Billy Currie

As already mentioned, classically-trained Billy Currie has been tickling the ivories for Ultravox since day one, and even their earliest recordings are characterised by his willingness to experiment with new sound textures and new methods of manipulating them from the keyboard. However, he remains best remembered for his raunchy lead-line synth sound, something he discovered quite by accident, it seems.

'Well, I got an ARP Odyssey for the first album back in '77, and I just stumbled on the lead sound by sticking it through a flanger. I used it a lot in the early days, and carried on using it on later records because it went so well with that particular rhythm guitar sound Midge gets.

• EMM Oct. 1984

"During the process of creating patches for RE-STRINGS Rack Extension, we talked with Billy Currie about his use of String Ensemble keyboards over the years and how the Elka Rhapsody and Yamaha SS-30 contributed to some of Ultravox's classic tracks. "

"Q. I noticed that during your solo albums you moved through the gamut of classic 80s keyboards including the PPG Wave, Yamaha GS-1 and Roland D-50. What are your fave synths from the 80s?

I loved the GS-1. It was big and high quality but I don’t think I used it a lot on my solo albums. I think it was originally made for the small church market in America so that they could get the sounds they needed without buying a huge church organ. I had a deal with Yamaha who stuck with us over the years and when the GS-1 came out I ended up going to Hamburg and sitting with a Yamaha programmer who created some great string sounds for me. I loved playing that instrument and I could play the vibrato with my feet. I’d stand up and rock back back to keep the sustain going and do the vibrato with my foot.

I used the PPG a lot. I got into the Rack Mounted DX-7, the TX-816. I’d got into MIDI in the early days in my own studio for the first couple of solo albums, Transportation and Stand Up and Walk and linking all these things up to get new sounds. I had a Prophet T8, the Prophet Sampler, the Roland D-50. it was like Keyboard City. The Prophet VS was used a lot. I really liked the joystick and the way you could morph between sounds."

In this picture Billy currie can be seen using the CP-300 onstage

"Q. I noticed that during your solo albums you moved through the gamut of classic 80s keyboards including the PPG Wave, Yamaha GS-1 and Roland D-50. What are your fave synths from the 80s?

I loved the GS-1. It was big and high quality but I don’t think I used it a lot on my solo albums. I think it was originally made for the small church market in America so that they could get the sounds they needed without buying a huge church organ. I had a deal with Yamaha who stuck with us over the years and when the GS-1 came out I ended up going to Hamburg and sitting with a Yamaha programmer who created some great string sounds for me. I loved playing that instrument and I could play the vibrato with my feet. I’d stand up and rock back back to keep the sustain going and do the vibrato with my foot.

I used the PPG a lot. I got into the Rack Mounted DX-7, the TX-816. I’d got into MIDI in the early days in my own studio for the first couple of solo albums, Transportation and Stand Up and Walk and linking all these things up to get new sounds. I had a Prophet T8, the Prophet Sampler, the Roland D-50. it was like Keyboard City. The Prophet VS was used a lot. I really liked the joystick and the way you could morph between sounds."

"Q. I noticed that during your solo albums you moved through the gamut of classic 80s keyboards including the PPG Wave, Yamaha GS-1 and Roland D-50. What are your fave synths from the 80s?

I loved the GS-1. It was big and high quality but I don’t think I used it a lot on my solo albums. I think it was originally made for the small church market in America so that they could get the sounds they needed without buying a huge church organ. I had a deal with Yamaha who stuck with us over the years and when the GS-1 came out I ended up going to Hamburg and sitting with a Yamaha programmer who created some great string sounds for me. I loved playing that instrument and I could play the vibrato with my feet. I’d stand up and rock back back to keep the sustain going and do the vibrato with my foot.

I used the PPG a lot. I got into the Rack Mounted DX-7, the TX-816. I’d got into MIDI in the early days in my own studio for the first couple of solo albums, Transportation and Stand Up and Walk and linking all these things up to get new sounds. I had a Prophet T8, the Prophet Sampler, the Roland D-50. it was like Keyboard City. The Prophet VS was used a lot. I really liked the joystick and the way you could morph between sounds."

"Q. I noticed that during your solo albums you moved through the gamut of classic 80s keyboards including the PPG Wave, Yamaha GS-1 and Roland D-50. What are your fave synths from the 80s?

