WELCOME

MY UBER-COZY PRIVATE STUDIO IN THE CREATIVE HEART OF COLOGNE, GERMANY AND OUR HOMEBASE FOR MUSICAL ENDEAVORS.

My private studio in Cologne is equipped with high-end gear, but still it always makes you feel at home. Rather than putting the recording technology at the center, I truly believe in putting the artist first. The Satellite is a collaborative space for us to realize our musical visions. Conceived as a wild mix of writing space, recording studio, and mixing room, we can work on a production mission from start to finish. Or we just focus on one specific task. The studio’s 30 square meters (325 sq. ft.) without a dedicated recording space allow for working together in a very personal way. Especially when cutting vocals I much prefer this way of working rather than putting the singer in an isolated box behind the glass.

As a creative launch pad for any project from a singer/songwriter to a full-blown band recording, the Satellite will always be the starting point. If we need more space for recording, we can always branch out to other studios in the same building, like the magical Maarwegstudio 2 upstairs. Then we come back to my own studio for overdubs and mixing. As result, we can avoid the costs of a big studio and still get amazing results.

Located in the creative hot spot of Cologne-Ehrenfeld, I’ve surrounded myself with some wonderful colleagues and potential resources. Besides producer Wolfgang Stach and his Maarwegstudio 2 there are several other super talented studio musicians and writers close by. There also is the music video production company klangmalerei.tv and my go-to mastering engineer Alex Kloss, all in the same building!

As a rule of thumb the journey begins with a strong espresso and a conversation about your goals and musical ideas. Depending on whether we’re talking about songwriting, producing, recording or mixing, we’ll take things from there and dive right in. Obviously my studio is based around a digital workstation, but it feels analog by nature. My tool of choice for recording and mixing is Pro Tools, but Ableton Live can be really interesting for writing electronic music. In case you’re working with Logic that will work for me as well. This could become particularly interesting if you’re looking for someone to mix your existing tracks recorded in Logic (you’ll find more about that on my mixing page).

By the way: all the expensive gear is pretty much useless if you can’t hear what you’re doing. So my studio was designed by Sven Pirschel, a professional acoustician and studio designer. I’ve also invested in high-end monitoring by Focal (Trio6 be) and Yamaha NS-10s, including highest quality VOVOX cabling. So we can focus on the music and never have to second-guess our decisions.

Even though a digital heart beats at the core of my studio I still cherish analog equipment for recording and mix. Apart from using high-end microphones by Neumann, AEA, AKG, Shure, and Townsend Labs, I also like to throw in analog synth or a quirky ol’ tape echo. Clean and perfect can be pretty darn boring!