Howard Jones has a lot to answer for in one way or another, but one of the major effects he's had on the musical mass is to imbue all those solo artists who didn't want to be Dylan with the belief that they could be megahuge without having to assemble an 'orrible band of argumentative musicians, drummers, and so on.

With the aid of modern technology, it's remarkable easy to build a full band sound on your own, work it from a convenient front-of-stage location and do all the hard graft beforehand, leaving you to spend the time on the boards dancing, singing, grinning like an idiot and preening your haircut. Handy.

And an obvious correlation to this has been the boom in one-man studios relying entirely on synthesizers and various kinds of digital wonderdevices to construct the desired musical maelstrom. The eighties' equivalent to the lone singer-songwriter sitting in a dank bedsit droning sensitive tunes over diminished minor acoustic guitar chords is the boffin who has everything bar the cat MIDI'd together and controlled via a computer. Instead of gazing at pictures of Joni Mitchell the new breed stares intently at a screen with such mysteries as 'Load Data' and 'If Yes, go to B' stencilled on it.

One of these nouveau solo fellows is David Yorath. Hunky Dave is a veteran of bands from way back. One of his earlier efforts, a romantic little swing combo evocatively named Blitzkrieg reached a respectably high position in the independent LP chart a while ago, which helped out quite considerably in purchasing new gear.

But the financial advantages weren't as good as you may think — the usual trials and tribulations of playing gigs for little money and financing recording sessions were making it tighter than was comfortable, and that wasn't all.

Dave wrote all the songs and was generally the leading light of the band, yet when the recording session time happened along there were always arguments about who should be louder than who, where the drummer's favourite fills should go, and all the normal inter-band friction factors.

So he thought carefully and came up with the solution that was to prove ideal. He amalgamated all his gear and went solo. And Shazam! No more heavy scenes in the rehearsal room. In fact no more rehearsal room; with the one-man operation now almost entirely synthesized, there's little noise and no huge drumkits.

The garage is today's chosen place of creative activity, although not without a few modifications. No longer a greasy hut full of dead lawnmowers, after a large number of layers of soundproofing and a smart bit of decorating it's become a small but very professional-looking studio, with the finishing touches of a small jungle of (artificial) plants and a neat logo saying 'Solo Sound'. Very apt.

The soundproofing is mainly to keep noise out rather than in; the cars travelling past the North London garage tended to intrude on the vocal tracks which is obviously more than desirable unless you're covering Cadillac Ranch. The building is constructed of single-skinned brick with a tiled roof supported by hefty beams, and these were used to suspend the insulation materials - three layers of board, rockwool and finally Government surplus carpet in a very soothing dark green. The whole lot is held up by criss-cross stringing for the roof beams to the floor, giving good isolation and a pretty neat finish.

David is quite concerned about the look of the place; as he said "if I'm going to spend hours at a stretch in here it's got to be comfortable, relaxing and well-organised. I can't stand studios where despite the fact they've got really expensive gear, it's just flung into a room any old way."

Therefore the rest of the gear is also stacked very neatly and professionally; a home-made cabinet houses the two reel-to-reel tape machines (both Teacs) the two cassette decks (both Trio), not to mention the tapes and a selection of the accessories that every studio has; leads, plugs, and so on. It has the triple benefits of neatness, space conservation (the Teacs are both mounted horizontally and flush to the surface of the unit) and burglary prevention: they're mounted in so securely that it would take any aspiring tea-leaf hours to unscrew them.

The synthesizers (a horde of them) and the other hardware, like the Commodore 64 computer, its monitor and disk drive, and the drum machine, are stacked on cheap but serviceable trestle tables — the sort you can buy in hardware shops for a few quid and are usually used for wallpapering on. They work equally well as keyboard stands, however, even if they're not quite up to the roadworthiness standards of the aluminium monstrosities the megastars use.