I loved the GS-1. It was big and high quality but I don’t think I used it a lot on my solo albums. I think it was originally made for the small church market in America so that they could get the sounds they needed without buying a huge church organ. I had a deal with Yamaha who stuck with us over the years and when the GS-1 came out I ended up going to Hamburg and sitting with a Yamaha programmer who created some great string sounds for me. I loved playing that instrument and I could play the vibrato with my feet. I’d stand up and rock back back to keep the sustain going and do the vibrato with my foot.

I used the PPG a lot. I got into the Rack Mounted DX-7, the TX-816. I’d got into MIDI in the early days in my own studio for the first couple of solo albums, Transportation and Stand Up and Walk and linking all these things up to get new sounds. I had a Prophet T8, the Prophet Sampler, the Roland D-50. it was like Keyboard City. The Prophet VS was used a lot. I really liked the joystick and the way you could morph between sounds."

"During the process of creating patches for RE-STRINGS Rack Extension, we talked with Billy Currie about his use of String Ensemble keyboards over the years and how the Elka Rhapsody and Yamaha SS-30 contributed to some of Ultravox's classic tracks. "

Billy states on his first solo album he used Waveterm samples on a few songs.

"I used a Korg T3 which belonged to Dead Or Alive, and that has a lot of good string sounds. Cubase was the main software package, although it wasn't used throughout, as there's not even timecode on some tracks. The Yamaha grand piano was there, and a Korg M1. I had a Fishman pickup on the viola, which is a fantastic English design, and a Barcus-Berry violin. I used my old Oberheim polysynth, and an Akai S900 sampler with a lot of 8-bit violin samples done for the first solo album, which were still perfectly good thank you very much! Then there's a D550 module, an Oberheim Matrix 1000, a lot of drum samples on an Akai S1000, some from an Alesis drum machine, some Prophet VS, a few bits from a Yamaha TX816 rack, and an OSCar solo on 'Ukraine'. I still use the Yamaha KX88 as the master keyboard because I like the touch, but it could do with more splits and it's not very easy to program. But there's less equipment here than on my first solo album — I hadn't really rushed out to buy any new equipment."

"I used a Korg T3 which belonged to Dead Or Alive, and that has a lot of good string sounds. Cubase was the main software package, although it wasn't used throughout, as there's not even timecode on some tracks. The Yamaha grand piano was there, and a Korg M1. I had a Fishman pickup on the viola, which is a fantastic English design, and a Barcus-Berry violin. I used my old Oberheim polysynth, and an Akai S900 sampler with a lot of 8-bit violin samples done for the first solo album, which were still perfectly good thank you very much! Then there's a D550 module, an Oberheim Matrix 1000, a lot of drum samples on an Akai S1000, some from an Alesis drum machine, some Prophet VS, a few bits from a Yamaha TX816 rack, and an OSCar solo on 'Ukraine'. I still use the Yamaha KX88 as the master keyboard because I like the touch, but it could do with more splits and it's not very easy to program. But there's less equipment here than on my first solo album — I hadn't really rushed out to buy any new equipment."

For Billy Currie, Ultravox's most recent major tour was particularly rewarding, partly because he discovered a new instrument - the OSCar - that assisted his live performance greatly.

'Yeah, I was particularly pleased with the last tour we did. You're always on a high when you're in front of an audience - or I am anyway - and it's even better if you've got a new instrument that stimulates you, like the OSCar did for me this time around.

'I got it just before we went on tour, which looked as though it was going to be a problem. But when an instrument excites you that much, it gives you so many new ideas that it doesn't matter if you haven't quite figured out how to play the damn thing yet. If you make a mistake you can probably bluff your way through it anyway, and there's a possibility the audience might actually get off on it because it shows you're fallible - that you're not just some studio musician who doesn't care about the music.

The OSCar has basically taken the place of the Odyssey. The Odyssey was still just about usable in the studio, but live it was becoming a liability because it went out of tune so easily. I really don't think I could have done another tour with it, so the OSCar arrived at just the right time. I like almost everything about it, and it's not just the sound. There's the duo-phonic facility, the simple facility to play two notes at a time, which is a big bonus for me, and the sequencer on it is so easy to use: I put a sequence in it and triggered it in threes for the single, as well as doing the main synth solo on it.

The other thing about the OSCar is that it just feels right as an instrument, which is a rare thing for a synth, I think. In fact, it's one of the few electronic things that seems to have been designed for musicians, as opposed to a lot of stuff - especially the stuff coming out of Japan - which is just developed in laboratories. I've been in touch with OSC and they've always been very helpful, which makes a change from a lot of other companies. They've maintained my enthusiasm for the instrument and right now I'd say it's the most exciting synth in my line-up - even though I'm using it with a PPG and a Yamaha GS1 on stage.'

