey basses to beautifully weird sounds. The filter and the resonance make a dangerous combination!

Roland Chorus Echo RE-501

The RE-501 is a machine I would recommend anyone to buy. It’s an analog tape delay machine that also includes the incredibly nice and fat sounding chorus and spring reverb, all in one unit. So, basically you have three fx units in one machine. You can use these functions separately or mix them together. I also use the RE-501 as a preamp for guitars, bass, drum machines and synths.

Linndrum

The Linndrum is one of the most iconic drum machines ever built. It has a very distinctive sound as its sounds were made from sampling real drums, not like many other machines – which were created digitally.

It has a built in sequencer for you to create your own patterns and beats, it has a mixer section and separate outputs for all channels on the back. Another feature that is really cool is the swing function, which gives this machine a unique sound, groove wise. It’s both so fun and so easy to use, which makes it the perfect starting point for me when I’m writing songs.

It’s not a surprise why Prince always had his Linndrum going in the studio, jamming parts and creating songs based on the groove of the Linndrum.

Bechstein Model 10

I found this piano on the street. Some guys were about to throw it away and apparently didn’t have a clue or just didn’t care to check if it was worth trying to sell it or not. I offered them €100 to take it to my apartment and now it’s already the center-piece of my creative space.

What I love with a good sounding piano is that you have a wide range of possibilities in the variations of sounds – the richness of overtones melting together, the different spectrums of dynamics of a real piano filling up the room is something out of this world. I also find the piano the most basic instrument used for songwriting as you can play melodies, chords and sing at the same time.

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