Christian Burkhardt

Christian Burkhardt – My Studio

My studio can feel like you’re in a club, and without neighbours I can go 24 hours like that.

Monitoring

Monitoring is the most important part of my studio. I go with the Tannoy DMT15 fired by a Bryston BSST and GJ Audio and Adam 12 sub. They sound really detailed and open, but they can also blow the roof off! I also use Yamaha NS10 to see what’s going in the midrange.

Alesis Andromeda

The Andromeda 16-voice analogue synth. I call it the Sven Väth synth because it sounds like a record played by Sven when jamming around with the presets.

But it’s more fun to program it – it has two oscillators, two VCFs (Moog and Oberheim), three LFOs, three ASDR envelopes, a sequencer, an arpeggiator and FX. A million options and a superfat sound!

JoMoX Xbase 888

An 808 clone with many more options than the original. The kick drum has 12 parameters to tweak the sound. The original 808 has only three. You can hear it in nearly every Burkhardt track!

Future Retro 777

Two oscillators plus two sub-oscillators, with a three-pole or seven-pole filter. You can do 303 lines, sub and lead sounds, but I use it for basslines mostly. It has a certain subby sound, powerful and clean – I like!

MFB Tanzbär

The best drummer after Dave Grohl, and at the moment my number one. It has 14 instruments plus two synth voices – completely analogue! I use the sequencer together with my modular system. I really dig the sound. It’s softer compared to the JoMoX 888, so a perfect addition.

My Modular System

My love. I use it for freaky sequences, FX and off the hook sounds, but also special drum sounds and basslines. My most used modules are the Cwejman BLD and Res-4, Vermona LFO, Makenoise Maths and the Phonogene sampler. I trigger it from Ableton, the Makenoise Rene and with the Tanzbär.

The Master Bus System

Compression for drums, bass and the 2-bus channel. After recording my outboard in the computer I edit and rearrange it with Ableton. Then I go again out of the box with single channels. The drums are summed by a Dangerous summing box then the signal goes through a Transient Designer and the TK audio SSL4000 clone. After that the drums, bass and other sounds go into my SSL X-Desk. It’s the centre of my studio – all the signals meet here and go on the 2-bus with Manley Vari-Mu, Dangerous Bax EQ and Höfex exciter.

With this chain my sound goes to another level. The Vari-Mu valve compressor brings all the frequencies together in a nice way. The Höfex spreads the signal with its special room exciter.

Roland Juno 106

My oldest synth. It delivers classic house chords or Captain Future space atmos. You can hear it in my track ‘Ghost’.

My Security Robot

He helps me out in difficult situations!

Automatic Pizza Machine

You can do two pizza margheritas at the same time!