Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Legs' wouldn't be 'Legs' unless it had that driving synth bass.
Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano.
My whole life, I've loved '80s synth and goth rock like The Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode.
If you make it sound too much like a synth, it will just sound like a guitar part played on a synth.
I love power ballads and the earnest lack of irony and emotion that exists in '80s music, along with synth guitars, of course.
In New Order, I played about 95% of the synths. It's not much fun for the other guys in the band when I'm playing my synth parts.
I consider my music to be Progressive Synth Pop, which says nothing about what it sounds like, but does describe my basic approach.
The synth helped us in that it meant you didn't have to be a traditional four-piece band and basically, you didn't have to work too hard.
I think people forget even though we were labelled a synth band because of 'The Hurting,' but keyboards are not our native instruments. Roland's a guitar player and I'm a bass player.
I bought this Oxygen midi synth from a flea market in Boston for $10. And then I found a cord in my house that fit it, and so I just started using that to do synth stuff in GarageBand.
I was given a lot of homework: I had to practise ironing as a synth, practise washing up as a synth, cooking a meal as a synth. It's definitely the most prep I've had to do for a role.
Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
The 'Hey Monday' songs were always glammed up to be this big production, and I definitely want there to be some bells and whistles like synth or drum loops, but for the most part, I want a simple yet powerful production.
Sometimes I can sit at my computer and find a cool sound, or a new synth patch, and get super-inspired by that and make a track based on that sound. But the piano is where I find the inspiration and come up with the melody.
The reason I like Steve Aoki is because I can trace my love of electronic music all the way back to when I was listening to not just new wave but to YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra] which, to me, was the ultimate Japanese band and launched synth electronic music.
In the past, I used to rely on the randomness of working with samples, which was a good way because it threw you in a completely different direction. You just thought, 'What if I take this samba drum and combined it with an '80s synth line or something from this record?'
I'm pretty much fully digital. I've basically spent a few painstaking days putting sounds into my laptop, just banking them, because I love playing, and I love visually seeing it on my screen and being able to change the sounds more, with different plug-ins. I've created my own synth sounds.
If reggae comes from another country, you can have the relationship to reggae that I have to rock. But it's something I grew up with. It's probably something I appreciate more now. In the '80s, I was all about New Wave and synth pop - New Order and Depeche Mode and Eurythmics and Michael Jackson and tons and tons and tons of Prince.
