SHOW OFF YOUR STUDIO
Rodriguez Jr
Interviewee Rodriguez Jr Contact rodriguezjr.net
Off the back of his third album Blisss, formidable techno producer Rodriguez Jr should have been touring his melodic electronic sounds around the clubs of Ibiza and Berlin. Instead, like the rest of us, he’s stuck indoors.
That’s no great hardship, though. With Rodriguez Jr’s cavernous studio stacked with modular racks and vintage synths that flank a legendary analogue instrument right at its centre, it doesn’t sound like a particularly bad place to be holed up.
Here, the highly respected producer shows us around his breathtaking Parisian cave and explains how he applies his experimental live techniques in the studio.
MusicTech: How do you use the studio?
Rodriguez Jr: How I use my studio has changed as my equipment has evolved, as well as my experiences with the production process. I use my studio very much as one would use a painting studio. Each instrument provides a different texture and/or colour, which I can apply and adapt to each project. Often, I’ll spend time on a particular machine without trying to extract anything in specific from it, but just to explore and push the limits of the equipment and get more acquainted with its possibilities. It’s an empirical kind of approach, I guess.
MT: When did you set up the studio and how has it grown over time?
RJ: I began producing music in the middle of the 1990s. At that time, I had an Atari ST running Cubase, a Roland JD-800 and, eventually, I brought in a Kurzweil K2000. Over the years, though, I’ve always hit up the second-hand shops, eBay and cash-converter shops in hopes of finding the kind of equipment I’d always dreamt of having. I have a real passion for old synths so, yes, I do have quite a collection. But I’ve also improved the signal path over the years.
MT:What DAW do you use and why?
I have
