Richard James Burgess

"The New Edition stuff was all computer and I mainly used the Roland MC4, actually doing all the programming in the studio."

"On my own album and on Melba Moore I used Fairlight CMI a lot. I use Page R mainly because it's so easy to use. It works the way the human mind works; you can bung a one bar idea into it, then modify it into a two bar idea, then into a whole song, then have different fills every eight bars. It's a great way of working because you don't have to conceive the whole thing in a blob. Previously you used to have to hold the thing in your head, but now it's getting to the point where you can actually sketch onto these machines, and from that sketch you can build the full colour picture."

"For instance, on the Melba Moore album I used the Yamaha RX11 drum machine with the individual outputs, which is MIDIable. I would write the song pattern on the RX11 and then MIDI it up to something else. I was MIDIing to an Emulator II which had samples on it which you could tune. It's basically using it instead of a Fairlight except you're not restricted to using Fairlight samples or Emulator samples. You could mix the RX11 sounds with the Emulator sounds, or you could trigger the DX7 with the RX11, or even an analogue synth via MIDI."

"We wrote that in about ten minutes at my home studio in London. It was made as a B-side for ‘Angel Face’ so I didn’t have any major aspirations or expectations for it. My MC8 / System 100M setup was always ready to roll; we talked about what we wanted and it popped out complete."

"I had just moved to NYC and I didn’t have much equipment with me – a LinnDrum, DX7 and a Juno 106 and I made the record with just those instruments."

"For instance, on the Melba Moore album I used the Yamaha RX11 drum machine with the individual outputs, which is MIDIable. I would write the song pattern on the RX11 and then MIDI it up to something else. I was MIDIing to an Emulator II which had samples on it which you could tune. It's basically using it instead of a Fairlight except you're not restricted to using Fairlight samples or Emulator samples. You could mix the RX11 sounds with the Emulator sounds, or you could trigger the DX7 with the RX11, or even an analogue synth via MIDI."

"I had used very early electronic percussion on the Easy Street recordings in the mid-70s: the Impakt Percussion device and I used my Synthi A to mock up percussive sounds."

"We rehearsed the music and recorded those sessions, I wrote out my drum parts and programmed them for the MC-8 Microcomposer and the prototype SDSV drum synth."

"We rehearsed the music and recorded those sessions, I wrote out my drum parts and programmed them for the MC-8 Microcomposer and the prototype SDSV drum synth."

"I had just moved to NYC and I didn’t have much equipment with me – a LinnDrum, DX7 and a Juno 106 and I made the record with just those instruments."

"I had just moved to NYC and I didn’t have much equipment with me – a LinnDrum, DX7 and a Juno 106 and I made the record with just those instruments."

"The major technical hurdle we had on the 'Tearooms' album was synching the CR78 with the MC8 (on the track 'The Tearooms of Mars…') and we did it by generating a square wave, recording that and locking the CR78 to that. It was hit and miss because the CR78 had to read every tooth of the square or it would slip out of synch. I seem to remember we got the square wave wrong at first and the CR78 was running at double speed. It was very exciting when we cracked it."

" I always liked the timing of the Linn 9000 and I still have mine."