WILLIAM & DEBORAH HILLYARDWILLIAM & DEBORAH HILLYARD

Music & My Studio

The Music Studio

I have a modest home recording studio.  Most of the music I produce is electronic, using a number of synthesizers and sound modules.  I also still play guitar, mainly Folk and Blues. 

I became interested in music at a very early age, getting my first guitar, a very inexpensive acoustic, when I was ten.  Around 1965, I changed this for a used Selmer Futurama 3 electric guitar (c. 1963 vintage, with the white push-buttons and six-on-a-side headstock), and then added a Hofner Congress (hofner 449 in the US) arch-top acoustic.  This was the model from around 1960 to1962 with the Compensator bridge and the treble clef logo on the headstock. 

Soon after I left home for University in 1968, I sold them both to buy a Landola acoustic that kept until 2009; I certainly got good value out of it. 

I bought my first Yamaha keyboard in around 1986.  It was not very good, in retrospect.  Still, I used it for recording in a very primitive studio I setup in my Barnes apartment.  Soon after, once I had a PC at home, I built my first basic MIDI based setup using a soundcard and a 61 key Kawai MIDI controller keyboard.  Finding this totally inadequate, I bought my first sound module, a Yamaha MU80 which I still own and use.  A couple more modules followed, like the Akai and Control Synthesis DB9, and then the whole lot moved to the US and has continued to expand.  The Studio section includes details of the current setup. 

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