Marius de Vries

Having launched his career in the music industry as a session keyboardist, the studio keyboard is very important to Marius. The Roland’s Fantom X8 is the instrument of choice, proving to be so favourable that he owns three of them! “It has a fantastic feel to the keyboard and the piano responds very musically. It has some great sounds onboard but, to be honest, it rarely gets used beyond the piano sound! I might under-use it, but I depend on it; it is a very comforting thing to have around. Keyboard-wise I am extremely loyal to Roland – they make the best synths and always have done."

While the demands of the filming process forced the chopping and changing of the songs, Marius was in contact with London‑based composer Chris Elliott, who had the job of arranging many of the orchestral parts. "We were emailing back and forth," explains Marius. "This was before the Rocket Networks thing really happened, otherwise I'm sure we'd have been using that. But for a long time I sent him MP3s of the backing tracks and pencil sketches on score paper suggesting where I wanted to go, and he'd send MIDI files back to me which I printed out from Emagic Logic and fed into my JV2080 and S6000s to listen to what he'd done. We built up the orchestrations that way until he came out to Sidney. Alexis Smith was working over here in the UK as my programmer while I was in Sidney, and he would sending over grooves and ideas for drum beats and sound design. By the time we got to the shoot, we had everything developed up to a stage where the orchestrations were coming in a relatively realistic manner out of the JV2080, our rhythm tracks were pretty realised and our vocals were recorded to a stage where they were ready for lip‑sync."

It can be seen in the fourth photo, which bears the caption "Three of Marius's monosynths: the physical modelling Korg Prophecy and Yamaha VL1 flank a classic OSCar."

It can be seen in the fourth photo, which bears the caption "Three of Marius's monosynths: the physical modelling Korg Prophecy and Yamaha VL1 flank a classic OSCar."

It can be seen in the fourth photo, which bears the caption "Three of Marius's monosynths: the physical modelling Korg Prophecy and Yamaha VL1 flank a classic OSCar."

It can be seen in the sixth photo, which bears the caption: "The Apple Powerbook (left), increasingly important to Marius de Vries' work, sits atop his Yamaha SY77 workstation: also visible are his Clavia Nord Rack and Roland JP8080 virtual analogue synths."

It can be seen in the sixth photo, which bears the caption: "The Apple Powerbook (left), increasingly important to Marius de Vries' work, sits atop his Yamaha SY77 workstation: also visible are his Clavia Nord Rack and Roland JP8080 virtual analogue synths." It appears to be the original version.

It can be seen in the sixth photo, which bears the caption: "The Apple Powerbook (left), increasingly important to Marius de Vries' work, sits atop his Yamaha SY77 workstation: also visible are his Clavia Nord Rack and Roland JP8080 virtual analogue synths."

"Selecting sounds is something that is very instinctive. I've been getting into the Waldorf Wave again recently. I've borrowed Björk's before and I've been using it again since we made Vespertine and I've been getting into designing some more sounds on that. I do still do a lot of pure sound‑design sessions where I'll put a day aside and work for an hour or two on the ARP 2600 or on the VCS3 with the tape running continuously."

"Selecting sounds is something that is very instinctive. I've been getting into the Waldorf Wave again recently. I've borrowed Björk's before and I've been using it again since we made Vespertine and I've been getting into designing some more sounds on that. I do still do a lot of pure sound‑design sessions where I'll put a day aside and work for an hour or two on the ARP 2600 or on the VCS3 with the tape running continuously."

The tenth photo shows his studio and is captioned: "Marius de Vries now does most of his programming work in his own room at London's Strongroom studios. The large rack at left contains, from top, Alesis DM Pro drum module, Korg O1R/W sound module, Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter synth with MPG80 programmer, Studio Electronics MIDIMoog synth, two Akai S3200 samplers, Emu Vintage Keys and Morpheus sound modules, Kurzweil K2000R sound module, Roland MKS50 and JV1080 sound modules."

The tenth photo shows his studio and is captioned: "Marius de Vries now does most of his programming work in his own room at London's Strongroom studios. The large rack at left contains, from top, Alesis DM Pro drum module, Korg O1R/W sound module, Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter synth with MPG80 programmer, Studio Electronics MIDIMoog synth, two Akai S3200 samplers, Emu Vintage Keys and Morpheus sound modules, Kurzweil K2000R sound module, Roland MKS50 and JV1080 sound modules."

The tenth photo shows his studio and is captioned: "Marius de Vries now does most of his programming work in his own room at London's Strongroom studios. The large rack at left contains, from top, Alesis DM Pro drum module, Korg O1R/W sound module, Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter synth with MPG80 programmer, Studio Electronics MIDIMoog synth, two Akai S3200 samplers, Emu Vintage Keys and Morpheus sound modules, Kurzweil K2000R sound module, Roland MKS50 and JV1080 sound modules."

