Page 44 - Zone Magazine Issue 012

whats in your studio?
Steve Helstrip, aka The Thrillseekers has been at the forefront of the global trance scene for some 15 years. From his first single 'Synaesthesia' through to countless club classics including 'The Last Time', 'Affinity', 'Es Vedra (with Aly & Fila)' and more recently 'Just Because' and “Amber'. As a DJ Steve continues to captivate crowds the world over and has recently performed at Aly & Fila's headline FSOE450 event at the historic site of Karnak Temple in Egypt. The end of 2016 also sees Steve release a brand new artist album entitled 'Escape' on Future Sound of Egypt.
You have been involved in music nearly all your life. From your time spent in college, your 90's house group days with 'The Flood' right up to the current day as a Trance Music pioneer. What was the first piece of music equipment you ever bought and have you still got it?
My first proper synth, which I saved and saved for, was a Kawai K1. It was an 8 part wavetable synth, which I learned to program inside out. I used to spend my nights recreating patches from my favourite artists at the time: Depeche Mode, Erasure, Human League, etc. My school had a Yahama QX21 hardware sequencer, which my music teacher used to let me take home, since no one at school had any idea what it was, let alone how to use it!
Nowadays electronic music is almost entirely made within the box and you have mentioned in interviews that you now also work within the box. Do you feel that the countless hours you spent learning your craft on physical synths and hardware, gives you a slight edge over newer producers today and do you think they miss out because of that?
If I was starting over today, I would be massively overwhelmed by the amount of equipment that’s included in any DAW, let alone the countless number of plug-ins
that are available on top. The way I learned was to buy 1 piece of kit at a time, which I spent months learning inside out. Ultimately, this teaches you how to get the best out of it. So, after I had a synth and a sequencer I went on to buy a delay unit, then a reverb, then more synths, etc. Having the time to learn each of these bits of kit individually certainly broadened my knowledge and taught me to dig deep into the settings. Of course, today we have endless tutorials online, but learning from the ground up has given me a deeper level of understanding, I reckon.
You have posted numerous videos across social media which feature Urs Heckmann's genius modular creation Bazille. Have you ever been tempted to fully dive into the modular world and build a Eurorack setup of your own?
Not at all! I feel all the tools I could ever dream of having are there right now, up on my screen. I prefer to spend my time on composition and production these days.
You have collaborated with Freshly Squeezed Samples in the past, producing both sample packs and synth preset packs. Are you more of a preset tweaker or do you like to start with a single cycle waveform and build on it?
The Freshly Squeezed banks were started from scratch, but in my productions I tend to find a preset close to what I’m looking for and tweak from there. But most of the parts in my production are inspired from the sounds themselves, so I spend a lot of time searching for interesting patches. I believe starting with good, solid sounds is the best way to get a decent track at the end, rather than starting with a weak sound and stacking up effects to make it sound more polished. I rarely use more than a compressor (UAD’s Teletronix LA2A) and gentle EQ on my synths, in addition to Lexicon PCM80 reverb and Soundtoys delays.
There are many sounds associated with dance music since its birth. The acid line from a TB303, the Supersaw from the JP8000 or the Hoover from the Alpha Juno are just some of the more recognizable ones. Is there any particular sound that every time you hear it, brings waves of nostalgia?
Oh absolutely. I’m a bit of a geek in that respect. I’m always ‘trainspotting’ when I listen to music, either figuring out how a sound was made, where it came from, or what voicing has been used to create string parts, etc.
Could you give us a quick run down of your current studio setup and also let us know of any changes you would like to make in terms of upgrading or buying new equipment?
I use Cubase Pro 8.5 on Mac with the CC121 control surface along with an iPad controller. That’s been a great addition recently, as I can assign any command (or string of commands) to a single button. I also slave Vienna Ensemble Pro, so all my synths are ready to go in my project templates. My ‘go to’ synth plug- ins are Diva, Zebra, Omnisphere, Lush, Massive and Sylenth, although I still use my Nord Lead 2 on most tracks. I also have countless libraries for Kontakt, which I go to for piano and strings.
My bread and butter effects include stuff from UAD, SoundToys and Fabfilter. I have a ton of plug-ins at my disposal, but with the above I can create pretty much everything I need for my sound. Right now I’ve got my eye on the upcoming Keyscape from Spectrasonics, which looks amazing for pianos. For monitoring I use DynAudio BM6As, which are pushing 16 years old now. I wouldn’t change them for the world!
Connect: http:// www.thethrillseekers.co.uk
Words By Daniel Daly
Pics By Maximiliano Rocchetti
44 ZONE-MAGAZINE.IE