Erdington, Birmingham
First Home Studio
Midihouse Studio was Simon Parkes first semi-professional setup within his parents home based in Erdington, Birmingham.
Midihouse was based around Cubase on the famous Atari 520 STE (1mb) and akai S950 12 Bit Sampler through an Alesis 1622 Monolithic 16 channel mixing console.
Midihouse studio was also home to the first TDV tracks such as Burning Up, Feel the Love, Make Love to Me and Higher & Higher.
The Home studio slowly expanded over time, equipment came and went then eventually dismantled before transporting it all to its new home at The Custard Factory to become V2.
The Atari was still used until it died to be replaced with the first Apple Powermac 7100 & cubase VST3.5.
Midihouse Studio To Version Two Productions
During the creation of Midihouse Studio, Simon teamed up with best Friend, Andy Spencer to help push and promote his new demo tracks.
The collaboration became known as ‘Version Two’, named after the sequencer used at the time, Steinberg Cubase V.2.00 on the Atari.
Simon Was the Composer, Engineer and Studio Manager, while Andrew (DJ Andy spencer) focused on promotion to local radio and UK based Record Labels.
Demos were sent out to: London Records, Polydor, Capitol, East West, XL Recordings, Hooj Toons, Network, Champion and Arista, just to name a few!
Thanks to Andy’s persuasive negotiation skill we also got invited to several of those record labels to meet personally with their A&R guys.