"Q. I noticed that during your solo albums you moved through the gamut of classic 80s keyboards including the PPG Wave, Yamaha GS-1 and Roland D-50. What are your fave synths from the 80s?

I loved the GS-1. It was big and high quality but I don’t think I used it a lot on my solo albums. I think it was originally made for the small church market in America so that they could get the sounds they needed without buying a huge church organ. I had a deal with Yamaha who stuck with us over the years and when the GS-1 came out I ended up going to Hamburg and sitting with a Yamaha programmer who created some great string sounds for me. I loved playing that instrument and I could play the vibrato with my feet. I’d stand up and rock back back to keep the sustain going and do the vibrato with my foot.

I used the PPG a lot. I got into the Rack Mounted DX-7, the TX-816. I’d got into MIDI in the early days in my own studio for the first couple of solo albums, Transportation and Stand Up and Walk and linking all these things up to get new sounds. I had a Prophet T8, the Prophet Sampler, the Roland D-50. it was like Keyboard City. The Prophet VS was used a lot. I really liked the joystick and the way you could morph between sounds."

"Q. I noticed that during your solo albums you moved through the gamut of classic 80s keyboards including the PPG Wave, Yamaha GS-1 and Roland D-50. What are your fave synths from the 80s?

I loved the GS-1. It was big and high quality but I don’t think I used it a lot on my solo albums. I think it was originally made for the small church market in America so that they could get the sounds they needed without buying a huge church organ. I had a deal with Yamaha who stuck with us over the years and when the GS-1 came out I ended up going to Hamburg and sitting with a Yamaha programmer who created some great string sounds for me. I loved playing that instrument and I could play the vibrato with my feet. I’d stand up and rock back back to keep the sustain going and do the vibrato with my foot.

I used the PPG a lot. I got into the Rack Mounted DX-7, the TX-816. I’d got into MIDI in the early days in my own studio for the first couple of solo albums, Transportation and Stand Up and Walk and linking all these things up to get new sounds. I had a Prophet T8, the Prophet Sampler, the Roland D-50. it was like Keyboard City. The Prophet VS was used a lot. I really liked the joystick and the way you could morph between sounds."

"Before we got a deal we'd met Steve Lillywhite, who was a tape op, and he'd get us into studios in down time to do free demos. Then when we got the deal we insisted that he was taken on as producer; we did the first album for about £15,000 with Brian Eno co-producing, and I'd got hold of an RMI piano, an Elka Rhapsody and a Hammond Organ, which on tracks like 'Mi-Sex' I was putting through a Carlsbro echo."

"I used a Korg T3 which belonged to Dead Or Alive, and that has a lot of good string sounds. Cubase was the main software package, although it wasn't used throughout, as there's not even timecode on some tracks. The Yamaha grand piano was there, and a Korg M1. I had a Fishman pickup on the viola, which is a fantastic English design, and a Barcus-Berry violin. I used my old Oberheim polysynth, and an Akai S900 sampler with a lot of 8-bit violin samples done for the first solo album, which were still perfectly good thank you very much! Then there's a D550 module, an Oberheim Matrix 1000, a lot of drum samples on an Akai S1000, some from an Alesis drum machine, some Prophet VS, a few bits from a Yamaha TX816 rack, and an OSCar solo on 'Ukraine'. I still use the Yamaha KX88 as the master keyboard because I like the touch, but it could do with more splits and it's not very easy to program. But there's less equipment here than on my first solo album — I hadn't really rushed out to buy any new equipment."

"I used a Korg T3 which belonged to Dead Or Alive, and that has a lot of good string sounds. Cubase was the main software package, although it wasn't used throughout, as there's not even timecode on some tracks. The Yamaha grand piano was there, and a Korg M1. I had a Fishman pickup on the viola, which is a fantastic English design, and a Barcus-Berry violin. I used my old Oberheim polysynth, and an Akai S900 sampler with a lot of 8-bit violin samples done for the first solo album, which were still perfectly good thank you very much! Then there's a D550 module, an Oberheim Matrix 1000, a lot of drum samples on an Akai S1000, some from an Alesis drum machine, some Prophet VS, a few bits from a Yamaha TX816 rack, and an OSCar solo on 'Ukraine'. I still use the Yamaha KX88 as the master keyboard because I like the touch, but it could do with more splits and it's not very easy to program. But there's less equipment here than on my first solo album — I hadn't really rushed out to buy any new equipment."