The tenth photo shows his studio and is captioned: "Marius de Vries now does most of his programming work in his own room at London's Strongroom studios. The large rack at left contains, from top, Alesis DM Pro drum module, Korg O1R/W sound module, Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter synth with MPG80 programmer, Studio Electronics MIDIMoog synth, two Akai S3200 samplers, Emu Vintage Keys and Morpheus sound modules, Kurzweil K2000R sound module, Roland MKS50 and JV1080 sound modules."

The tenth photo shows his studio and is captioned: "Marius de Vries now does most of his programming work in his own room at London's Strongroom studios. The large rack at left contains, from top, Alesis DM Pro drum module, Korg O1R/W sound module, Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter synth with MPG80 programmer, Studio Electronics MIDIMoog synth, two Akai S3200 samplers, Emu Vintage Keys and Morpheus sound modules, Kurzweil K2000R sound module, Roland MKS50 and JV1080 sound modules."

The tenth photo shows his studio and is captioned: "Marius de Vries now does most of his programming work in his own room at London's Strongroom studios. The large rack at left contains, from top, Alesis DM Pro drum module, Korg O1R/W sound module, Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter synth with MPG80 programmer, Studio Electronics MIDIMoog synth, two Akai S3200 samplers, Emu Vintage Keys and Morpheus sound modules, Kurzweil K2000R sound module, Roland MKS50 and JV1080 sound modules."

The tenth photo shows his studio and is captioned: "Marius de Vries now does most of his programming work in his own room at London's Strongroom studios. The large rack at left contains, from top, Alesis DM Pro drum module, Korg O1R/W sound module, Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter synth with MPG80 programmer, Studio Electronics MIDIMoog synth, two Akai S3200 samplers, Emu Vintage Keys and Morpheus sound modules, Kurzweil K2000R sound module, Roland MKS50 and JV1080 sound modules."

List of Marius de Vries' equipment, from the September 1998 issue of Sound on Sound:

DRUM MODULES

Yamaha RM50

"The thunder sound on the track 'Glasgow' on Craig Armstrong's CD is from the Matrix 12. It's actually a preset. I think that synthesizer is still rare enough for me to be able to get away with using presets. When I first went down to Syco 15 years ago and tried out a Matrix 12 it was definitely the thing I most wanted in the world, and more than anything it was that thunder sound that sold it to me. It is one of those keyboards that I use on almost every record. I first saw it when I was probably 20‑21 and just starting out as a keyboard player. At the time it represented the absolute Rolls Royce of synthesizers. There was no comparison, and to many people it still is the best analogue synthesizer ever made. For a non‑modular system it is extremely deep, the modulation technology on it is extremely complex. The sound of it is glorious, it has the best filters and the best oscillators. They are very sophisticated filters for the time — you get notch filters and phase filters and comb filters, and all that back in the days when normally you would have been lucky to get more than one resonant low pass filter. So for all those reasons, and also the multitimbrality of it, it was a revolutionary thing at the time."

"Keyboard‑wise, favourites are the Nord Lead and the JP8000 and some of the old dinosaurs that I still carry around like the Oberheim Matrix 12, which is an important instrument for me. I have been playing with the Yamaha VL1 a lot recently, I do not know whether that is a passing phase, but it's really good fun. Good training for the lungs as well, because it is all breath‑control driven. The Kurzweil K2000 is also important. It's nice because it reads your Akai samples and it is also a little bit more deep as a synthesizer than the Akai sampling devices. Those are the things that stand out."

"Keyboard‑wise, favourites are the Nord Lead and the JP8000 and some of the old dinosaurs that I still carry around like the Oberheim Matrix 12, which is an important instrument for me. I have been playing with the Yamaha VL1 a lot recently, I do not know whether that is a passing phase, but it's really good fun. Good training for the lungs as well, because it is all breath‑control driven. The Kurzweil K2000 is also important. It's nice because it reads your Akai samples and it is also a little bit more deep as a synthesizer than the Akai sampling devices. Those are the things that stand out."

KEYBOARDS/SYNTHS

ARP 2600 EMS Synthi A Emu Morpheus Emu Vintage Keys (x2) Korg 01R/W Kurzweil K2000 Nord Lead rack Oberheim Matrix 12 OSC OSCar Roland MKS50 Roland JV1080 Roland MKS80 Super Jupiter (+ MPG80 programmer) Roland MKS900 Roland JP8000 Studio Electronics MIDI Moog Yamaha VL1 Yamaha SY77