British composer Michael Price and his family had moved out of London in 2021 to be closer to parents and nature. The move gave him the opportunity to evaluate which tools of the trade he needed for a new stripped-down home set-up. In addition to a piano and comfortable furnishings, he alighted on Solid State Logic’s UC1 Plug-in Controller and UF8 Advanced DAW controller, along with some choice outboard analogue mastering equipment.

Price, who won an Emmy award in 2014 plus a BAFTA nomination and two further Emmy nominations for the BBC’s Sherlock series, had tried various physical and touchscreen controllers, but was unable to find any that supported his workflow – until he discovered the SSL units. ‘I have found these two control surfaces to be the most tactile and the most encouraging of a flow state of anything that I’ve used,’ he reports.

A graduate of the University of Surrey’s Tonmeister course, Price’s appreciation of both engineering and creativity enables him to appreciate equipment’s aesthetics as much as its functionality. ‘I’m fascinated as much by elegant design in music technology as I am in furniture or composition,’ he says. ‘It’s so beautiful when a company can take a design approach and a form and function approach to a problem, or a particular facility to add to your set-up, and solve that problem in such a way that the box has an intrinsic beauty or elegance as well, particularly if you’re going to use it every day. The UF8 solves a problem better than anyone else. And the build quality and functionality are great.’

But the key for Price is the integration between the UC1 and SSL’s 360 software. ‘Those two things are the big difference, and provide a level of functionality beyond his DAW that has more in common with the mixing consoles on which he has worked for decades,’ he says.

‘I instantiate a Channel Strip 2 plug-in across everything; that’s built into my DAW templates,’ he elaborates. ‘I’m using the 360 software then as a mode switch, moving from composing to mixing by tabbing onto the 360 screen. I’m not looking at the waveforms anymore. I’ve got the UC1 to hand, where it’s a very tactile, immediate, “golden strip” approach to having the things that I’m focusing on on-screen.’

Price has also experimented with “coloured” channel strips: ‘Whatever console you’ve ever had, someone’s made a channel strip of it,’ he quips. ‘But I found with some of the console emulations that there was a darkness starting to creep in. I’m happier with a cleaner, slightly more transparent world of working in-the-box.’

Price has also noticed that, because he’s not looking at a graphic when he’s using the UC1’s EQ, he’s happier with the choices that he’s making. ‘It has clarity, and if it’s just a knob in front of you, you turn it until it sounds right. I want to avoid building up grit that I can’t lose. But I can then choose to put in the grit if I need it as a specific colour.’

Price hadn’t planned on setting up a music and recording room at the new location, he admits, having long preferred keeping work and family separate, as he had in London, where he still maintains a 600sq-ft production facility. But his planned sabbatical was interrupted when the deadlines for a couple of TV scoring projects, including ITV’s BAFTA-winning crime drama Unforgotten, returning for a fifth season, began to approach. ‘The net result was that I’ve set up in the study at home,’ he says. ‘My template is built for Unforgotten, which is filming now, so the SSL controllers are in place to do that.’

The UC1 and UF8 were also in place when Price worked on his next solo project, Whitsun, earlier in the pandemic. ‘I used them for the composition process and world-building for the new album. I recorded myself on the Una Corder, a single-string piano with a beautiful bell-like quality, and Yamaha CS-80. I sang a bit as well. Everything went through my SSL template and the devices, then Guy Massey did his magical mixing at the end of it.’

Overall, the new study studio needed to accommodate Price’s three creative endeavours. ‘One is, I play the piano, often in an improvised way. Then, I write film and TV scores. I also write contemporary classical music, predominantly on paper with a pencil. That’s like trying to construct beautiful architectural musical buildings with proportion and interesting number patterns, and an analogue process,’ he says.

‘So when I was putting this room together I wanted it to reflect those three things more closely – the piano, pencil and paper, and recording and producing film and TV music. I’ve also got a selection of very comfy leather chairs in here. I’m a mid-century modern furniture fan, so there’s an Eames Lounge chair and a beautiful Eames Lobby chair in a very striking red leather. It’s a very tactile room.’

More: www.solidstatelogic.com