Roger O'Donnell

roger has this listed under keyboards

Roger played a roland XP50 and new how to use it!

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Roger played a Roland JX-8P while touring with the Cure.

"The characteristic sound of the album is the orchestral string sample I got from Doctor Sounds in New York for my [Sequential] Prophet 2000."

Roger says in this interview that he has played a Sequential Circuits Pro One synthesizer.

Roger O'Donnell's keyboard rig for the Cure's Swing Tour '96 consisted of "Apple Powerbook 5200CS (plus CD-ROM drive); Furman power supply; Emu E4K keyboard sampler; Emu EIV rack sampler (with Emu CD-ROM library); Emu Proteus synthesiser; Emu UltraProteus synthesiser; Kurzweil PC88 master keyboard; MOTU MIDI Time Piece II; Roland XP50 synthesiser; Yamaha ProMix 01 mixer; Zip Drive."

I have used Kurzweil's for close to 20 years and I don't even think about using anything else. The sound, the action, the reliability are incomparable. I recently programmed the entire Cure back catalogue using only a PC3K8! Outstanding library of sounds... In those 20 years on tour I have never had a keyboard go down and thats pretty spectacular!

The picture shows O'Donnell on stage with a Yamaha Motif XF6.

"Robert really likes the [Roland] MKS-20 piano module, so I've stuck with that. I've got some Prophet and Ell piano samples, but piano samples never seem to work live. I do actually use a piano sample for one of the old Cure songs, 'All Cats Are Gray' [from Faith], which has this really heavy single-note piano line at the end. For that part, I use a Prophet sample, which is quite powerful in the low range. The problem, of course, is that it's so difficult to get a piano sample that sounds real across the keyboard."

And the massive textured synth on the opening cut,'Plainsong,' was originally created by Smith on his demo. "We worked together on that, but it's mainly Robert," O'Donnell acknowledges. "I played the guide keyboard, with Boris [Williams, drummer] in the studio, because it's difficult to play to a click. For the guide keyboard part, I played a solo violin line. Then I added the bass keyboard line, which was a very heavy MIDIed texture with about four sounds, including a Minimoog, which I was determined to get onto the album somewhere, a very deep cello, and lots of Solina. Robert held down one chord all the way through--a kind of block C thing that he's fond of, with all five fingers very close together. It always works, which constantly amazes me. There's also a single high C held down all the way through, which we brought in and out of the mix."

"I write and record in my own studio using Logic on an iMac which just replaced an ageing G5. I produce everything myself and mix it, the only thing I send out is the mastering."

"I use Ableton Live for live looping and I use Mainstage for running live instruments. This all goes through a Macbook Pro an a MOTU Ultralite audio interface. I use Faderfox midi controllers which I love…"

"O'Donnell records these performances into Apple Logic (through a MOTU 828 into a MacIntosh computer) with a fairly sparse complement of controllers and peripherals: Mackie Control Surface, two 20" Apple Cinema displays, a Mackie Big Knob for monitoring, and Mackie 824 monitors."

"it's got to be the Kurzweil PC88 mother keyboard, because I always prefer a weighted keyboard, and I think this is the best on the market at the moment. It allows me to have multiple splits across the keyboard - I need at least three or four. The Roland XP50 is used as a backup, because it's got so many sounds in it. The PC88 drives the rack, but if that goes down, then I can always resort to the XP50, to fill in for a song. I've also just got the Yamaha ProMix 01 mixer - and it's amazing. All the songs are programmed in the PC88, and as I flip through them, everything changes on the desk as scene memories - levels, effects sends and EQ."

"The heart of my rack is an Emu EIV. I wanted something that had enough memory to store data for all the songs, so I wouldn't be waiting if Robert decided to change the order. It meant resampling every old sound and storing it on there, That added up to between 72 and 100Mb. I use an Emu Proteus - specially for the stereo piano preset - and an UltraProteus for basic sounds. I have a MOTU MIDI Time Piece II, and use an Apple Powerbook to make editing and routing of the Time Piece easier.

"I also use the Mac, with Alchemy editing software, to juggle samples round in the EIV. I just send a stereo feed out, much to the dismay of house sound engineers, who usually want a feed pre-master level. I always run up against this, because they seem to think you're going to ride the master volume pedal, but I don't - I just need to fade out the tails of strings and stuff.

"I've just got the keyboard version of the EIV, the E4K. And Perry's going to play keyboards on a couple of songs, so we're both going to have E4Ks. It's a great keyboard for live use - they've really worked out the logistics of using a sampler in a live situation."