At the heart of the studio is an Athlon 64 X2 based computer loaded with Cakewalk Sonar 8.02 Producer Edition. It's also equipped with an Echo Mia audio interface, and an Echo AudioFire4 firewire interface. The Screen is an LCD flat panel monitor to prevent guitar/bass pickup noise caused by CRT's. The speakers are a pair of M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 monitors. The mixer is a Behringer Xenyx2442FX.

Steve's main guitar is an Ibanez Artist ART300BNC guitar. He bought it mainly for the sound...it has active pickups which makes it sound quite sweet. He also likes the way it plays over most other Les Paul type guitars. It has the most curvature in the fretboard of any guitar of its type. Additionally, the string spacing is narrow at the nut and wide at the bridge.

Steve's workhorse guitar is a Squier Double Fat Strat. This guitar is far from stock. He replaced the cheesy sounding Squier pickups with a Dimarzio PAF Pro in the neck position, and a Dimarzio Steve Morse pickup in the bridge position. He also totally re-wired it. The Volume controls are wired pretty much like a Les Paul. It has two independent volume controls to allow for mixing pickup levels. This opens up a whole world of tonal colors. Also, the two volume controls are pull switches for coil splitting, allowing for that classic strat sound.

Steve's bass is a Squier Special 5 string. This particular model bass shipped with pickups meant for a 4 string. The neck pickup was off center toward the G string, so it didn't respond well to the B string. The bridge pickup was centered, but didn't spread far enough below the B or G string to respond well to either. Steve replaced these pickups with a set of Bartolini 57CBJD's which sound and respond much better. Finally, Steve strings the bass with Rotosound strings to get that classic prog rock sound.

For recording guitar and bass, Steve uses Behringer V-Amp and Bass V-Amp virtual amplifiers. In addition, for guitar, Steve uses an Ibanez Tube Screamer TS9DX, a Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive, a Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal, a Boss AC-2 acoustic simulator, and a Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal distortion pedal.

Now for Steve's keyboard rig...The main board is a Korg TR-88 keyboard workstation. It has a pretty convincing piano feel, and sounds awesome as well. The second board is a Hammond XK-1 virtual drawbar organ. This board features Hammond's latest technology with tone much improved over its predecessor, the XK-2. Steve's third board is a Roland SH-201 analog modeling synthesizer. Steve likes this board much better than comparable models in the $600.00 price range. It has buttons, knobs and faders for easy patch creation.

For recording drum parts, Steve uses a DIY electronic kit containing Alesis, Roland, Pintech and Yamaha Components. The brain is an Alesis Trigger|IO. It's a 6 piece set with kick, snare, 4 toms, two crash cymbals, ride and hi-hat.

To record music, Steve uses the following steps: First the melody and basic chord structure are recorded. This is a very rough sketch, much the same way a painter will use a pencil on the canvas. At this point, he doesn't care about mistakes or timing. It's really just a matter of getting the idea on screen.

All of this sketching is done on the keyboard. This would include arranged guitar and bass parts as well as traditional keyboard parts. There's a reason Steve does all the composition on the keyboard: if he has a tune in his head and tries to work it out on the guitar, it always turns into something different. On the other hand, if he works tunes out on the keyboard, they fall right into place. Probably because the notes on the keyboard are linear whereas, the notes on the guitar are stacked.

The next step is to record a basic drum track to anchor the rythm. Next will be laying down all keyboard tracks in midi format. These are more polished to replace the rough sketches. After that will be recording guitar and bass parts, replacing the rough sketches done on the keyboard. Some guitar and keyboard parts are improvised, but most follow the template laid out on the keyboard.

The last step requiring instrument playing is re-recording a fancier drum track. In this step, Steve gets far more creative and devotes way more time than on the initial basic drum track.

Before mixing may commence, all midi tracks containg keyboard and drum parts must first be converted to audio. Keyboard parts are converted by playing back a particular midi track through a particular keyboard controlled by midi. Simultaneously, said keyboard's output is recorded as audio.

Drum parts are converted from midi to audio using a virtual instrument on the computer. To do this, Steve uses FXpansion's BFD2.

On occasion, Steve will use other virtual instruments. For example, if orchestration is needed, Steve will use EastWest Symphonic Orchestra Silver. For solo piano tunes, Steve will use 4Front's TruePianos. For most parts however, Steve likes to record his keyboards so live performances will sound the same as the recordings.

Once all the pure audio tracks are in place, the next step is adding reverb, eq, compression, and other effects. The finishing touch is the actual mix process which involves adjusting the level of each track until they all blend together well. When all is finished, the final mix track is exported.

Steve records his audio in 24bit 48KHz format. This allows for better sound quality, and minimal degradation while performing operations like normalizing and bouncing tracks. The final product is exported in 16bit 44.1KHz format for CD compatibility. If in the future he decides to create DVD's, he has the original material in 24/48 format.