Panu M Savolainen – Surrounded

The tracks were originally made under the name of DeadZone between 1999 – 2001.

It was the first time I had musical and inspirational synths in my setup and a better sequencer: Cakewalk. I used to have many ideas but could never afford the equipment that I needed. The situation was still the same, but at least I had something to start and to explore with. Most of the inspiration came from the countryside, where I grew up, and of course the music was listening to. But still, trying to find my own style.

I made these tracks with qute limited equipment. I remember MIDI was slowing down quite often and synths went out of voices. You can hear I made these tracks with quite limited equipment. I remember MIDI was slowing down quite often and the synths went out of voices. This can be heard as lagging in some of the tracks. The quality was still pretty good. Not because of the high-end and silent equipment but the warm sounding Roland mixer (it didn’t even have eq), good natural sounding speakers and pretty good room acoustics.

Surrounded was the first track, made in 1999. I used Roland JV-1010, Korg Wavestation SR, Waldorf Pulse and Yamaha AN1x.

Reactor was also made in 1999. Pretty much the same equipment were used. Roland JV-1010 used the same controllers than Yamaha AN1x so I could control JV with the knobs of Yamaha.

Dreamwaves, The Sky’s the Limit, Digital Edge, Fields of Motion were made in 2000: I saved a bit of money and added a few synths to setup: Waldorf Microwave XT, Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309 (drum and synth expansions) and replaced JV-1010 with JV-1080. Microwave and Rave-O-Lution had a quite raw(digital) and harsh tone and JV-1080 sounded better than JV-1010 probably because of the A/D-converters. It was very tight and fast compared to later models so I could use it for e.g. drums. It didn’t sound great in solo but sat in the mix very well even without effects. Quasimidi had ok drums, but synth engine was very limited. I used the synth engine for some additional bass and background stuff. For example, you can hear liquid-sound in background of Dreamwaves which is coming from Quasimidi.

Dreamwaves starts with synthline from Yamaha AN1x and pads from Roland JV-1080. Drums are from Quasimidi and JV-1080. Filtersweep is from Waldorf Pulse. Lead synths are coming from Microwave XT (oscillator sync -lead) and Pulse (smoother filtered lead). Additional synth at 2:55 is from Microwave XT.

The Sky’s the Limit is quite a 90’s track. Pads are from AN1x and JV-1080, drums again Quasimidi and Roland and bass and synth lines from Microwave XT. Filtered/panned synth is from Pulse.

Digital Edge has multiple tracks from Microwave XT. Pads are from AN1x and JV-1080. Lead is from also from MW XT. It’s the second favourite track from the album.

Fields of Motion is the favourite track of the is the favourite track of the album. Drums are Quasimidi and JV-1080.Wobbly/filtered sweep at the beginning (and later) is from AN1x. Bass is from MW XT. Pads and organ-stab are from JV-1080. Lead is from Pulse. Additional synths are from MW XT and JV.

Fade the Space was the last track I made in 2001. Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309 was replaced with Quasimidi Sirius. I got an analog drum synth Jomox Airbase99. Additional drums were coming from Roland JV-1080. I also got Novation Nova and Waldorf Micro Q. Other sounds were coming from Yamaha AN1x, Waldorf Pulse and Waldorf Microwave XT. Even it’s quite techno’ish track, it was the first time I get interested of dnb-type tracks. After few years I made the album Silently which has more that genre. Of course, jungle and breakbeat were familiar from the 90’s and the DJ-times.

Darkness & Light and Liquid Minds was made in end of the 1999 and early 2000 when I got Roland JD-990 with vintage expansion. Other synths were Waldorf Microwave XT / Pulse, Roland JV-1080 and Yamaha AN1x. I used Pulse for bass, JD for lead, AN1x for pads, JV-1010 for synthstab and drums in Darkness & Light. I had Turtle Beach Pinnacle soundcard which allowed to play samples from it’s own few megabyte memory. So, I used it for additional drums in Liquid Minds. Guitar-type lead and arpeggio-type synth was coming from JD-990 and bass from AN1x in Liquid Minds.

I got pretty good reviews of these tracks. Mp3.com site was very good to get listeners worldwide and comments.