CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: DARIUS SYROSSIAN'S ESSENTIAL KIT

“My Korg EMX-1 is something that gives me that particular sound I am known for when I am programming drums and percussion for my tracks. Personally I find really clean totally quantised tracks really stale and they don't excite me, I need tracks to have some rawness to them. Ironically, the EMX-1 does give a very clean sound and is really tight on the drums, unlike the days when you would use Midi and there would always be at least something a little out of time here or there.

But I can really manipulate drums and percussion with this, when exporting I actually record in manually, and make sure something is a millisecond out of place, and I mess with the pitch to make it crunchy.

“The EMX-1 uses a combination of PCM drum samples and digital wave shapes for sound generation. Basic envelope generator controls and filter options allow the sound to be shaped, but the real power lies in the modulation section in the top-right-hand corner. Here, an oscillator (LFO all the way up to audio rate, with BPM sync option) can be used to modulate parameters such as pitch, filter cut-off or oscillator settings.

It's a relatively simple but highly effective system, and the range of sounds on offer is phenomenal.

“I have used this so much and I always get told I have a unique sound, and I don't really want to change how I work, so for that reason I cannot live without my Korg EMX-1”