Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Richard Earnshaw and I’m a full time musician/producer. I’ve been performing and making music since my teens, so at the tender age of 35, I’ve been doing it for some time now. I am co-owner of Kinetic Music Group Ltd, Duffnote Ltd and Kinetic Management Ltd which, combined, currently include 3 labels ( Duffnote, One51 and Guess), Duffnote Music Publishing, Kinetic Management and Kinetic Music Production.

What hardware are you using?

I’ve always been a Mac man. Since the late 90’s. Before that I wrestled with the unstable unitor equipped Atari 1040ST with a Fostex R8 dealing with the audio. I use a lot of outboard gear, all sorts of digital, hybrid and analogue synths and samplers. And even in this plugin era, I still use them for a lot of my sound and inspiration. I have a huge library of drums samples on my old E-mu e6400, which even with the massive sound sources in plugin synths like Stylus RMX, the old E-mu still features heavily in my sound. I have 2 mixers in the studio, a Mackie d8b which is a trusty old workhorse of a board but it has been recently joined by an SSL X-Desk which now deals with all summing and monitoring. It’s a beautiful thing, and sounds superb. I’ve been a champion of highend digital gear for a long time, but it’s easy to get caught up in the whole “in the box” work ethic. I’ve now reconfigured my setup so once all the creative work is done, I bus out my stems and sum them on the X-Desk. The difference really is quite staggering. The d8b is now a glorified patch bay but will stay where it is until I expand my SSL setup. Also on “that side” of my work area, I have the TL Audio EQ-2 and C-1 compressor which are my favourite boxes for the final stages of summing/mastering. There is a lot to be said about the warmth of valve/analogue gear. I get asked all the time about “how do I get my sound” well it really is down to using “real” equipment I think. Software is amazing these days and I do use it, but throwing some valves and analogue circuits into the equation really does de-digitize the sound and gives it some life and personality.

What software are you using?

I do all my creative work in Logic Pro. I’ve always been in the “Logic” camp, right from the early days of C-Lab Notator. I used Steinberg Pro 12/24 too but for some reason, always stayed with C-Lab/E-Magic and now of course Apple. Once the “music” bit is done, I might leave the mixing process in Logic, or break out the stems and mixdown elements in Pro Tools before summing on the SSL. Everything eventually ends up in Pro Tools for the mastering. 


What would be your dream setup?

I always dreamt of having synths and a studio when I was a young lad. Spending hours in music shops playing around on DX-7s and ogling at huge mixing boards in studio brochures. I’m a lucky guy, and I have most things that I always wanted to have in a studio. I think to really achieve the “dream setup” for me, I would continue expanding my SSL setup. The SSL mixing desk was my “centre page” when I was growing up, so I would eventually get rid of the Mackie d8b and either expand further into the X setup with the X-Rack system and EQ/dynamic/preamp modules or go straight in with the SSL AWS 948.

Any production tips & tricks you'd like to share?

It’s a tricky one giving advice as there are so many elements of music making I’d need a specific question. The main thing I’ve learnt over the years is that, although there are some very obvious do’s and don’ts, everyone has their own way of doing things. Listen and take advice, but ultimately, it’s down to you! ;)

Where can we find you on the web?

SoundCloud / Facebook / Twitter /