Looking through the key hole into my project studio: Here you can see me sitting in front of the Fusion, above is the Minimoog and the Andromeda on the right site, on it's rear the JD800 and below of it the Arturia Analog Factory keyboard. The Macbook runs Logic and left from it: A old Atari 1040, works good for 80s synth soundmanagers. AirFX on the top of one Monitor speaker. All other things on the right side are not visible as well as that on the rear and in the second studio room, so I will keep it as my secret. Ok, one is the limited edition silver with gold plated DX7II Centennnial. It does not look like other studios, isn't it? I need my workplace totally cosy, with pictures of my favorite places pinned at the wall, in this case Palm Springs indian desert and L.A. at night, pic taken from the Mulholland drive. With plastic dinosour on the Moog. I do not wear shoes all day and the pic is done today, taken a hour after my 7 kilometers jogging through the woods. So this is the place where all the Fusion sounds are done. When I need SSL console, concert hall recording space, valve mic vocal suites etc. I go to other places.
Now it's five years ago where everything began.
It was late 2004 when I was asked from Alesis to contribute my sounddesign for the factory presets of their new Fusion workstation. At this point I was already familiar with Alesis staff and instruments as I did some sounddesign earlier for the Andromeda A6 and Ion synthesizers. So I agreed again and waited for briefing and of course for the instrument to start with the voicing. A few months later in 2005 I got a Fusion 8HD and after unpacking the unit I placed it on a keyboard stand in my project studio. The instrument looked quite nice and the keyboard action was great. After turning the power switch on I could try some first presets someone at Alesis did. And it sounded great too, although the Presets were just beta-versions and still incomplete. So, now I was one of those who should make this thing sound good and during the following weeks I tried my best to make it. A little later I got the final factory presets content list and could check how many of my sounds made it. At this time I was involved in a music production, as executive producer and keyboard player. So I thought it would be good to keep the Fusion and use it for this project. But I did more sounds too and when reading the Fusion owners forum I got the impression that there was demand for commercial soundware. It was summer 2006 when I released my first "Fusion Presets by kpr", a collection of 3 Program banks with 384 new sounds. Many Fusion owners liked what they heard when listening to the demonstration audio track I did. And ordered my sounds. Encouraged by this success I decided to do more, even sample libraries, and after 5 years now I released over 20 sound and sample collections with a total number far of more than 3.000 Presets. Even for me a big surprise, and when looking back to the point where it started I must admit that I can't believe that all this happened because I definitely had no plans to do this in the first place. There was even a very strange moment when doing my very first Presets during the factory voices weeks: The Fusion had to be updated it's OS and it didn't work so well, and there was no one who really could help me, although the Alesis guys supported my job as good as possible. It was a computer problem in my project studio and for a moment I even thought that I can't make it and should call them and quit my job. I stood in my studio rather clueless, and a bit frustrated too. But thanks to the internet I found a solution for this problem, downloaded a special software that allowed my to process the data to my needs, and 20 minutes later the problem was solved! And I was the happiest man on earth, really. It was an intense personal experience too. All the soundmaking and using the Fusion also for music projects got me a special knowledge how everything works under the hood. The book with the title "My Fusion Secrets" is the collection of this personal know how and I share it with you and further tutorials can be found in my new Fusion blog since a while. The latest news is the hybrid-system, where the Fusion is connected with a sampleplayer VST. More products are already in progress and some of them will be released very soon, and there are surprising things too! It's all about creativity, the music and most important: fun!
Cheers
Klaus
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