What's On Your Hard Drive?

Jay Clarke The British techno star and Klockworks regular reveals a few studio secrets and the importance of… Dropbox

ABLETON LIVE 10

“The reason I love this DAW so much is that it’s so simple. I started using Live in 2008 and it’s been my faithful friend ever since. Everything I need is one click away, not hidden within menus, and that allows me to spend more time being creative. The factory instruments and effects are also used a lot in my idea-generation and productions. They always sound great and, with some saturation and light distortion, you wouldn’t know the sounds were made using a soft synth. After all, synthesis theory is the same if you use softsynths or hardware. My track, Entity, was made solely using Operator and is an example of when I really started to understand the importance of sound design. Recently, I’ve been using a Max for Live sequencer for creating grooves and rhythms which I’ve found works really well. In Dreams, from my forthcoming Klockworks release, was made using solely Ableton instruments. The main synth line and effects hits are from Analogue, which is such a versatile synth. I also used it for the main riff in Drift from my first Klockworks release, and Perdita from my contribution to the KW20 compilation.”

UAD THERMIONIC CULTURE VULTURE

“Last year, I invested in a UAD Apollo Twin soundcard and some plugins. It wasn’t long before I bought some more. I was hooked! I don’t have a large studio space, so the UAD system works perfectly for me. It gives me some iconic devices which are superbly modelled and sound fantastic. This is a plugin model of the distortion/enhancer hardware, so I tend to use it subtly in the mix to add some warmth and grit. On the flip side, you can really push this thing hard and it still sounds great.”