But enough of the Homes & Gardens stuff, what about the gear? Well, it's an eight-track set-up based around the trusty Tascam 38 and a Recording Studio Design 24:8 (aka Studiomaster) desk; it was originally a 16:8 but with the addition of two four-channel expander units it had grown and grown until it was a 24. The combination of Auratones and a pair of Canadian speakers picked up cheap through a personal contact (not to belittle them, they're a very good quality studio monitor with, unusually enough, two bass drivers) provides the means to hear the signal, powered by Quad as it is, and the control room itself has been checked out by an expert and equalised into a state of utter flatness. So what you hear is what you get, as the great man once said.

The devices for spicing your sound are in abundance — much more of an abundance than most people could lay claim to in fact. There's a Vesta Fire RV1 stereo reverb, an Ibanez HD1000 delay/harmoniser, an MXR Flanger/Doubler, and a Korg SDD1000 delay which also has the enviable facility of being able to sample. Some of these devices are more useful than others — the MXR flanger/doubler, despite its slightly advanced age and ostensibly limited functions, is actually a favourite for its rich doubling sound, ideal for instruments and vocals to thicken them up. The stereo reverb is another favourite, but with the addition of an Aria AD1 analogue delay set on a very short repeat (80 milliseconds or so) before it. This simulates the pre-delay function you get on very expensive reverb devices and gives a great 'big room' sound at very low cost.

The sampler is also coming into a lot of use, mainly for drum sounds and effects triggered from the drum machine. Resynthesis, while it may be rapidly becoming a dirty word to the MU, is just as quickly becoming the handiest way for low-cost sampling fans to acquire those professional sounds. I'm sure Dave can't be the only one to have boosted sales of Michael Jackson and Phil Collins LPs for purposes of recycling sounds. As well as 'borrowing' noises right left and centre he also produces his own, a well-placed triggered vocal sound alone can add life to a hard dance track or spice up a lacklustre middle eight.

But that's enough about the recording. Never mind the Home Taping, what about the Home Sequencing? Because that's where David thinks the future of recording is.

"A little while ago I thought about upgrading, upping the number of tracks, but then I decided there's no need, because the way people are going isn't towards the tape side of things — but this side of the studio..."

He dramatically indicated the microcomputer sitting in its own little web of MIDI cables and synthesisers.

"I record a sync code onto tape to trigger the Sequential Circuits Drumtraks," he said, "usually on a track to one side of the tape and leaving a spare one beside it in case of crosstalk. Then the drum machine triggers the computer which is loaded with the Sequential Circuits Model 64 software and interface and controls a Six-Trak, a Siel DK600 and a Sequential Pro-One. So with all that lot going off a single sync track, I don't need much in the way of tape room. There are enough channels on the desk to get it mixed down at the mastering stage quite easily.

"I use a couple, or maybe three, tracks for vocals; I've got a Crumar Baby Grand electric piano which I use a fair amount, and as I started off as a guitarist I still play that, mostly sparse and quite choppy rhythm things. I use so little guitar that when it does arrive I like it to leap out of the mix at you and really do something positive. I've just bought a Fender Vintage Series Telecaster which is brilliant, and I always play that through a Marshall valve combo miked up. Never a DI feed, always miked; I think it sounds much more live that way.

"I've got a cheap bass but I never use it myself — just the synth bass which can be much more powerful and versatile if you use it properly. The Sequential synths have great filters which are brilliant for bass sounds.

"And the whole lot is controllable from a couple of footswitches which I had built for me so I can use it live. They're hooked up so I can start and stop the sequencers without moving from the front of the stage, and the other switch steps through the 'function' keys on the Commodore, so I can change those functions quickly as well. I hope to be able to play live soon."

Very Howie, very Davie. Or is it?

David: "But I don't like Howard Jones at all!"

Ah well.

Stop Press: As we write David has decided to let the occasional other songwriter/musician into his Solo Sound domain ("well, it might as well pay for itself," he said) so if you're interested ring him on (Contact Details).